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Jules Verne
Abandoned
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664171849
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
The present romance, the second in the Mysterious Island triad, was originally issued in Paris with the title of L'Abandonné. Jules Verne's list of stories already ran then to some twenty volumes—a number which has since grown to almost Dumasien proportions. L'Abandonné, like its two companion tales, ran its course as a serial through the Magasin Illustré of education and recreation, before its issue as a boy's story-book. Its success in both forms seems to have established a record in the race for popularity and a circulation in both the French and English fields of current literature. The present book was translated into English by the late W. H. G. Kingston; and is printed in Everyman's Library by special exclusive arrangement with Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd.
1909
The list of tales and favourite romances by Jules Verne includes the following:—
Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1870; A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, translated by J. V., 1872; tr. F. A. Malleson, 1876; Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, 1873; tr. H. Frith, 1876; From the Earth to the Moon, and a Trip Round it, tr. Q. Mercier and E. G. King, 1873; The English at the North Pole, 1873; Meridiana: Adventures of Three English and Three Russians, 1873; Dr. Ox's Experiment and other Stories, 1874; A Floating City, 1874; The Blockade Runners, 1874; Around the World in Eighty Days, tr. G. M. Towle and N. D'Anvers, 1874, 1876; tr. H. Frith, 1879; The Fur Country, or Seventy Degrees North Latitude, tr. N. D'Anvers, 1874; tr H. Frith, 1879; The Mysterious Island, tr. W. H. G. Kingston, 1875; The Survivors of the Chancellor: Diary of J. R. Kazallon, tr E. Frewer, 1875; Martin Paz, tr. E. Frewer, 1876; Field of Ice, 1876; Child of the Cavern, tr. W. H. G. Kingston, 1877, Michael Strogoff, tr. W. H. G. Kingston, 1877; A Voyage Round the World, 1877; Hector Senvadac, tr. E. Frewer, 1878; Dick Sands, the Boy Captain, tr. E. Frewer, 1879; Celebrated Travels and Travellers: The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century, tr. Dora Leigh, N. D'Anvers, etc., 1879–81; Tribulations of a Chinaman, tr. E. Frewer, 1880; The Begum's Fortune, tr. W. H. G. Kingston, 1880; The Steam House, tr. AD Kingston, 1881; The Giant Raft, W. J. Gordon, 1881; Godfrey Morgan, 1883; The Green Ray, tr. M. de Hauteville, 1883; The Vanished Diamond, 1885; The Archipelago on Fire, 1886; Mathias Sandorf, 1886; Kérabân the Inflexible, 1887; The Lottery Ticket, 1887; Clipper of the Clouds, 1887; The Flight to France, or Memoirs of a Dragoon, 1888; North against South: Story of the American Civil War, 1888; Adrift in the Pacific, 1889; Cesar Cacabel, 1891; The Purchase of the North Pole, 1891; A Family without a Name, 1891; Mistress Branican, 1892; Claudius Bombarnac, 1894; Foundling Mick, 1895; Clovis Dardentor, 1897; For the Flag, tr. Mrs. C. Hoey, 1897; An Antarctic Mystery, 1898.
Jules Verne's works are published in an authorised and illustrated edition by Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd.
THE ABANDONED
CHAPTER I
Conversation on the Subject of the Bullet—Construction of a Canoe—Hunting—At the Top of a Kauri—Nothing to attest the Presence of Man—Neb and Herbert's Prize—Turning a Turtle—The Turtle disappears—Cyrus Harding's Explanation.
It was now exactly seven months since the balloon voyagers had been thrown on Lincoln Island. During that time, notwithstanding the researches they had made, no human being had been discovered. No smoke even had betrayed the presence of man on the surface of the island. No vestiges of his handiwork showed that either at an early or at a late period had man lived there. Not only did it now appear to be uninhabited by any but themselves, but the colonists were compelled to believe that it never had been inhabited. And now, all this scaffolding of reasonings fell before a simple ball of metal, found in the body of an inoffensive rodent! In fact, this bullet must have issued from a firearm, and who but a human being could have used such a weapon?
When Pencroft had placed the bullet on the table, his companions looked at it with intense astonishment. All the consequences likely to result from this incident, notwithstanding its apparent insignificance, immediately took possession of their minds. The sudden apparition of a supernatural being could not have startled them more completely.