Mongrov is a technology startup, specializes in customer engagement \u0026 happiness with these core spheres:\n\nDigital identity and assets\nSecure collaboration for humans and things\nInstantification and knowledge

Mongrov

Interview with Nadja Bester, AdLunam, on finding better blockchain projects/investors & the power of the Attention Economy. There is no doubt that 2021 has been a historical year – largely a horrible year in RL, punctuated by a pandemic, political extremism and unrest, and historical economic disparity. But it has also been “the year of the NFT,” . It has been a year of new highs in investing, in cryptocurrency, and in traditional investments. according to Jordan Belfort In this environment, blockchain innovation continues to thrive and as new projects pour into the space there is a reliable demand for funding. Retail investors are eager to find new projects that can take their investments to the moon. Blockchain projects with use cases that meet real needs are looking for investors that will also be long-term supporters, keeping the value of the project steady and filling the community with support and attention. Nadja Bester believes that there is a better way to connect investors and projects, one that rewards interactions between projects and investors and allows both sides to be diligent and choose the right investor/project for them. In Q3 2021, Nadja co-founded AdLunam, a “Web 3.0 cryptocurrency investment ecosystem that allows investors to invest in early-stage and go-to-market projects via an Engage to Earn Proof of Attention model.” AdLunam plans to launch its first cohort of projects in Q1 of the new year and they hope to leverage the Attention Economy to encourage more interactions between qualified investors and projects. We spoke with Nadja concerning their new project and their goals for the new year. Nadja Bester What attracts projects to IDOs? Why not raise money privately? “To understand IDO (Initial DEX Offering) platforms, we must talk about mangroves. Mangroves are a loosely connected mishmash of tree species that share one extraordinary commonality: They grow in oxygen-poor soil that's flooded with saltwater every time the tide comes in. What makes them so remarkable is that they've managed to flourish in an environment that would kill off even the hardiest tree. Crypto in its infancy is like a mangrove estuary. So where do IDO platforms fit in? Nurseries. Mangroves are nurseries par excellence. Estuaries that form around mangroves offer juveniles from different species and taxonomies protection against predators until they're ready to venture out by themselves. Similarly, the original purpose of a launchpad was to offer investors a buffer against predatory projects. After the 2018-2019 Wild West, investors needed protection. This focus quickly expanded into offering new projects the support they need to grow independent and prosperous,” Bester said. How did AdLunam start? What was the initial idea? “When we were ideating the concept behind AdLunam, we were determined that it couldn't be just another platform to add to the body count. We held ourselves to strict parameters: Either we reinvent how IDOs are done, or we'd be better off doing something else. The problems we'd be solving… had to address real pain points that to date had remained unsolvable. Double points if it was a victim of the additive bias and could be solved without the need for millions of dollars and years down the black hole of R&D. Our solution had to benefit our two stakeholder groups equally – the projects and the investors,” Bester said. What is AdLunam offering that's new for projects? “Any project that's gone through private fundraising rounds knows how valuable it is to have negotiation discussions with VCs in terms of the value-add and how important it is to be able to decline offers from institutional investors who don't share your vision or values. The ability to vet investors is crucial in ensuring a healthy cap table, yet as soon as it hits the retail investment round, projects are going in blind, with no way of knowing whether your retail investors are good or bad actors or whether they they share the long-term vision for the project. One of our key focus areas was to extend a project's ability to do due diligence on their investors from the seed stage all the way up to IDO. With AdLunam, projects get to hand-pick the investors they want to reward allocation to, basing their decisions on a dashboard of robust data analytics that offers a detailed overview of an investor's profile,” Bester said. What is AdLunam offering that's new for buyers? “It is the Attention Economy. We've reluctantly accepted the idea that if it's free, you are the product. Crypto has flipped that model on its head, and projects are literally paying to get investor attention. Projects end up spending vast marketing budgets on haphazard AMAs and giveaways, hoping to retain investor attention past these fleeting 'retweet 'n win' moments. There are vast swaths of crypto investors out for the hunt, hoping to win $10 here, $20 there. They're not emotionally invested – or often even interested at all – in these brands... They play the odds, and the odds play them… We knew that the rules of engagement between projects and investors had to give. These days, in a lot of ways, launchpads are skewed in favor of the tokens they list, and investors often pull at the short end of the stick. Thus was born our Engage-to-Earn model, a gamified approach to engagement whereby investors are continuously rewarded for the time and energy they invest in participating in crypto discussions or creating content…,” Bester said. How is AdLunam helping to stimulate interactions between projects and supporters? “Society is based largely on a zero-sum game principle. There can only be one winner.. A non-zero-sum game is a more intelligent – and sustainable – long-term strategy… Win/win cooperation is essential if there's going to be any sort of continuity. So, a project desires a win/win relationship with its investors, namely a shared long-term loyalty to token growth. As for a launchpad, a ready-made investor community lies at its core. The question we asked ourselves was whether we could create a platform that gives both stakeholders what they deserve without depriving each other in the process. And I think we've