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Updated: June 13, 2025
But before he quite lost his power of sight and reason he became the witness of a phenomenon, unexpected, inexplicable, and marvelous in the extreme. A deadened roar resounded through the liquid depths. It was like a thunder-clap, the reverberations of which rolled along the river bed, then violently agitated by the electrical discharges of the gymnotus.
The beautiful experiments of Seebeck and Peltier show the convertibility of heat and electricity; and others by Oersted and myself show the convertibility of electricity and magnetism. But in no case, not even in those of the Gymnotus and Torpedo, is there a pure creation or a production of power without a corresponding exhaustion of something to supply it.
Guapo now bethought himself of the narrow escape he himself had had while swimming across to the palm-woods; and the appearance of the gymnotus only rendered him more determined to keep the promise he had made to Leon, that is, that he would revenge him of the caribes. None of them could understand how Guapo was to get this revenge without catching the fish, and that would be difficult to do.
Then could the Tory, delivering at the right season the Shakesperian 'This England . . . and Byronic 'The inviolate Island . . . shake the frame, as though smiting it with the tail of the gymnotus electricus.
A fellow is n't all battery, is he? The idea that a Gymnotus can't swallow his worm without a coruscation of animal lightning is hard on that brilliant but sensational being. Good talk is not a matter of will at all; it depends you know we are all half-materialists nowadays on a certain amount of active congestion of the brain, and that comes when it is ready, and not before.
It resembled some kind of water-snake more than a fish, but Guapo knew it was not a snake, but an eel. It was the great electric eel the "temblador," or "gymnotus." This explained the mystery. The gymnotus, having placed itself under the belly of the unsuspecting mule, was able to bring its body in contact at all points, and hence the powerful shock that had created such an effect.
The gymnotus seldom failed in its aim; one single stroke was almost always sufficient to overcome the resistance which the strata of water, more or less thick according to the distance, opposed to the electrical current. When very much pressed by hunger, it sometimes directed the shocks against the person who daily brought its food of boiled meat.
When we recollect, that the electric fluid itself is actually accumulated and given out voluntarily by the torpedo and the gymnotus electricus, that an electric shock will frequently stimulate into motion a paralytic limb, and lastly that it needs no perceptible tubes to convey it, this opinion seems not without probability; and the singular figure of the brain and nervous system seems well adapted to distribute it over every part of the body.
At a time when the physicians of Europe had great confidence in the effects of electricity, a surgeon of Essequibo, named Van der Lott, published in Holland a treatise on the medical properties of the gymnotus. These electric remedies are practised among the savages of America, as they were among the Greeks.
His heart, for an instant, ceased to beat. He thought he was going to lose consciousness. By a supreme effort he recovered himself. He stepped toward the corpse. Suddenly a shock as violent as unexpected made his whole frame vibrate! A long whip seemed to twine round his body, and in spite of the thick diving-dress he felt himself lashed again and again. "A gymnotus!" he said.
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