Jules Verne · 1875 · survival

Jules Verne's 1875 Robinsonade, and a crossover sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues and In Search of the Castaways. Five Northerners and a dog escape besieged Richmond by balloon and are blown seven thousand miles to an uncharted speck in the South Pacific - where they rebuild civilisation from first principles, watched by a hidden benefactor.

1. 1
   Richmond

   March 1865. Five Union prisoners hijack an observation balloon in the siege lines and are carried off by a hurricane - an engineer, a reporter, a sailor, a boy, a freedman named Neb, and a dog called Top.

2. 2
   Lincoln Island

   Seven thousand miles across America and the Pacific to a volcanic island east of New Zealand, which they name for the President - and where they make glass, nitroglycerine, brick and a telegraph out of what the island provides.

3. 3
   Tabor Island

   A message in a bottle sends them two hundred miles south in the Bonadventure, the boat they built - and they find Ayrton, marooned twelve years by Lord Glenarvan for the mutiny in In Search of the Castaways, living like an animal.

4. 4
   Lincoln Island

   They bring him home and he becomes one of them - and then his old crew arrive, the pirates die without a mark on them, and Nemo is found dying in the Nautilus in a cavern under the island, which he has been defending all along.

5. 5
   San Francisco

   The volcano goes and the island sinks, leaving them on a bare rock for nine days until the Duncan comes for Ayrton - Lord Glenarvan having kept his promise to return, twelve years and one novel later.

6. 6
   Iowa

   With the chest Nemo left them they buy land and found a colony - and the surviving characters of both earlier novels become regular guests there, which is Verne closing three books at once.