The Mysterious Island Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Captain Grant's Children

Chapter 2 Captain Grant's Children (2)
"What the hell is it!" Mrs. Helen always asked impatiently with the unique curiosity of women.

"Yes, that's right!" Sir Glenarvan exclaimed, "I guessed it was right, it was a letter!"

"Ah! letter, letter!" exclaimed Lady Helen in surprise.

"But," added Sir Glenarvan, "I saw it, because the paper was damp and stuck to the neck of the bottle, so I couldn't get it out."

"Then just smash the bottle!" Major McNabbs suggested.

"But I would very much like the bottle intact and in its original condition," said Sir Glenarvan.

"I'm in favor of the idea." The major changed his attitude at once.

"Of course, not smashing the bottle is the best choice," Madam Helen added, "but I think the letters in the bottle are a hundred times more important than the bottle itself. Therefore, you should choose important things to do."

"Your Excellency, in fact, you only need to break the bottleneck, and the letters inside can be taken out completely." John Mengel made a suggestion.

"That's right, that's right! My dear Edward, just do it!" Mrs. Helen echoed loudly.

In fact, this is the best way.Sir Glenarvan, in spite of his reluctance, broke the cork of the precious vial.The condensed impurities on the bottle are as hard as granite and can only be beaten with a hammer.After a while, the bottleneck was broken into pieces and scattered on the table one by one.Everyone around saw a few pieces of paper glued together.Sir Glenarvan gently pulled it out, unfolded the papers one by one, and spread them flat on the table.Mrs. Helen, the major and the captain surrounded her.

letter in bottle
Obviously, these sheets of paper have been eroded by seawater for a long time, and the handwriting is really blurred and difficult to read. Only some individual words can be seen clearly, and it is difficult to spell them into lines or sentences.Sir Glenarvan held the paper, facing the sun, looked up and down, carefully, and upside down for a few minutes, then imitated the strokes of each letter, and finally raised his head, and looked at the onlookers, their expressions. anxious friend says:
"I speculate from the unetched handwriting that these three letters may be just a letter, written on three sheets, and written in three different languages; one is English, one is German, and one is German. Zhang is French. I'm pretty sure of my guess."

"From these handwriting, we can see the meaning to be expressed!" Mrs. Glenarvan asked curiously.

"It's hard for me to explain this, dear Mrs. Helen, because the words on the letter are really illegible."

"Then, the words left in these three letters can complement each other to form a complete meaning!" the major asked.

"Yes, it should be possible," John Mengels replied, "I think it is impossible for the same word on the same line on these three letters to be eroded by sea water. In fact, we can make these incomplete letters and words Putting them together, you can see the general meaning.”

"Yes, that's what we'll do!" said Sir Glenarvan. "Now, let's look at English first!"

On this English stationery, the incomplete word letters are as follows:
62Brigow
Zinc
aland
SkippGr
That monit of long
Andssistance
lost
"No matter how you look at it, I can't tell what the meaning is from these words." The major was quite disappointed and said with a sigh.

"But at any rate," added Captain John, "it is the English alphabet."

"There is no doubt about it," said Sir Glenarvan, "among them, sink (sink), aland (land), that (this), and (and), lost (lost), these words are all complete. And , the complete meaning of this skipp must be skipper (captain); as for this Gr (grid)...it should be a person's name, maybe the captain's name of a ship in distress..."

"Well, I would like to add," John Mengel said, "monit and ssistance are also very clear, monit should be monition (file), and ssistance should be assistance (rescue)."

"Yes, if you look at it this way, you can understand the meaning of it." Mrs. Helen interjected.

"Unfortunately," continued the major, "this short letter and short line, what ship, and what happened to it is really confusing."

"I'm sure the truth will come to light," said Sir Edward confidently.

"That's for sure," said the major, who was characteristic of agreeing with others, "but how shall we find out?"

"It's enough to read the handwriting of these three letters to complement each other." Sir Glenarvan said.

"Well, that's the way it should be done!" Mrs. Helen shouted out in agreement.

But all is not satisfactory, the second letter has been more severely eroded by sea water, and only a few isolated fonts exist:

7juniGlas
Zwei atrosen
Graus
Bring ihnen
"These words are in German," said John Mengel, looking at them.

"John, can you really read German?" Sir Glenarvan replied.

"Sir, know something."

"That's good, tell us, what do these words mean?"

Captain John looked at the letter paper carefully again, and replied: "Well, I think the time of the accident has been determined, it was on 7 Juni, that is, June 6, if it is combined with the 7 on the English letter , which means June 62, 1862."

"It's really great!" Madam Helen exclaimed in surprise, "John, keep going."

"On the same line of this letter, this Glas," continued young Captain John, "is put together with the gow on the English letter paper, which is Glasgow. Obviously, the expression means a ship anchored in the port of Glasgow."

