A Journey To The Center Of The Earth Part 19

Why am I unable to pull back my foot? It must be riveted to the planks! Ah! the descent of this electric sphere has magnetized all the iron on board; the instruments, the tools, the weapons, move about and clash with a sharp jangle; the nails in my shoes cling tenaciously to a plate of iron set into the wood. I cannot pull my foot away!

At last, I tear it away with a violent effort just when the ball was about to seize it in its gyration and drag me along with it....

Ah! what glaring light! the sphere bursts! we are covered with tongues of fire!

Then all the light goes out. I had the time to see my uncle stretched out on the raft. Hans still at the helm and "spitting fire" under the impact of the electricity that penetrates him.

Where are we going? Where are we going?

Tuesday, August 25.-I come out of a long spell of unconsciousness. The thunderstorm continues; the lightning flashes tear loose like a brood of snakes released in the atmosphere.Are we still on the sea? Yes, we are driven at incalculable speed. We have pa.s.sed under England, under the channel, under France, under the whole of Europe perhaps!A new noise can be heard! Obviously waves breaking on rocks! ... But then ....

x.x.xVI.

HERE ENDS WHAT I have called my "s.h.i.+p log," happily saved from the wreckage. I resume my narrative as before.

What happened when the raft was dashed on the reefs of the sh.o.r.e I cannot tell. I felt myself being hurled into the waves, and if I escaped from death, if my body was not torn on the sharp rocks, it was because Hans' powerful arm pulled me back from the abyss.

The courageous Icelander carried me out of reach of the waves to a burning sand where I found myself side by side with my uncle.

Then he returned to the rocks, against which the furious waves were beating, to save a few pieces from the s.h.i.+pwreck. I was unable to speak; I was shattered by emotion and fatigue; it took me a long hour to recover.

Meanwhile, a deluge of rain was still falling, but with the increased intensity that precedes the end of a thunderstorm. A few overhanging rocks afforded us shelter from the torrents falling from the sky. Hans prepared some food that I could not touch, and each of us, exhausted by three sleepless nights, fell into a painful sleep.

The next day the weather was splendid. The sky and the ocean had calmed down in perfect synchrony. Any trace of the tempest had disappeared. The professor's joyful words greeted my awakening. His good cheer was terrible.

"Well, my boy," he exclaimed, "have you slept well?"

Would not one have thought that we were still in the house on the Konigstra.s.se, that I was coming down peacefully for breakfast, that I was to be married to poor Grauben the very same day?

Alas! if the tempest had only driven the raft to the east, we would have pa.s.sed under Germany, under my beloved city of Hamburg, under the very street where all that I loved in the world dwelled. Then just under forty leagues would have separated us! But they were forty vertical leagues of granite wall, and in reality we were a thousand leagues apart!

All these painful reflections rapidly crossed my mind before I answered my uncle's question.

"Well, now," he repeated, "won't you tell me whether you slept well?"

"Very well," I said. "I still feel shattered, but it'll soon turn to nothing."

"Absolutely nothing, a bit of fatigue, that's all."

"But you seem very cheerful this morning, Uncle."

"Delighted, my boy, delighted! We've arrived!"

"At the goal of our expedition?"

"No, but at the end of that unending ocean. Now we'll travel by land again, and really go down into the bowels of the globe."

"Uncle, allow me to ask you a question."

"Of course, Axel."

"How do we return?"

"Return? Ah! You think about returning before we've arrived."

"No, I only want to know how we'll do it."

"In the simplest way in the world. Once we've reached the center of the globe, we'll either find a new route to go back to the surface, or we'll just return the way we came like ordinary folks. I'd like to think that it won't be closed off behind us."

"But then we'll have to repair the raft."

"Of course."

"As for food supplies, do we have enough left to accomplish all these great things?"

"Yes, certainly. Hans is a skillful fellow, and I'm sure that he's saved a large part of our cargo. Let's go and make sure, at any rate."

We left this grotto which was open to every wind. I cherished a hope that was a fear as well; it seemed impossible to me that the terrible wreckage of the raft would not have destroyed everything on board. I was wrong. When I arrived on the sh.o.r.e, I found Hans in the midst of a mult.i.tude of items, all arranged in order. My uncle shook hands with him in an expression of deep grat.i.tude. This man, with a superhuman devotion that perhaps had no equal, had worked while we were sleeping and had saved the most precious items at the risk of his life.

It's not that we had not suffered appreciable losses; our firearms, for instance; but we could do without them. Our stock of powder had remained intact after having almost blown us up during the tempest.

"Well," exclaimed the professor, "since we have no guns we won't have to bother hunting."

