"
"An island?"
"Or, more correctly speaking, on our gigantic narwhal."
"Explain yourself, Ned!"
"Only I soon found out why my harpoon had not entered its skin
and was blunted."
"Why, Ned, why?"
"Because, Professor, that beast is made of sheet iron."
The Canadian's last words produced a sudden revolution in my brain.
I wriggled myself quickly to the top of the being, or object,
half out of the water, which served us for a refuge. I kicked it.
It was evidently a hard, impenetrable body, and not the soft substance
that forms the bodies of the great marine mammalia. But this hard
body might be a bony covering, like that of the antediluvian animals;
and I should be free to class this monster among amphibious reptiles,
such as tortoises or alligators.
Well, no! the blackish back that supported me was smooth,
polished, without scales. The blow produced a metallic sound;
and, incredible though it may be, it seemed, I might say,
as if it was made of riveted plates.
There was no doubt about it! This monster, this natural
phenomenon that had puzzled the learned world, and over thrown
and misled the imagination of seamen of both hemispheres,
it must be owned was a still more astonishing phenomenon,
inasmuch as it was a simply human construction.
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