managed to do just that,” Bester said. How does Proof of Attention work? What are the platform mechanics? “Proof of Attention is one-half of AdLunam's Investor Profile NFT offering. The other is a Wallet Scorecard. Proof of Attention is a formulaic approach to quantifying and qualifying investor engagement. Gamifi Engage to Earn forms part of our ecosystem, a type of Grand Central Station out in space.. Open to anyone, free to join and participate, an investor can build up a sizable presence here with nothing more than their social capital contributions. An investor's Wallet Scorecard, on the other hand, is a slow-burn qualifier. Our data collection includes aspects such as the age of the wallet, funds transfer frequency, and very importantly, how quickly an airdrop or allocation token is dumped. Over time, this builds up a revealing picture of an investor's behavioral patterns, and projects can take this into consideration when extending allocation. Together, an investor's Engagement and Wallet Scores is represented as a dynamic NFT (dNFT) that holds their store of value as an investor, and the value of these dNFTs increase or decrease depending on their actions within the AdLunam ecosystem. Investing into projects happens in the launchpad area of the AdLunam platform, exclusive by-invitation-only project spaces where projects can reward the top-standing investors of their choosing with airdrops, allocation, and community rewards,” Bester said. Who is the platform specifically for among buyers? Among projects? “For investors, we have a 70/30 split. For higher tiers, 70% of an IDO's allocation is guaranteed and relates to staking $LUNAM. Through our Seedpad, retail investors who lack access to early-stage deal flow will be able to connect with projects seeking sanction elements like points, badges, ranks, and leaderboards, making this a very dynamic environment in which engagement actions yield immediate results.. The Engage to Earn model is built around the other 30%... For projects, we offer a range of options. Launch your token through Launchpad. Kickstart your community early on through Seedpad. And if you're a Web 2.0 company – startup or well-established – looking to pivot your offerings into Web 3, then Space Camp takes you through the entire pipeline, from initial advisory services to growing your community and launching your IDO. We're extremely bullish on this technology and this industry and as a result, we have a vested interest in diversifying our product lines. We're not a niche launchpad and we have no intentions of shunning fantastic DeFi projects simply because the metaverse is the hype of the hour. However, personally speaking, as a female-led company in a male-dominated industry, at a time when sustainable development is necessarily inserting itself into every conversation, with a track record of supporting entrepreneurs in emerging markets, my door is open for projects who find themselves on the fringes of mainstream crypto,” Bester said. Summary The pandemic and general global hardships of 2021 have accelerated the need for economic equality and for many new retail investors including access to markets and the ability to invest in start-up projects. It has also driven the need for investment money to fuel new projects. After watching the classic ICO crash and burn, it’s natural for projects to seek new funding sources and try to find a better way of funding innovation. Launchpads like AdLunam and another step forward in looking for a more perfect exchange between investors and projects in a way that better serves both sides. There are many new entrants in the space, but the idea of tracking and rewarding interactions is clever. But 2022 is likely to be a continuation of the “show don’t tell” attitude in blockchain, so ultimately we will see based on its first cohort of projects in 2022. Lead image credit: on Pixabay.* ipicgr

IDOs Work Like Mangroves

Let's learn about via these 44 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. We Building /Learn Repo 1. Is Your Social Media Actually Social? Social media is “social” in the sense it relates to society at large. People seek connection with society to find the communities they belong to, a marketplace for their services and ensure their own welfare as a member of that society. 2. Introducing the Terminal Reader App by HackerNoon This is a web application with the intention of providing a different way of reading. Yes, you will be reading in a terminal-like application. 3. Here's How I Built a Quiz App for Remote Team Building [A Step by Step Guide] The COVID-19 pandemic and statewide stay-at-home order have caused many companies, including mine, to close their offices, restrict travel, and require all employees to work remotely. 4. Going beyond StartUp Revenue and Traffic metrics! What areas of transparency do companies cover? 5. Perp v2 Goes Open Source: Including Codebase, frontend SDK, and Subgraph After months of hard work, we are pleased to announce that our Curie contract codebase, the frontend SDK and subgraph are now all open source. 6. I'm Failing at Building a Startup and Here's Why - Part 1: The Problem The problems faced and the lessons learned working on a startup and launching an app. 7. For My Dad, I Automated Bulk WhatsApp Messaging using Python - Here's How So, this Whatsapp just irritates my dad. 8. What We Learned While Designing a Mobile Payments SDK Yesterday, we released version 1.1.0 of the Nami SDK for iOS. To mark this release, we thought we’d share some details about how we approach development of the SDK including our key design goals. 9. I Created a Google Chrome Extension to Read Online Articles For You In this article I want to talk about a chrome extension that I made, it’s called WhistleX. You may have heard of it if you have read my articles because, I mentioned it, but I didn’t say that it’s mine and that I made it. 10. Pending Cops in Rubocop to Make Upgrade Easier [Project Update] Whenever a new version of Rubocop comes out, there are always some new cops. If our code is not compatible with new cops, then the rubocop build fails. With every new release, we have to spend time to make our code compatible with the new cops. Well not any more! 11. We Raised $450k For Omnisearch’s  Pre-Seed Round: Here's What We Learned Eight key takeaways from raising Omnisearch's pre-seed round. 