"Yes, I think so too." The major echoed.

Captain John Mengel continued: "The second line on this German letter paper has been eroded by sea water and is illegible. But there are two very important words, the first is zwei, which means two; and The meaning of atrosen should be matrosen, which should mean sailor."

"In this way, what you want to express is that a captain and two sailors have died?" Mrs. Helen asked in surprise.

"Yes, very likely!" said Sir Glenarvan.

"But my lord, I still tell you that the graus below is really difficult for me. Maybe when I see the third picture and compare it with each other, I can figure out what it means. As for the last one The two words, bring ihnen, are not difficult to guess the meaning of "hope to give"; if they are put together with the word "rescue" in the sixth line of the English letter, it means "hope to help", which means it is easy to see."

"Yes, I hope to get help!" Sir Glenarvan replied, "But where did these victims die? Now it seems that the exact place where the bottle drifted and the place where the victims happened are still unknown. It's a mystery, and we're still in the dark."

"I just hope that all this can be explained clearly on the French letter paper." Mrs. Helen interjected.

"Well, let's read the French letter now!" said Sir Glenarvan. "We all know French among the three languages, so it is much easier to specialize in it."

The handwriting left on the third letter reads:
Troiatsfannia
Gonieaustral
Taste
Continprcruelindi
Jeteongit
Et37°11"lat
"There are still some numbers in this letter," Madam Helen exclaimed in surprise, "Gentlemen, take a look!"

"Let's take a closer look and study it carefully!" Sir Glenarvan suggested. "We should start from the beginning. Now I will list these incomplete words in order. The opening words A few words, I saw that it means 'three-masted ship', combined with the English letter, it should be 'Britannia' three-masted ship. And the following two words, gonie and austral, can only be known as austral That means the southern hemisphere."

"This tells us a lot of information," said Captain John Mengel, "that is to say, the ship should have been in distress in the southern hemisphere."

"But it's all uncertain," added the major.

"Be quiet, please listen to me continue." Jazz said eagerly again, "Look quickly, the word abor is written in full, it should mean aborder, which means 'arrive' and 'disembark'. It should be Say, these people who died have arrived at a certain place. But where is it? Contin! Is this word continent (mainland)? But cruel..."

"Cruel!" John Menger yelled loudly, "This happens to have the same meaning as graus... grausam in German letter paper, it is an adjective meaning 'barbaric'!"

"Look on, look on!" said Sir Glenarvan excitedly.Obviously, he was excited by the meaning presented by these vague and incomplete words, "Is the word indi the word inde (India)? Are all the sailors on this ship thrown to India? And this ongit What does the word mean? Does it mean longitude? Here is the latitude: 37°11. That would be great! We finally know an exact direction!"

"However, we still don't know the position of longitude!" McNabbs said.

"My dear major, we cannot know them all at once," explained Sir Glenarvan. "It is very good to know the exact latitude. Of the three letters, the French one is obviously the most complete." It can be seen that these three letters are mutually interpretable. The number of lines on the three sheets of paper is the same, they can complement each other, and can be translated word for word. Now, the work we have to do is to combine these three letters Merge the letters into one letter and express it in one language, and then think about the most possible, clearest, most reasonable, and most definite meaning of the letter."

"Then shall we combine this letter in English, French or German?" asked the major.

"It should be in French!" said Sir Glenarvan, "because the meaning of this letter is the most complete in French!"

"You are quite right, sir!" John Mengel added, "and, besides, the language most of you are familiar with is French."

"Of course there is no doubt. Now, I will use French to piece together the broken words and sentences in these three letters, and reserve the blanks in the words and sentences; and then fill them in with clear words, so that I can Start research and analysis.”

So Sir Glenarvan immediately took a quill, and in a short time he wrote everything.Afterwards, reading to everyone, he wrote the following lines:
7 juin 1862 trois—mats brifannia Glasgow
(June 1862, 6) HMS Britannia (Glasgow)
Sombregonieaustral
(Sunken) (Gonia) (Southern Hemisphere)
a terredeux mafelots
(landing) (two sailors)
Capitaine Grabor
(captain grid) (arrival)

Contin prcurelindi
(Continental) (captured) (Savage) (India)
Jeté ce document de longitude
(throws this letter) (longitude)
Et37°11"de latitude portez-leur secours
(latitude 37°11") (hope for rescue)

lost
(died)
At this moment, a sailor came forward and reported to the captain that the "Duncan" had now reached the Firth of Clyde, and was listening to the captain's orders.

"What do you want to do now, sir?" John Mengel asked Sir Glenarvan.

"Captain John, now sail to Dunbarton as soon as possible. After that, when Mrs. Helen returns to Malcolm House, I will go to the Admiralty to deliver these letters."

John Mengel, acting on orders, gave the sailor his order, and the sailor immediately ran to the mate to convey his order.

