O Captain Cyrus Harding, his manservant Neb, Gideon Spilett a journalist andīonadventure Pencroff with his adopted son, Herbert Brown. Nothing to work with or live on, since they threw overboard, almost everything to get O Unlike the castaways in Wyss's 'The Swiss Family Robinson' who had the stores ofĪ wrecked ship with which to work, these men have almost O The balloon is whisked away by the storm, only to drop them in the sea near an island in the Pacific Ocean. O The five seize an observation balloon to make their escape, along with Harding's dog, during a storm.

O Five Northerners, are held captive by Southerners, during the American Civil War. Gideon Spilett ranked among the first of those reporters: a man of great merit, energetic, prompt and ready for anything, full of ideas, having traveled over the whole world, soldier and artist, enthusiastic in council, resolute in action, caring neither for trouble, fatigue, nor danger, when in pursuit of information, for himself first, and then for his journal, a perfect treasury of knowledge on all sorts of curious subj The newspapers of the Union, such as the New York Herald, are genuine powers, and their reporters are men to be reckoned with. Gideon Spilett was one of that race of indomitable English or American chroniclers, like Stanley and others, who stop at nothing to obtain exact information, and transmit it to their journal in the shortest possible time. This was no other than Gideon Spilen, a reporter for the New York Herald, who had been ordered to follow the changes of the war in the midst of the Northern armies. Same day another important personage fell into the hands of the Southerners.

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne