I supposed there are a few ways to look at this novel. Perhaps Jules Verne was riffing on Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps, given Poe’s sense of the macabre, Verne was collaborating with a departed Poe. Or perhaps, like me, Verne found the ending of Poe’s book was less than satisfying, and he decided to do something about it. The book I am referring to is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
In Poe’s book, after a series of adventures two of the main characters are adrift in the Antarctic Ocean in a small boat. Poe envisioned an Antarctic that was warmer than the reality we know to be true. This Antarctic may have been heated by thermal action. The novel ends with the two of them in a mist or fog when suddenly a huge human like figure appears as the boat rushes towards some rapids. The explanation given by the author was the Mr. Pym, one of the characters in the boat, had passed away, and the notes of the remaining few chapters could not be found.
Verne is not one of my favorite authors, but he usually spins an interesting tale. He does so in this case. What was fascinating to me is the way he wove the elements of Poe’s story into his story.
The novel starts off with the narrator on Desolation Island in the Indian Ocean. He was awaiting for passage off the island. Any ship will do as long as it is the first. He manages to wrangle passage on the Halbrane even though the Captain, Len Guy, had initially refused him multiple times. As it turns out Len Guy is the brother of the Captain of Jane Guy, the vessel lost in the Antarctic with Gordon Pym aboard. Len Guy has reason to believe his brother is still alive and he mounts a rescue mission to the Antarctic. Unbeknownst to him as he reinforces his crew he takes on Dirk Peters, the companion of Gordon Pym in the boat from Poe’s novel. He had managed to escape the Antarctic and he is determined to return to save Pym.
As it turned out the Captain of the Jane Guy had survived along with several of his crewmen. But, of course, there were a series of events that decimated their number. Tension is brought into play between the old crew who are willing to follow Captain Len Guy anywhere, and the new crew members. They are ready to turn back at the first failure to locate any survivors.
Verne is so obvious in his tension building techniques that sometimes it is a little irksome. Dirk Peters comes on board as a Seaman Hunt, and is obvious that it is Dirk Peters. The author keeps the pretense up for several chapters. Verne even makes an aside to the readers about this.
“I shall not be at all surprised if my readers have already recognized Dirk Peters in Hunt; indeed, I shall be astonished if they have failed to do so. The extraordinary thing is that Captain Len Guy and myself, who had read Edgar Poe’s book over and over again, did not see at once, when Hunt came on the ship at the Falklands, that he and the half-breed were identical! I can only admit that we were both blindfolded by some hidden action of Fate, just when certain pages of that book ought to have effectually cleared our vision.”
There is a neat little section in the middle of the book where Verne summarizes Poe’s book to help tie the two together, and to bring in some foreshadowing.
I will not give away the ending. I would suggest reading the two books as companions. They are worth while reading to appreciate two well known authors. Especially Verne’s riffing on Poe.
This book is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free.
Audio book from LibriVox.org : An Antarctic Mystery, or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields
e-Book from Gutenberg.org: An Antarctic Mystery