12. Replace your Coffee with Brain Stimulation To Enhance Focus and Increase Productivity In this interview with Balder Onarheim, co-founder and CEO of PlatoScience we explore the advances in neurostimulation (Transcranial Electrical Stimulation, TES) and how it can be used to enhance focus and creativity. Can you give a quick background about you and how you got to this technology? 13. Why I Built Overbit Rewards Hub — a Game Changer for Crypto The cryptocurrency market is in the middle of transitioning into an era of mass-market flourishing, by all measures. Putting aside the fact that Bitcoin is now breaking price barriers with speed, account activity, institutional adoption, regulation — these are all pointing towards adoption. 14. How to get into Crypto Trading: An Interview with David Waslen David Waslen was finance first, then tech and, in the latter, he was influenced by his good friend and co-founder of HedgeTrade, Peter Danihel. David has studied in the States as well as in the UK, taking a number of economic degrees. 15. Here's How I Built An ETH Wallet On A Cheap NFC sticker Story of how I tried to become a cyborg, but with a geeky twist 16. I Developed A Visual Development Tool For Web Applications with React Hi, my name is Alex, I’m the author of Webcodesk. In this article, I want to tell you why I created Webcodesk and why I consider it a great tool to develop Web applications with React. 17. The GoDaddy Hack Would've Been Impossible In The Dappy System Dappy is a first of its kind open source web browser and name system that addresses at the same time the structural flaws of the Domain Name System 18. Building A Tezos's Smart Contract Dashboard Using ReactJS, TezBridge and Netlify [A How-To Guide] I always find it troublesome for me to deploy and interact with Tezos’s Smart Contract at my job as a Software Engineer in my company. So, I decided to build a tool (web app) to solve my problem. 19. Will AES-256 Withstand The Gauntlet Thrown by Quantum Computers? With quantum computers getting more powerful every year, many worry about the safety of modern encryption standards. As quantum computers improve in performance and the number of qubits used for calculations increase, current crypto systems are under more threat of attack. 20. Use My App - NFT Maker To Make Your First NFT for FREE With this Android App You can create 1 NFT for free, easy as just to fill a form 21. We Are Making Crypto More Usable In The FIAT world Bitcoin & crypto were originally intended to be used as a currency. Hardly surprising that has not happened when it’s so complex for non tech savvy and without a marketplace for buyers and sellers to transact. 22. I Built A Handy Browser Plugin To Search Docs And Packages Directly From The Address Bar Hi all. I'm so honored to introduce my product: Go Search Extension, a handy browser plugin to help every Go developer search docs and package in the address bar instantly. 23. We Built A Coronavirus Map with COVID-19 Data and Travel Restrictions Across All Countries Back in March my teammates and I switched from our regular tasks working on a travel platform to building a COVID-19 monitoring service. Here is what we’ve managed to get done so far: 24. How We Migrated From Software Factory into Product Development Studio We were in college when we decided to start a company. At that time, it didn’t matter what type of company. 25. Find and Fix Problems in .env Files With Dotenv-linter v2.2.0 We have developed dotenv-linter — a useful tool for checking .env files. It helps to find problems in .env files that you might miss at first, but which later may result in incorrect work of applications. 26. Slack Will Reject Your App: 5 Reasons From Someone Who's Been Through The Process, TWICE At a time when businesses are increasingly relying on Slack for
day-to-day operations, the Slack App Directory is thriving. These days,
there are Slack apps for everything: from polls to team recognition, to daily standups, to promoting inclusive language. There has never been a better time to be a Slack user. 27. BitBanged SPI in Go [Explained] I’m going to focus mostly on some design decisions and how I went about writing an SPI interface using Go on a Raspberry Pi. I assume my readers have a basic understanding of what a Raspberry Pi is, and how basic electronics work. If not, read on anyway and I will be sure to include some valuable resources below. 28. Could Blockchain Innovation Be The Source of Prosperity for Nation? In 2020, apart from falling cryptocurrency prices following the stock price due to being dragged by the coronavirus, we see some news in the blockchain industry that is quite encouraging for us in terms of innovation and economic growth potential. 29. I Started An Open Source Project To Help DeFi Developers and Companies Most of the DeFi projects are built on the Ethereum blockchain, so I thought that would be cool to collaborate with the community by giving some tools to make the development easier for everyone. 30. Why I Decided to Bring a New Cloud Data Warehouse to Market So we’ve all heard that “data is the new oil” way too many times. It’s been said so often that I personally feel slightly nauseous every time someone says that (sorry). 31. Text Classification in iOS using tensorflowlite [A How-To Guide] Text classification is task of categorising text according to its content. It is the fundamental problem in the field of Natural Language Processing(NLP). More general applications of text classifications are in email spam detection, sentiment analysis and topic labelling etc. 32. How learning Elixir helped me build a SaaS for Marketers In 2019, I was looking for a project. 33. Building An Ethereum-based Decentralized casino: How I Did It There are a lot of different gambling platforms out there. But there is almost no project that offers a transparent and fair experience. Let's fix that! 34. We Built A Lightweight Project Management Tool on Slack We communicated via Slack and Trello almost exclusively for the past three years at OneBar. Recently, we’ve discovered a way to reduce communications to just Slack, and the team loves the new, lighter process! It worked for us, and there’s a great chance it’ll work for you too! 35. What I Learnt About A/B Testing by A/B Testing my Landing Page In this post, I would share about my experience with and without A/B testing on Howuku landing page and how adopting A/B testing has improved my landing page conversion rates by 60%. 