Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea even for 1869 ... In none of these technical situation did Verne take advantage of knowledge readily available to him at the time". Thomas said, however, that despite poor science, plot, and characterization, "Put them all together with the magic of Verne's story-telling ability, and something flames up. A story emerges that sweeps incredulity before it". Jules Verne's wrote a sequel to this book: "L'Île mystérieuse" ("The Mysterious Island", 1874), which concludes the stories begun by "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and "In Search of the Castaways". While "The Mysterious Island" seems to give more information about Nemo (or
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea not to a "depth", as 20,000 leagues (80,000 km) is nearly twice the circumference of the Earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is four leagues. The book uses metric leagues, which are four kilometres each. During the year 1866, ships of several nations spot a mysterious sea monster, which some suggest to be a giant narwhal. The United States government assembles an expedition in New York City to find and destroy the monster. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine biologist and narrator of the story, who happens to be in New York at the time, receives a last-minute