My book starts out with a naturalist named Pierre Arron ax. He’s a man that is fascinated by underwater life, and enjoys watching and studying underwater creatures. News spread worldwide about a serpent-like creature, part of the whale family, had been ramming ships and seeking them with ease. Pierre was very interested in this issue. One day, while Pierre was staying the night in a hotel in Paris, he received a letter.
The letter said that the American government was going to build a frigate to chase down and kill the sea monster. The letter also said that they would be more than happy to have him come along. Pierre and his trustworthy servant, Conseil, we ” re going to attend this expedition. They packed up the belongings that were necessary, and then headed out to the dock to meet the ship, named the Abraham Lincoln. He gets aboard the ship, and the crew set sail to kill the monster. On the ship they meet a Canadian harpooner, Ned Land.
He is the one who is supposed to kill the monster when they find it. The crew goes on for about four weeks without finding any sign of the monster. Just as they are about to give up, Ned spots the monster! The monster proved to be 100 times faster than the Abraham Lincoln. After chasing the monster for a long period of time, they finally get close to the monster.
They thought that maybe the creature was now sleeping, because it wasn’t running from them like the previous times. The monster seemed to be letting off a radiant glow in which nobody had seen before. The crew decides they are going to go for the kill. The men start firing guns at it, and start shooting different weapons trying to kill the beast. Nobody seemed to get close to hitting the beast, and if they were, it wasn’t effecting it.
One elderly man steps up with his gun, and he decides that he is going to take a shot at it. The old man proves his marksmanship by hitting the beast dead on. The crew celebrated, but it still showed it wasn’t taking any effect. Ned Land steps up and decides to take a shot as well. He decides to try to create a serious injury to it.
He grabs his harpoon, and he then takes the shot. Pierre saw the harpoon soar and then hit the monster, but it made a sound as if it had hit some kind of metal. The light from the animal then went out, and the object could be seen moving at the ship full speed. It then hit the ship, making a big triangular shaped hole in the side of the ship. When the monster had struck the ship it had then threw Pierre overboard. Pierre sunk about 20 feet into the ocean.
He was a pretty good swimmer, and he managed to swim back up to the top. He could see the Abraham Lincoln slowly drifting away. Thoughts were racing through his head about his life, and he was wondering if they had noticed he had been thrown off the ship. He swam desperately trying to make his way to the ship. Pierre started growing tired, and the ship started getting away faster.
He started trying to scream help, but it was no use. He grew tired of swimming and just started to sink, but was then grabbed up by the collar by somebody. He coughed up water, and realized that it was his trustworthy assistant Conseil. He thanked him, and tried discussing how they were going to make it. They decided to help each other swim, and take turns pulling each other. The two men swam for a while and the struck something hard.
They then realized that they were on top of the giant monster. It turned out that another man was on top of the monster. It was Ned Land. Ned explained to them that the reason that the harpoon and the guns had no effect on the monster was because it seemed to be made of some sort of metal plates. The object rose to the surface a little more. The three men then discovered that it wasn’t a monster at all.
They started stomping their feet, and then a man with a mask on came out of the top of it. He started screaming a German language at them. Before they knew it, a group of men grabbed the three men, took them in their ship, and threw them in a dark room. Ned, Pierre, and Conseil realized that they hadn’t been chasing a monster, and a monster hadn’t been sinking those ships. They realized that it was some sort of submarine.
They walked around the dark room. It seemed as if there weren’t any doors in it. They stayed locked up for a while. Then they heard latches and locks opening.
There in the door stood two men on each side of a person that seemed to be a captain. They tried speaking to the captain in all kinds of different languages. They were trying to tell them their story, and what had happened. The captain just stood there, then just left.
Shortly after, a man walked into the room and served them dinner. Ned hated the place, and attacked a butler trying to get answers. He was pulled off of him, and then he calmed down again. The men remained locked up in the solitary room for a long time.
Then one day the captain walked in and introduced himself. He told the men that his name was captain Nemo, and that they were aboard the Nautilus. He told them that he despised life on land, so he built a submarine, and decided to live underwater. Captain Nemo said that he got all of his necessities from the ocean, and that nobody knew about the submarine except the crew, and the three men now aboard.
He said since they attacked his ship and since nobody was supposed to know about it, that they would have to stay aboard the ship forever. Ned Land wasn’t happy. He then lets them roam the ship. Professor Anno rex and Conseil found the ocean depths to be a new world! Many life and death experiences made Ned Land feel uneasy about his new life aboard the Nautilus. He was determined to escape. Captain Nemo took them to many wonderful places.
They experienced hunting and searching for pearls. They went to Vigo Bay, a hollowed out volcano, and the underwater city of Atlantis. Captain Nemo took them to the South Pole, where no man had ever been before. That made Captain Nemo the first person ever there. They almost died leaving the Great Ice Barrier.
Then they also got in a fight with a giant squid! The only bad parts about their voyages were that Captain Nemo seemed to be seeking revenge on ships from his own country. He used the powerful Nautilus as a weapon to sink many ships. After ten months of being aboard the Nautilus, they completed their underwater exploration covering 20, 000 leagues under the sea. Later on, a maelstrom hit the Nautilus. The prisoners had then planned their escape. Professor Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land, already in the dinghy ready to escape, were thrown from the submarine.
They then floated to safety, and returned to their homeland. The mystery remains. Nobody knows what happened to the Nautilus, and it’s infamous Captain Nemo.