36. Here's Why We Built a Web App for Open Reviews with Open Source Infrastructure We built a service for online reviews that makes the insights you share accessible across any application, and that does not invade your privacy. Leave proprietary data silos behind and enter the open data ecosystem of Mangrove reviews. 37. Here's Our "So, We Decided To Start Sending Out A Newsletter" Story We’re a custom software house with a team of 25 developers. During 2020 we’ve been experimenting with different B2B marketing techniques: one of these was an email newsletter, which we trialled at the beginning of September. Here’s how it went. 38. My Roadmap For Making a Popular Workout App From Scratch First, welcome to my series of “My Roadmap For Making a Popular Workout App”. I will share with you my trip to make my workout app into a popular mobile app. 39. How We're Building an EVOLVING Blockchain The CEO of Koinos Group explains how they built a blockchain that evolves 40. Free TON: How It Started Vs. How It's Going The Durov brothers fought for a very long time with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the adoption of the Telegram Open Network (TON) in the US, which led to the official statement by Pavel Durov to close the project and stop its development. Nevertheless, the open source code of the project gave a second chance. With the help of TON repositories, a group of independent enthusiasts collected all the best that was created by the Telegram development team and released their project called Free TON with the TON Crystal cryptocurrency.Like other POS networks that have their own decentralized management, Free TON has its own declaration, which spelled out all the ideas and concepts of the community and the Free TON decentralized network. All the philosophical foundations of the project can be found in this foundation of the declaration. The Declaration on Decentralization is gradual, it was not created in a few days. And while the process of creating a full-fledged declaration was going on, more and more participants joined the project – both from the side of developers and users, and from the side of users who were interested in this project. These members have formed a very active and large crypto community in a short period of time, which is currently one of the largest independent cryptocurrency communities. How it all began? From the very beginning, there were people who were very much involved in the TON project (which was directed by Pavel Durov). They were looking forward to launching all over the world. When Pavel Durov announced the closure of the project, these people were very upset. They decided that closing a project that they had been working on for over 2 years was humiliating. A lot of people spent a huge amount of time and effort on a project, which was then closed on the grounds that the money was not collected the way someone wanted – this is nonsense. It was these people who became the one that was used, helped to gain huge publicity among ordinary people and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. On May 7, 2020, the official launch of the Free TON project took place. In addition to launching the project, the TON Labs team published the main components of TON OS on GitHub. Free TON has grown very quickly as a truly decentralized community driven project. Today, Free TON is an active community of cryptocurrency enthusiasts with over 30,000 members worldwide who contribute daily to the development of both the Free TON blockchain and TON Crystal digital coins. The Free TON community is self-sufficient. All changes within the community and the blockchain take place after the approval of the community members and nothing else. There is no centralized governing body and project community. As a result of the interaction of all these factors and the efforts of the programmers, a wide range of software developments has been provided, aimed at significantly improving tooling and changes in protocols. 41. 🎉 Deno: 1.0: A Review of Features [We're Going Live] 🤠 Introduction 42. Building a Successful Fintech by Listening to the Market (Founder Interview) When serial entrepreneur Illit Geller started telling me her story, I could instantly see why the fintech startup she founded, TradAir raised $11M in its latest funding round. 43. I Built a Crypto-Trading Bot...and Am Now Looking For People to Share My Profits With 44. I Built The One Browser Extension To Rule Them All How the Platypush web extension makes it easy to customize your browser and connect things together Thank you for checking out the 44 most read stories about We Building on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

44 Stories To Learn About The "We Building" Mindset 

After a voyage of seventy-four days, the "Pilgrim" had stranded

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . VANIKORO here CHAPTER XVIII: VANIKORO This terrible spectacle was the forerunner of the series of maritime catastrophes that the was destined to meet with in its route. As long as it went through more frequented waters, we often saw the hulls of shipwrecked vessels that were rotting in the depths, and deeper down cannons, bullets, anchors, chains, and a thousand other iron materials eaten up by rust. However, on the 11th of December we sighted the Pomotou Islands, the old “dangerous group” of Bougainville, that extend over a space of 500 leagues at E.S.E. to W.N.W., from the Island Ducie to that of Lazareff. This group covers an area of 370 square leagues, and it is formed of sixty groups of islands, among which the Gambier group is remarkable, over which France exercises sway. These are coral islands, slowly raised, but continuous, created by the daily work of polypi. Then this new island will be joined later on to the neighboring groups, and a fifth continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia, and from thence to the Marquesas. Nautilus One day, when I was suggesting this theory to Captain Nemo, he replied coldly: “The earth does not want new continents, but new men.” Chance had conducted the towards the Island of Clermont-Tonnere, one of the most curious of the group, that was discovered in 1822 by Captain Bell of the Minerva. I could study now