This is Love started five years ago on Valentine's Day. Valentine also happens to be my middle name.

So this year we decided to make Valentine's. A set of five postcards was some of our favorite episode art from the show.

The very talented Julian Alexander designed them and we think they're great.

You can get yours today at this is lovepodcast.com slash shop. That's this is lovepodcast.com slash shop and Happy Valentine's Day.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jewels Verne.

Part 1. Chapter 1. A Shifting Reef.

The year 1866 was signaled by a remarkable incident. A mysterious and puzzling phenomenon which doubtless no one has yet forgotten.

Not to mention rumors which agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind even in the interior of continents.

Seafaring men were particularly excited merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries and the governments of several states on the two continents were deeply interested in the matter.

For some time past vessels had been met by an enormous thing, a long object spindle shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, an infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale.

The facts relating to this apparition entered in various log books, agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed.

If it was a whale, it surpassed in size all those hither-to-classified in science. Taking into consideration the mean of observations made it diverse times, rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object a length of 200 feet, equally with the exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile in width and three in length.

We might fairly conclude that this mysterious being surpassed greatly all dimensions admitted by the learned ones of the day, if it existed at all, and that it did exist was an undeniable fact, and with that tendency which disposes the human mind in favor of the marvelous,

we can understand the excitement produced in the entire world by the supernatural apparition, as to classing it in the list of fables the idea was out of the question.

On the 20th of July 1866, the steamer, Governor Higginson, of the Calcutta and Bernock steam navigation company, had met this moving mass five miles off the east coast of Australia.

Captain Baker thought at first that he was in the presence of an unknown sandbank, even prepared to determine its exact position, when two columns of water projected by the mysterious object shot with a hissing noise 150 feet up into the air.

Now, unless the sandbank had been submitted to the intermittent eruption of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had to do neither more nor less than with an aquatic mammal, unknown till then, which threw up from its blowholes columns of water mixed with air and vapor.

Similar facts were observed on the 23rd of July in the same year in the Pacific Ocean by the Columbus of the West India and Pacific steam navigation company.

But this extraordinary creature could transport itself from one place to another with surprising velocity, as in an interval of three days, the Governor Higginson and the Columbus had observed it at two different points of the chart, separated by the wind.

Separated by a distance of more than 700 nautical leagues.

15 days later, 2,000 miles farther off, the Helvisha of the Compania National and the Shannon of the Royal Mail Steamship Company, sailing to Windward in that portion of the Atlantic, lying between the United States and Europe, respectively signaled the monster to each other in 42-15 North Latitude and 60-35 West Longitude.

In these simultaneous observations, they thought themselves justified in estimating the minimum length of the mammal at more than 350 feet, as the Shannon and Helvisha were of smaller dimensions than it, though they measured 300 feet overall.

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