he year is 1865, and five Union men are trapped in the siege of the city of Richmond, Va. Cyrus Smith, master engineer, and his Negro servant, Neb; Bonadventure Pencroff, a hearty and bold sailor, in charge of a 15-year-old orphan, Harbert Brown; and, lastly, an experienced and adventuresome newspaper reporter, Gideon Spilett. Chafing at their captivity, the men steal a war balloon for their escape, being joined at the last minute by Top, Smith's dog. They take flight under cover of a tremendous storm. But unfortunately the storm does not abate, and the balloon is blown southwestward for some 6,000 miles, into the uncharted South Pacific.
By a stroke of immense luck, the balloon finally crash-lands on a lush, uninhabited island. The battered refugees catalog their material possessions: the clothes on their backs, one match, two watches, a notebook, Top's dog collar and a grain of wheat. From this unlikely stock, adding in hard labor and their wits, the five will, over the next four years, transform their island home into a happy, flourishing mini-colony of the glorious techno-democracy, the United States of America.
The narrative proceeds at a deliberate, almost day-by-day pace, yet is not without suspense and drama. Step by meticulous step, the colonists progress from taking drafty refuge under a jumble of large stones to residing warm and safe in a cliffside mansion. They go from desperately eating raw shellfish to grinding flour, roasting domesticated fowl and pigs and drinking homemade beer. The discovery of native tobacco gives them a recreational pursuit. Roads and a telegraph line, a stout ship to cruise to a neighboring island and an elevator to their front door soon follow. Along the way, they acquire two more companions: a fellow castaway named Ayrton, found on the nearby isle, and an orangutan named Jup, who is trained up as a willing and good-humored servant.
But throughout their stay, occasional baffling incidents arise, which seem to betoken a mysterious and hidden human presence on their paradise. Unseen help is given to the colonists at crucial junctures, the most pivotal of which occurs when they are attacked by pirates and the pirate ship is exploded by secret means. It is only when the novel is five-sixths told that their unknown benefactor emerges as an ailing Captain Nemo. After this revelation, events quickly converge to doom the further tenancy of the colonists, and their eventual rescue comes at the very last possible minute.
A blueprint for rebuilding civilization
Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island appeared in 1874 in France, but the history of English-language editions of Verne's masterpiece has been a sad and sordid one. Bad translations which abridged much of the original text (the Bantam edition of 1970 contained only 90,000 words of Verne's 200,000, for instance) guaranteed a reading experience that would pale in comparison to what Verne intended. This current edition, buttressed by massive but reader-friendly scholarly apparatus, remedies the deficits of all previous versions.
Jules Verne doted on Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson (1814), and wrote many Robinsonades during his long career. In Island, Verne set out to outdo all his predecessors, and to large degree he succeeded. So believable and detailed are the accomplishments and tactics of the five accidental colonists, so admirable are their characters and achievements, that even a reluctant reader will be won over by their tale of human triumph over seemingly insurmountable misfortune.
The many good things contained in this book begin and rely on translator Sydney Kravitz's wonderful rendering of Verne's original words. There is nothing fusty or dull about this tale, as filtered through Kravitz's talents. The dialogue sounds like actual people might speak it, and hardly any archaic constructions obtrude. Reading this prose is pure pleasure; it allows the story itself to leap free. And what a story it is! Given any fascination at all with the infrastructure of civilization, the underpinning of our modern lives which we ignore and take for granted, the reader will be amazed and astounded by the ingenuity on display here. Verne makes his schematic for rebuilding civilization almost patentable, and one feels that, possessed only of this book and marooned under similar circumstances, one could do as well just by following its prescriptions.
The castaways themselves are all vividly drawn, but the real star of the book is Pencroff, the impetuous Everyman. Smith is a bit stolid and Spilett is too philosophical. Neb is given a full range of humanity, but still limited. Ayrton is trapped in his remorse for past misdeeds. And Harbert is a Billy Budd figure of too much virginal purity. But Pencroff can be relied on for down-to-earth laughter and even rudeness. And the men are not callous earth-rapists, but husbanders of the land. For instance, they disdain to make a needless slaughter among the helpless seal colony, deeming it a foolish waste of resources. True, everything is regarded in light of their own needs, but no waste or befoulment is permitted.
As for Verne's prowess as a science-fiction writer, one can only admire the natural way he inserts all his facts and research. True, he will occasionally include a neat tidbit of knowledge that's really extraneous, but you can forgive him his enthusiasm, since the next sentence will invariably find the colonists battling a jaguar, climbing the walls of a crater or breaking wild asses to the harness.