"Now, my friends," said Sir Glenarvan loudly, "we have deciphered a shipwreck and obtained some clues, so let's continue to analyze and study! It seems that our judgment ability is It also determines the survival of several human lives. So we must use our brains now to solve this mystery."

"Everything is ready, my Edward," replied Lady Helene.

"The first thing we have to do," continued Sir Glenarvan, "is to divide the letter into three distinct parts: first, what is known; second, what can be speculated. ; the third is the unknown part. What is the part we know now? It should be June 1862, 6, a three-masted ship called 'Britannia' which was moored in Grisgow Harbor It sank; the captain and two sailors put the three-sheet letter in a bottle, and threw it into the sea at latitude 7°37′, asking for help."

"Yes, exactly," agreed the major.

"What can we guess?" Sir Glenarvan said to himself. "First of all, the part that should be guessed is that the place of death was in the sea in the southern hemisphere. After that, I remind everyone to pay attention to the 'gonie 'This word. Does it refer to a certain place name, or does it refer to a part of a place name?"

"Does this refer to Patagonia, the place name of the southern region of Argentina in South America?" Madam Helen blurted out.

"Presumably it should be."

"But, is this Patagonia really at 37° south latitude?" the major asked questioningly.

"It's not difficult to verify," said John Menger, and immediately spread out a map of the world, pointing to South America and said, "Yes, that's right. Patagonia is exactly at 37 south latitude. ° line. Look, Alogania Alogania, a place name in southern Chile. The area is exactly on the 37° south latitude, and then this latitude runs along the northern part of Patagonia, across across the pampas, and then directly into the Atlantic Ocean."

"Well, well said! Let's proceed to the next step of guessing. The captain and two sailors abor, in fact, abordenr (arrived) at a certain place. Contin...that is continent (land), everyone please pay attention, this It's 'mainland' instead of an island. Then, what happened to them? There are two letters -pr- which should have the meaning of revealing, so that the mystery can be solved. These two letters should be pris (captured), and It should mean prisonniers (made prisoners)? And then who were these people captured? It should be taken captive by Cruels indiens (savage Indians). I explain this way, what do you think? ? In the blank place, didn’t the word jump on the paper? Now the meaning of this letter should be clear! Do you still have any doubts?”

Sir Glenarvan's tone was very confident, and his eyes were also full of confidence.Everyone was also infected by this confident enthusiasm, and they replied unanimously: "Yes, that's obviously the case!"

After a short pause, Sir Glenarvan continued: "My friends, I now think that this theory is quite valid. The place of accident is off the coast of Patagonia. I should Send someone to the Port of Glasgow to inquire where the Britannia was headed after leaving the port. Maybe, through this, we can know whether there are any ships that were forced to sail to the Patagonian waters. possibility."

"Oh, we don't need to go so far to inquire about it," John Mengel suggested. "I have a compilation of the "Merchant Shipping Daily" here, and we will find out after looking it up."

"It's really great! It's great!" said Mrs. Helen joyfully.

So John Mengel took out a large stack of 1862 "Merchant Shipping Daily" from the cabin, and quickly flipped through it.He didn't read for too long, and soon he shouted excitedly:

"In 1862, May, 5th. In Peru! Callao Callao, located on the west coast of Peru, a large commercial port name. A ship full of cargo, bound for the port of Glasgow. The name of the ship is called' The Britannia', the captain's name is Grant!"

"Ah! Grant!" exclaimed Sir Glenarvan, "that Scotchman full of ambition to establish a new Socrates in the Pacific!"

"Yes, yes, it was he," said Captain John Mengel. "In 1862, he sailed the 'Britannia'. After sailing out of Glasgow port, he was never heard of again."

"Yes, there is no doubt about that! There is really no doubt!" added Sir Glenarvan. "It should be him, it is he! On the 5th of May, leaving the Britannia Callao, just eight days later, on the 30th of June, was wrecked off the coast of Patagonia. From these three illegible letters, the whole experience of this ship is also recorded. My friend Guys, take a look again, my guess is correct. But the only information we know is: the longitude of the crash.”

"Since we know the place of death, it doesn't matter if we don't know the longitude," John Mengel said. "If we know the latitude, we can definitely find the place of death."

"In this way, we know everything?" Mrs. Helen asked.

"My dear Helen, yes, we are all clear. I can fill in the blanks left by the erosion on this paper. Just as Captain Grant himself told, I am taking notes."

So Sir Glenarvan took up his pen, and made these notes without hesitation:
On June 1862, 6, the three-masted ship "Britannia" belonging to the Glasgow Bay was wrecked in the southern hemisphere, in the waters around Patagonia.The captain and two sailors hurried to the mainland, but were captured by the local savage Indians. They deliberately dropped the three letters at latitude 7°37", praying for assistance, otherwise they would die in this place.

(End of this chapter)