A summary of "The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain" by Jules Verne

This adventure novel, set in naval and geographical themes, was written in 1878. The author combined a dynamic sea voyage with a geographical description of Central Africa and a poignant expose of the crimes of the 19th-century slave trade. It is number 17 in the "Extraordinary Journeys" (Voyages Extraordinaires) cycle. The book has been adapted for the screen several times: Soviet films from 1945 and 1986, as well as a Franco-Spanish film from 1974, are well-known.

Disaster in the ocean and the death of the crew

On February 2, 1873, the whaling schooner-brig Pilgrim, under the command of Captain Goole, returns from New Zealand to San Francisco. On board are passengers: Mrs. Weldon, her five-year-old son Jack, her cousin Benedict, an avid entomologist, and an elderly African-American nanny, Nan. The crew consists of five experienced sailors, fifteen-year-old orphaned cabin boy Dick Sand, and the ship’s cook, Negoro, a Portuguese man with a shady past.

In the open ocean, the crew spots the half-sunken brig Waldeck. They find five surviving African-American citizens on board (Tom, his son Bat, Austin, Actaeon, and Hercules), as well as a large dog named Dingo. The dog’s collar is engraved with the letters "C" and "B." Dingo displays a fierce hatred for the cook, Negoro, and chooses these two letters from alphabet blocks. Captain Goulle speculates that the dog belonged to the French explorer Samuel Vernon, who disappeared in Africa.

A few days later, the watchman spots a minke whale — a large female whale with a calf — at sea. Wanting to fill the empty barrels, Captain Gul sets out in a longboat with all the sailors to hunt, leaving Dick Sand in charge of the Pilgrim. The hunt ends in tragedy: a wounded whale smashes the boat with a blow from its powerful tail, drowning all the whalers.

Negoro’s betrayal and the sinking of the Pilgrim

Dick Sand takes control of the ship, aided by rescued black Americans. Negoro hatches a cunning plan. Taking advantage of the young captain’s inexperience with celestial navigation, the Portuguese places a block of iron under the compass binnacle at night. The needle deviates by forty-five degrees.

Negoro then smashes the second compass and breaks the log line that determines the ship’s speed. Storms cause the Pilgrim to round Cape Horn and, instead of the coast of South America, find itself in the Atlantic Ocean. Believing the island of Tristan da Cunha seen in the distance to be Easter Island, Dick Sand continues to steer the ship east.

On April 6th, a schooner-brig is caught in a fierce hurricane and wrecked on the coastal reefs. Dick Sand skillfully pours oil onto the raging waves, allowing all passengers to reach dry land unharmed. The ship is completely destroyed by the surf.

Unknown continent

On the shore, Negoro disappears unnoticed. The travelers meet an American named Harris. He assures them they have landed on the coast of Bolivia, near the Atacama Desert, and offers to guide the party to his brother’s farm. The party sets off through the dense forest.

Soon, Dick Sand begins to be plagued by doubts. The forest lacks rubber and cinchona trees, but there are giraffes, elephants, hippos, tsetse flies, and the roar of a lion. Old Tom finds chains and stocks in the grass, and severed human hands litter the ground.

Harris realizes he’s been exposed and escapes that night. Dick Sand realizes the terrible truth: they’re not in America, but in Equatorial Africa, in Angola. The masterminds of their misfortune are Harris and Negoro’s accomplices, slave traders.

Captivity and slave caravan

Wanting to spare Mrs. Weldon from the horror, Dick Sand decides to lead the party to the river to raft down to the ocean shore. However, during a severe thunderstorm, the travelers take refuge inside a giant termite mound, which is quickly inundated by the flooding river.

After punching a hole in the top of the cone to allow air to enter, they are ambushed by natives. The attackers separate the captives. Mrs. Weldon, little Jack, and Cousin Benedict are taken away separately. Dick Sand, Nan, Tom, Bat, Austin, and Actaeon are shackled. Only Hercules manages to break free and escape into the jungle.

The captives join the massive slave caravan of the slave trader Ibn Khamis. A harrowing thirty-eight-day trek to the slave market in Kazonda begins. Half the slaves, including old Nan, die along the way from hunger, deprivation, and the torture of their overseers. That night, Dingo brings Dick a note from Hercules: Mrs. Weldon and Jack are alive and under guard.

Events in Kazonda

On May 26th, the caravan arrives in Kazonde. At the fair, the owner of the trading post, José Antonio Alvez, sells Tom, Bat, Actaeon, and Austin to an Arab merchant, who takes them to Lake Tanganyika.

Dick Sand confronts Harris. The traitor brazenly lies that Mrs. Weldon and her son are dead. Consumed by rage, Dick snatches the knife from Harris and plunges it into his heart. The young man is captured and thrown into prison.

Negoro suggests Alvets postpone the young man’s execution, planning to torture him. At the same time, the Portuguese forces Mrs. Weldon to write a letter to her husband in San Francisco demanding a ransom of one hundred thousand dollars.

The drunken King of Kazonde, Muani-Lunga, dies of spontaneous combustion after attempting to drink punch set on fire by Alvetz. The new Queen, Muana, holds a lavish funeral. An effigy of the king is placed in a dried-up streambed, fifty slave women are thrown alive, and tied to Dick Sand’s stake. Afterwards, the dam is destroyed, and the tomb is flooded.

Rescue and the way to the ocean

Hercules rescues Dick Sand, pulling him from the water during a flooded tomb. Earlier, Cousin Benedict, caught up in the pursuit of a rare manticore beetle, had escaped the trading post through a mole hole and was caught by Hercules.

Taking advantage of the drought and disasters, Hercules disguises himself as a renowned mute Mganngi sorcerer. He accuses Mrs. Weldon and Jack of being the cause of the prolonged rains, snatches them from Alvets’ trading post in front of the terrified natives, and carries them off into the forest.

The fugitives team up and sail down the Zaire River (Congo) in a pirogue, camouflaged by a canopy of grass. Cousin Benedict catches a strange insect, hoping to immortalize his name by discovering a six-legged spider.

At Ngama Falls, the pirogue lands on the shore. The travelers find the hut where the French explorer Samuel Vernon was killed in 1871. A dingo attacks Negoro, who has come to dig up hidden gold. The dog rips out the scoundrel’s throat, but is itself killed by a knife.

The fugitives are attacked by cannibalistic natives. Dick Sand shoots a canoe’s oar and sends the boat carrying the savages careening into a waterfall. He himself is saved by the overturned hull.

Returning home

On July 20th, the surviving travelers met an honest Portuguese trading caravan, which took them to Emboma. On August 11th, they boarded an American steamship, and on August 25th, they arrived in San Francisco.

Cousin Benedict puts on his glasses and discovers to his horror that his unique "six-legged" creature is actually an ordinary spider, two of whose legs Hercules accidentally tore off when he captured it. James Weldon organizes a search and buys Tom, Bat, Austin, and Actaeon from slavery in Madagascar. Fifteen-year-old Dick Sand graduates from a nautical course with honors and prepares to become captain of one of Weldon’s ships.