the madreporal system, to which are due the islands in this ocean. Nautilus Madrepores (which must not be mistaken for corals) have a tissue lined with a calcareous crust, and the modifications of its structure have induced M. Milne Edwards, my worthy master, to class them into five sections. The animalcule that the marine polypus secretes live by millions at the bottom of their cells. Their calcareous deposits become rocks, reefs, and large and small islands. Here they form a ring, surrounding a little inland lake, that communicates with the sea by means of gaps. There they make barriers of reefs like those on the coasts of New Caledonia and the various Pomoton islands. In other places, like those at Reunion and at Maurice, they raise fringed reefs, high, straight walls, near which the depth of the ocean is considerable. Some cable-lengths off the shores of the Island of Clermont I admired the gigantic work accomplished by these microscopical workers. These walls are specially the work of those madrepores known as milleporas, porites, madrepores, and astraeas. These polypi are found particularly in the rough beds of the sea, near the surface; and consequently it is from the upper part that they begin their operations, in which they bury themselves by degrees with the debris of the secretions that support them. Such is, at least, Darwin’s theory, who thus explains the formation of the , a superior theory (to my mind) to that given of the foundation of the madreporical works, summits of mountains or volcanoes, that are submerged some feet below the level of the sea. atolls I could observe closely these curious walls, for perpendicularly they were more than 300 yards deep, and our electric sheets lighted up this calcareous matter brilliantly. Replying to a question Conseil asked me as to the time these colossal barriers took to be raised, I astonished him much by telling him that learned men reckoned it about the eighth of an inch in a hundred years. Towards evening Clermont-Tonnerre was lost in the distance, and the route of the was sensibly changed. After having crossed the tropic of Capricorn in 135° longitude, it sailed W.N.W., making again for the tropical zone. Although the summer sun was very strong, we did not suffer from heat, for at fifteen or twenty fathoms below the surface, the temperature did not rise above from ten to twelve degrees. Nautilus On 15th of December, we left to the east the bewitching group of the Societies and the graceful Tahiti, queen of the Pacific. I saw in the morning, some miles to the windward, the elevated summits of the island. These waters furnished our table with excellent fish, mackerel, bonitos, and some varieties of a sea-serpent. On the 25th of December the sailed into the midst of the New Hebrides, discovered by Quiros in 1606, and that Bougainville explored in 1768, and to which Cook gave its present name in 1773. This group is composed principally of nine large islands, that form a band of 120 leagues N.N.S. to S.S.W., between 15° and 2° S. lat., and 164 deg. and 168° long. We passed tolerably near to the Island of Aurou, that at noon looked like a mass of green woods, surmounted by a peak of great height. Nautilus That day being Christmas Day, Ned Land seemed to regret sorely the non-celebration of “Christmas,” the family fete of which Protestants are so fond. I had not seen Captain Nemo for a week, when, on the morning of the 27th, he came into the large drawing-room, always seeming as if he had seen you five minutes before. I was busily tracing the route of the on the planisphere. The Captain came up to me, put his finger on one spot on the chart, and said this single word. Nautilus “Vanikoro.” The effect was magical! It was the name of the islands on which La Perouse had been lost! I rose suddenly. “The has brought us to Vanikoro?” I asked. Nautilus “Yes, Professor,” said the Captain. “And I can visit the celebrated islands where the Boussole and the Astrolabe struck?” “If you like, Professor.” “When shall we be there?” “We are there now.” Followed by Captain Nemo, I went up on to the platform, and greedily scanned the horizon. To the N.E. two volcanic islands emerged of unequal size, surrounded by a coral reef that measured forty miles in circumference. We were close to Vanikoro, really the one to which Dumont d’Urville gave the name of Isle de la Recherche, and exactly facing the little harbour of Vanou, situated in 16° 4′ S. lat., and 164° 32′ E. long. The earth seemed covered with verdure from the shore to the summits in the interior, that were crowned by Mount Kapogo, 476 feet high. The , having passed the outer belt of rocks by a narrow strait, found itself among breakers where the sea was from thirty to forty fathoms deep. Under the verdant shade of some mangroves I perceived some savages, who appeared greatly surprised at our approach. In the long black body, moving between wind and water, did they not see some formidable cetacean that they regarded with suspicion? Nautilus Just then Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the wreck of La Perouse. “Only what everyone knows, Captain,” I replied. “And could you tell me what everyone knows about it?” he inquired, ironically. “Easily.” I related to him all that the last works of Dumont d’Urville had made known—works from which the following is a brief account. La Perouse, and his second, Captain de Langle, were sent by Louis XVI, in 1785, on a voyage of circumnavigation. They embarked in the corvettes Boussole and the Astrolabe, neither of which were again heard of. In 1791, the French Government, justly uneasy as to the fate of these two sloops, manned two large merchantmen, the Recherche and the Esperance, which left Brest the 28th of September under the command of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux. Two months after, they learned from Bowen, commander of the Albemarle, that the debris of shipwrecked vessels had been seen on the coasts of New Georgia. But D’Entrecasteaux, ignoring this communication—rather uncertain, besides—directed his course towards the Admiralty Islands, mentioned in a report of Captain Hunter’s as being the place where La Perouse was wrecked. They sought in vain. The Esperance and the Recherche passed before Vanikoro without stopping there, and, in fact, this voyage was most disastrous, as it cost D’Entrecasteaux his life, and