With The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne writes a compelling survival story, intertwining history and fiction to tell the narrative of a small band of wartime escapees. Five Yankee prisoners-of-war, detained in Richmond by the Confederates, make a daring escape in a balloon meant for communication. United in their quest for freedom, the party crash-lands on an undocumented island in the Pacific, 7000 miles away from their homes. But in the ensuing melee, the band loses their leader, engineer Cyrus Harding. Alone, on an apparently uninhabited island, without their leader, and with no tools, the band must find a way to survive. And survive they do, even thriving on the island, which they soon name Lincoln Island after their president. Through their exploration and eventual settlement of the island, the castaways are repeatedly saved or aided by mysterious, almost supernatural occurrences. One of these mysterious acts reveals to the colonist, as they call themselves, the presence of a similarly stranded castaway on a nearby island, whom the small band ultimately saves from maddening solitude. Eventually, the perpetrator of these beneficial works reveals himself as Captain Nemo, the infamous submarine captain from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Before he dies, the old man gives one last warning to the colonists, but even that cannot save them. Despite the colonists’ best efforts, their volcanic island home explodes before they can escape. They survive the blast, but with no food