Master Antifer's wonderful adventures
Master Antifers wonderful adventures , also: Master Antifers Glücks- und Unglücksfahrten ( French: Les mirifiques Aventures de Maître Antifer ) is a novel by the French author Jules Verne . The original edition was published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in Paris in 1894 (Volume I on August 23 and Volume II on November 19). The German-language edition was published in 1895 under the title Master Antifer's wonderful adventure .
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In 1831, the Egyptian Kamylk Pascha set off from Cairo on a three- master to hide three barrels with his treasure, which is worth many millions, on a desert island. He wants to keep his wealth safe from his greedy cousin Murad and political squabbles. You come across an island that seems to have risen from the sea only recently. There he leaves the three barrels with gold, diamonds and other precious stones buried by the crew and marks the spot with his initials KK .
He bequeathed his fortune to the French merchant Thomas Antifer, who saved his life on the beach in Jaffa in 1799 when, as a prisoner of war, he was to be shot with 4,000 other prisoners on the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte . He sends Thomas Antifer a letter that only contains the latitude of a position. Thomas Antifer dies and inherits the letter to his son Master Antifer, actually Pierre-Servan-Malo Antifer, a coastal captain from Saint-Malo . He is waiting for the corresponding longitude to be transmitted by an unknown person as announced in the letter .
Master Antifer has been waiting for news for years, he is getting more and more insufferable from day to day, and his friend Gildas Tregomain and his niece Enogate and their bridegroom Juhel no longer believe that this news will ever come. Finally he gets a visit from the notary Ben Omar from Egypt. This is in possession of the longitude and wants Antifer to name the latitude. Behind this is Murad's son, who traveled to Saint-Malo with Ben Omar. Saouk poses as Nazim, Ben Omar's first secretary.
Antifer, Tregomain and Juhel finally set off for Port Said on a steamboat . From there they take the train to Suez . In the Suez train station, they meet again with Ben Omar and Saouk. With these you will travel by ship through the Red Sea towards Bombay . They disembark in Muscat . A caravan continues to Sohar . With the Turkish two-master Bebera we go to the island, which is on the position of the coordinates of Antifer and Ben Omar.
There you will only find a metal box that contains another letter with another degree of longitude. They should find out the latitude from the other heir, the Maltese banker Zambuco in Tunis . He blackmailed Antifer with the fact that he would only know the latitude if he agreed to marry Zambuco's 47-year-old sister. After hesitation, he responds. The stagecoach continues to Bône . Since the railway line to Algiers has not yet been built, they take a steamboat to Algiers instead of the train. From there they take another steamer to Dakar . They continue on with the coastal sailor owned by the Portuguese Barroso. In the vicinity of the island on which the next coordinate lies, elephants on board capsize the ship. On the island they only find another metal box with another letter in it. In the letter there is another degree of longitude and the note that the corresponding degree of latitude can be found at the Reverend Tyrcomel in Edinburgh. A sloop takes them all. You travel to Edinburgh via Marseille , Paris , Calais , Dover and London . Tyrcomel turns out to be a preacher of poverty in a free church who urges his followers to sink their fortune in the Firth of Forth . He refuses to tell you the latitude. Saouk ambushes the Reverend and discovers the latitude tattoo on his back. Antifer found out about the position information via the evening newspaper.
The next destination is near Spitzbergen . With a Norwegian freighter we continue over the Sognefjord , Trondheim , the Arctic Circle , Tromsø to Hammerfest . A cutter continues to Spitsbergen, where they only find another metal box. The position of the next island results from a riddle, but it is illegible.
You travel back to Saint-Malo. Juhel marries Enogate and by chance finds out the position of the last island with the help of his wife. The island is located in the Mediterranean. You are traveling to Sicily. From Palermo they take a felucca to the place in question. But there they only find the open sea. The captain of the felucca informed them that the Julia island they were looking for had sunk back into the sea in 1831. So the treasure is 100 meters below sea level. Antifer knew that, he just wanted to fool his opponents Ben Omar and Zambuco one more time.
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As in other novels, Jules Verne seems to have looked at the atlas when he came up with a name. The name Antifer is obviously borrowed from the Cape d'Antifer of the same name and the Phare d'Antifer lighthouse on the chalk coast between Étretat and Le Havre in Normandy . The same thing happened to Captain Hatteras (see Captain Hatteras Adventure ) when Verne named the captain after Cape Hatteras in the USA.
Other examples are:
- Colonel Everest ( Adventure of three Russians and three Englishmen in South Africa )
- Prince Dakkar ( The Mysterious Island )
- Gil Braltar (in the short story of the same name)
The mysterious island in the Mediterranean Sea has a real model: The island of Ferdinandea , about 60 km off the southwest coast of Sicily, was created in the summer of 1831 as a result of a submarine volcanic eruption. By the end of the same year, the surf had already eroded the island to the point where it disappeared under the surface of the water.
literature
- Heinrich Pleticha (ed.): Jules Verne manual . Deutscher Bücherbund / Bertelsmann, Stuttgart and Munich 1992.
- Volker Dehs and Ralf Junkerjürgen: Jules Verne . Voices and interpretations of his work. Fantastic Library Wetzlar, Wetzlar 2005.
- Volker Dehs: Jules Verne . Jules Verne. A critical biography. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2005. ISBN 3-538-07208-6