those of two of his lieutenants, besides several of his crew. Captain Dillon, a shrewd old Pacific sailor, was the first to find unmistakable traces of the wrecks. On the 15th of May, 1824, his vessel, the St. Patrick, passed close to Tikopia, one of the New Hebrides. There a Lascar came alongside in a canoe, sold him the handle of a sword in silver that bore the print of characters engraved on the hilt. The Lascar pretended that six years before, during a stay at Vanikoro, he had seen two Europeans that belonged to some vessels that had run aground on the reefs some years ago. Dillon guessed that he meant La Perouse, whose disappearance had troubled the whole world. He tried to get on to Vanikoro, where, according to the Lascar, he would find numerous debris of the wreck, but winds and tides prevented him. Dillon returned to Calcutta. There he interested the Asiatic Society and the Indian Company in his discovery. A vessel, to which was given the name of the Recherche, was put at his disposal, and he set out, 23rd January, 1827, accompanied by a French agent. The Recherche, after touching at several points in the Pacific, cast anchor before Vanikoro, 7th July, 1827, in that same harbour of Vanou where the was at this time. Nautilus There it collected numerous relics of the wreck—iron utensils, anchors, pulley-strops, swivel-guns, an 18 lbs. shot, fragments of astronomical instruments, a piece of crown work, and a bronze clock, bearing this inscription—“Bazin m’a fait,” the mark of the foundry of the arsenal at Brest about 1785. There could be no further doubt. Dillon, having made all inquiries, stayed in the unlucky place till October. Then he quitted Vanikoro, and directed his course towards New Zealand; put into Calcutta, 7th April, 1828, and returned to France, where he was warmly welcomed by Charles X. But at the same time, without knowing Dillon’s movements, Dumont d’Urville had already set out to find the scene of the wreck. And they had learned from a whaler that some medals and a cross of St. Louis had been found in the hands of some savages of Louisiade and New Caledonia. Dumont d’Urville, commander of the Astrolabe, had then sailed, and two months after Dillon had left Vanikoro he put into Hobart Town. There he learned the results of Dillon’s inquiries, and found that a certain James Hobbs, second lieutenant of the Union of Calcutta, after landing on an island situated 8° 18′ S. lat., and 156° 30′ E. long., had seen some iron bars and red stuffs used by the natives of these parts. Dumont d’Urville, much perplexed, and not knowing how to credit the reports of low-class journals, decided to follow Dillon’s track. On the 10th of February, 1828, the Astrolabe appeared off Tikopia, and took as guide and interpreter a deserter found on the island; made his way to Vanikoro, sighted it on the 12th inst., lay among the reefs until the 14th, and not until the 20th did he cast anchor within the barrier in the harbour of Vanou. On the 23rd, several officers went round the island and brought back some unimportant trifles. The natives, adopting a system of denials and evasions, refused to take them to the unlucky place. This ambiguous conduct led them to believe that the natives had ill-treated the castaways, and indeed they seemed to fear that Dumont d’Urville had come to avenge La Perouse and his unfortunate crew. However, on the 26th, appeased by some presents, and understanding that they had no reprisals to fear, they led M. Jacquireot to the scene of the wreck. There, in three or four fathoms of water, between the reefs of Pacou and Vanou, lay anchors, cannons, pigs of lead and iron, embedded in the limy concretions. The large boat and the whaler belonging to the Astrolabe were sent to this place, and, not without some difficulty, their crews hauled up an anchor weighing 1,800 lbs., a brass gun, some pigs of iron, and two copper swivel-guns. Dumont d’Urville, questioning the natives, learned too that La Perouse, after losing both his vessels on the reefs of this island, had constructed a smaller boat, only to be lost a second time. Where, no one knew. But the French Government, fearing that Dumont d’Urville was not acquainted with Dillon’s movements, had sent the sloop Bayonnaise, commanded by Legoarant de Tromelin, to Vanikoro, which had been stationed on the west coast of America. The Bayonnaise cast her anchor before Vanikoro some months after the departure of the Astrolabe, but found no new document; but stated that the savages had respected the monument to La Perouse. That is the substance of what I told Captain Nemo. “So,” he said, “no one knows now where the third vessel perished that was constructed by the castaways on the island of Vanikoro?” “No one knows.” Captain Nemo said nothing, but signed to me to follow him into the large saloon. The sank several yards below the waves, and the panels were opened. Nautilus I hastened to the aperture, and under the crustations of coral, covered with fungi, syphonules, alcyons, madrepores, through myriads of charming fish—girelles, glyphisidri, pompherides, diacopes, and holocentres—I recognised certain debris that the drags had not been able to tear up—iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, bullets, capstan fittings, the stem of a ship, all objects clearly proving the wreck of some vessel, and now carpeted with living flowers. While I was looking on this desolate scene, Captain Nemo said, in a sad voice: “Commander La Perouse set out 7th December, 1785, with his vessels La Boussole and the Astrolabe. He first cast anchor at Botany Bay, visited the Friendly Isles, New Caledonia, then directed his course towards Santa Cruz, and put into Namouka, one of the Hapai group. Then his vessels struck on the unknown reefs of Vanikoro. The Boussole, which went first, ran aground on the southerly coast. The Astrolabe went to its help, and ran aground too. The first vessel was destroyed almost immediately. The second, stranded under the wind, resisted some days. The natives made the castaways welcome. They installed themselves in the island, and constructed a smaller boat with the debris of the two large ones. Some sailors stayed willingly at Vanikoro; the others, weak and ill, set out with La Perouse. They directed their course towards the Solomon Islands, and there perished, with everything, on the westerly coast of the chief island of the group, between Capes Deception and Satisfaction.” “How do you know that?” “By this, that I found on the spot where was the last wreck.” Captain Nemo showed me a tin-plate box, stamped with the French arms, and corroded by the salt water. He opened it, and I saw a bundle of papers, yellow but still readable. They were the instructions of the naval minister to Commander La Perouse, annotated in the margin in Louis XVI’s handwriting. “Ah! it is a fine death for a sailor!” said Captain Nemo, at last. “A coral tomb makes a quiet grave; and I trust that I and my comrades will find no other.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (1994). Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

