In 1865 five men held prisoner in besieged Richmond, Virginia, escape in a balloon with a dog and are blown across the Pacific to an uncharted island. Led by…
Now playing01 The Storm of 1865. Voices in the Air
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Chapters (62)
About this book
In 1865 five men held prisoner in besieged Richmond, Virginia, escape in a balloon with a dog and are blown across the Pacific to an uncharted island. Led by the engineer Cyrus Smith, they begin with nothing, not even a match, and build a civilisation from scratch: fire, pottery, iron, glass, explosives, a windmill, a telegraph. Strange things keep helping them, a bullet found in a wild pig, a chest washed ashore, a rescue from the sea, and only at the end do they learn who has been watching over them.
Context and significance
Jules Verne published it in 1874 and 1875 as a sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and to In Search of the Castaways, though it stands perfectly well on its own. Mark F. Smith reads all sixty-two chapters alone, about twenty-two hours.
This is a LibriVox recording, read by volunteers and dedicated to the public domain; its audio files are kept by the Internet Archive, which plays and serves them here. Public-domain status differs from country to country, so check the law where you live before republishing it. Do you hold rights in this work? Request its removal
A Journey to the Centre of the EarthJules Verne8 h 9 min · English
From the Earth to the MoonJules Verne4 h 39 min · English
Around the World in Eighty DaysJules Verne6 h 33 min · English
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the SeaJules Verne16 h 30 min · English
IvanhoeWalter Scott19 h 25 min · English
KimRudyard Kipling13 h 8 min · English
Twenty Years AfterAlexandre Dumas25 h 43 min · English
The Black TulipAlexandre Dumas7 h 34 min · English