Facing the Flag

In another science-based entry in his Voyages Extraordinaires series, Verne takes us on the journey of Simon Hart, an engineer who poses as a medical attendant to the scientist Thomas Roch. Roch's invention of a world-conquering weapon has driven him insane. As the paranoid doctor rests in a sanatorium, the vicious pirate Ker Karraje kidnaps both Roch and Hart. Karraje takes them to a secret hideaway in a burned-out island caldera in the Bermudas-but Hart hatches an ingenious escape plan. Facing the Flag or For the Flag (French: Face au drapeau) is an 1896 patriotic novel by Jules Verne. The book is part of the Voyages extraordinaires series. Like The Begum's Millions, which Verne published in 1879, it has the theme of France and the entire world threatened by a super-weapon with the threat finally overcome through the force of French patriotism.

Plot :

Thomas Roch, a brilliant French inventor, has designed (but not yet built) the Fulgurator, a weapon so powerful that "the state which acquired it would become absolute master of earth and ocean." The weapon is so powerful that (as we see later in the book) a shell shot from the Fulgurator need not hit the target at all- the vibrations in the air when the shell passes over a ship are enough to break the ship into pieces.

However, when Roch attempts to sell his design, no one believes his weapon can really work. He first tries to sell it to the French government, asking for a lot of money, and is turned down. He then tries Britain and United States. Unable to sell his unproven idea, Roch becomes bitter, megalomaniacal, and paranoid. The United States Government finally reacts by tucking him away at a luxurious asylum in New Bern, North Carolina, where he is visited by Ker Karraje, a notorious pirate of Malagasy origin.

Karraje and his men kidnap Roch and his attendant Gaydon from the asylum and bring him to their hide-out, the island of Back Cup in Bermuda. Here a wide cavern, accessible only by submerged submarine, has been made into a well-equipped pirate base. It is revealed that Gaydon is actually Simon Hart, a French engineer and explosives expert sent to spy on Roch and gain his confidence. Roch begins constructing his fearsome weapon, happily unaware that he is nothing but a glorified prisoner in the pirate's hands.

Hart succeeds in secretly sending out a message in a metal keg, giving the full details of Karraje's operations and his impending acquisition of the Fulgurator. The message gets through to the British authorities at their nearby naval base in Bermuda, and they send a submarine, HMS Sword, to find Hart. The submarine's crew makes contact with Hart, and take him and Roch on board, but the Sword is discovered, attacked, and sunk by the pirates. The unconscious Hart and Roch are extracted from the sunken British sub by pirate divers, leaving the entire British crew to perish. Hart manages to avoid suspicions of his actions.