This terrible spectacle was the forerunner of the series of maritime catastrophes

THE EVENING SKY AT THE WINTER SOLSTICE

MAURITIUS TO ENGLAND

The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories, by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps—for the thing has happened again and again—there slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as that of its discoverer? "John-smithia"! There have been worse names. It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales—that hope, and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse. "I have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is going to happen to me to-day." He spoke—as he moved and thought—slowly. "Oh, don't say that!" said his housekeeper—who was also his remote cousin. For "something happening" was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her. "You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant...though what I do mean I scarcely know. "To-day," he continued, after a pause, "Peters' are going to sell a batch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good unawares. That may be it." He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee. "Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of the other day?" asked his cousin, as she filled his cup. "Yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast. "Nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently, beginning to think aloud. "I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people. There is Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence, on Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin came home from Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a whirl of excitement!—compared to me." "I think I would rather be without so much excitement," said his housekeeper. "It can't be good for you." "I suppose it's troublesome. Still ... you see, nothing ever happens to me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in love as I grew up. Never married... I wonder how it feels to have something happen to you, something really remarkable. "That orchid-collector was only thirty-six—twenty years younger than myself—when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once; he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you know—except, perhaps, the leeches." "I am sure it was not good for him," said the lady with conviction. "Perhaps not." And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. "Twenty-three minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket—it is quite warm enough—and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. I suppose—" He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then nervously at his cousin's face. "I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London," she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "There's all between here and the station coming back." When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy, but this time he had done so. "There are Vandas," he said, "and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis." He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening for her and his own entertainment. "I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all these. Some of them—some of them—I feel sure, do you know, that some of them will be remarkable. I don't know how it is, but I feel just as sure as if some one had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable. "That one "—he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome—"was not identified. It may be a Palaeonophis—or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected." "I don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "It's such an ugly shape." "To me it scarcely seems to have a shape." "I don't like those things that stick out," said his housekeeper. "It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow." "It looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming dead." Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. "It is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can never judge of these things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed. How busy I shall be to-morrow! I must see to-night just exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow I shall set to work." "They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp—I forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these very orchids crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to obtain." "I think none the better of it for that." "Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with profound gravity. "Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine—if men were left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine—and no one round you but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting wretches—and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the necessary training. And just for people in England to have orchids!" "I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of thing," said Wedderburn. "Anyhow, the natives of his party were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid, and had let it wither. And it makes these things more interesting." "It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying across that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner." "I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the window-seat. I can see them just as well there." The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange. Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was delighted, and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it at once, directly he made the discovery. "That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves there, and those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets." "They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown," said his housekeeper. "I don't like them." "Why not?" "I don't know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can't help my likes and dislikes." "I don't know for certain, but I don't think there are any orchids I know that have aerial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends." "I don't like 'em," said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning away. "I know it's very silly of me—and I'm very sorry, particularly as you like the thing so much. But I can't help thinking of that corpse." "But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of mine." His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. "Anyhow I don't like it," she said. Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in particular, whenever he felt inclined. "There are such queer things about orchids," he said one day; "such possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their fertilisation, and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid flower was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant. Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. Some of the Cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can possibly fertilise them, and some of them have never been found with seed." "But how do they form new plants?" "By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for? "Very likely," he added, "my orchid may be something extraordinary in that way. If so I shall study it. I have often thought of making researches as Darwin did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to unfold now. I do wish you would come and see them!" But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache. She had seen the plant once again, and the aerial rootlets, which were now some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity. So that she had settled to her entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were of the ordinary broad form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards the base He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. And he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange plant. And at last the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little glass house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great Paloeonophis Lowii hid the corner where his new darling stood. There was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse. Directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. And, behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. He stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration. The flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one. And the insufferable scent! How hot the place was! The blossoms swam before his eyes. He would see if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the thermometer. Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward. At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable custom. But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea. "He is worshipping that horrid orchid," she told herself, and waited ten minutes. "His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him." She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name. There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks between the hot-water pipes. For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless. He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight, with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands. She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood. With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap dripped red. Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel. How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration. She caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the greenhouse. Then she re-entered. She tugged now with renewed strength at Wedderburn's motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor. It still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air. Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the horror. He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches. The odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass, and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands. For a moment he thought impossible things. "Bring some water!" she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies. When, with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping with excitement, and with Wedderburn's head upon her knee, wiping the blood from his face. "What's the matter?" said Wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing them again at once. "Go and tell Annie to come out here to me, and then go for Dr. Haddon at once," she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and added, seeing he hesitated, "I will tell you all about it when you come back." Presently Wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, "You fainted in the hothouse." "And the orchid?" "I will see to that," she said. Wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered no very great injury. They gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. His housekeeper told her incredible story in fragments to Dr. Haddon. "Come to the orchid-house and see," she said. The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly perfume was almost dispelled. Most of the torn aerial rootlets lay already withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. The stem of the inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. The doctor stooped towards it, then saw that one of the aerial rootlets still stirred feebly, and hesitated. The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and putrescent. The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all the array of Wedderburn's orchids was shrivelled and prostrate. But Wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his strange adventure. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2004). The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at . https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

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