The Sea Raiders sea monsters include Scylla and Charybdis of Greek mythology, and the kraken of medieval times which is thought to have been a giant squid. Previous fictional encounters with giant squids are described in chapter 59 of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" of 1851, and in Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" of 1870. The narrator describes a recent period when a new sort of giant squid, a species named "Haploteuthis ferox", became known. (This fictitious name can be compared with the genus name "Architeuthis" of the giant squid.) As a part of the survey of the period, including early encounters
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Prince Dakkar), it is muddied by the presence of several irreconcilable chronological contradictions between the two books and even within "The Mysterious Island." Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much later "Facing the Flag". That book's main villain, Ker Karraje, is a completely unscrupulous pirate acting purely and simply for gain, completely devoid of all the saving graces which gave Nemo—for all that he, too, was capable of ruthless killings—some nobility of character. Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests—but unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers, Karraje's career of