"All right; but the instruments?"

"Here's the manometer, the most useful of them all, for which I'd have exchanged all the others! With this I can calculate the depth so as to know when we've reached the center. Without it we risk going beyond it and re-emerging at the antipodes!"

This cheerfulness was ferocious.

"But the compa.s.s?" I asked.

"Here it is, on this rock, in perfect condition, as well as the thermometers and the chronometer. Ah! The hunter is an invaluable man!"

There was no denying it. As far as instruments, nothing was missing. As for tools and devices, I saw ladders, ropes, picks, pickaxes, etc. lying strewn about in the sand.

Still there was the question of food supplies to investigate.

"And the food?" I said.

The boxes that contained them were lined up on the gravel, perfectly preserved; for the most part the sea had spared them, and what with biscuits, salted meat, gin and dried fish, we still had a four-month food supply.

"Four months!" exclaimed the professor. "We have time to go and return, and with what's left I'll give a grand dinner for all my colleagues at the Johanneum!"

I should have been used to my uncle's temperament for a long time, and yet he never ceased to amaze me.

"Now," he said, "we'll replenish our supply of fresh water with the rain that the storm has left in all these granite basins; that way we'll have no reason to fear being overcome by thirst. As for the raft, I'll recommend to Hans to do his best to repair it, although I don't expect it'll be of any further use to us!"

"How so?" I exclaimed.

"An idea of my own, my boy. I don't think we'll go out where we came in."

I looked at the professor with a certain mistrust. I wondered whether he had not gone mad. And yet he would turn out to be right.

"Let's go and have breakfast," he resumed.

I followed him to an elevated promontory after he had given his instructions to the hunter. Dried meat, biscuits, and tea made us an excellent meal there, one of the best, I'll admit, that I have ever had in my life. Hunger, fresh air, calm weather after the trouble, all contributed to give me an appet.i.te.

During breakfast, I asked my uncle where we were now.

"That," I said, "seems to me difficult to calculate."

"Difficult to calculate exactly, yes," he replied; "impossible, actually, since during these three days of tempest I've not been able to keep track of the speed or direction of the raft; but we can still make an approximate estimate."

"In fact, we made the last observation on the island with the geyser ..."

"On Axel Island, my boy. Don't reject the honor of having given your name to the first island ever discovered in the interior of the earth."

"All right. On Axel Island, we had covered two hundred and seventy leagues of ocean, and we were six hundred leagues away from Iceland."

"Good! Let's start from that point, then, and count four days of storm, during which our speed could not have been less than eighty leagues per twenty-four hours."

"That's right. So that would be three hundred leagues in addition."

"Yes, and so the Lidenbrock Sea would be about six hundred leagues from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e! Do you realize, Axel, that it competes in size with the Mediterranean?"

"Yes, especially if we've not crossed all of it!"

"Which is quite possible!"

"And curiously," I added, "if our calculations are accurate, we now have the Mediterranean right above our heads."

"Really!"

"Really, since we are nine hundred leagues away from Reykjavik!"

"That's a nice long way, my boy; but whether we're under the Mediterranean rather than under Turkey or the Atlantic, depends on whether our direction hasn't changed."

"No, the wind seemed steady; so I think this sh.o.r.e should be south-east of Port Grauben."

"Well, it's easy to make sure of that by consulting the compa.s.s. Let's go and see what it says!"

The professor went toward the rock where Hans had put the instruments. He was cheerful, lively, he rubbed his hands, he posed! A real young man! I followed him, rather curious to know if I was not mistaken in my estimate.

When we reached the rock, my uncle took the compa.s.s, placed it horizontally and observed the needle, which after a few oscillations stopped in a fixed position due to the magnetic attraction.

My uncle looked, and rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Finally he turned to me, thunderstruck.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

He motioned to me to look at the instrument. An exclamation of surprise burst from me. The tip of the needle indicated north where we a.s.sumed the south to be! It pointed to the sh.o.r.e instead of the open sea!

I shook the compa.s.s, I examined it; it was in perfect condition. No matter in what position we placed the needle, it obstinately returned to this unexpected direction.

Therefore, there could be no doubt: during the storm, the wind had changed without our noticing, and had taken our raft back to the sh.o.r.e that my uncle thought he had left behind.

x.x.xVII.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO describe the succession of emotions that shook Professor Lidenbrock, amazement, incredulity, and finally rage. Never had I seen a man so disoriented at first, and then so furious. The exhaustion of our journey across the ocean, the dangers we had incurred, all that had to be started over again! We had gone backwards instead of forwards!

But my uncle quickly regained control of himself.

"Ah! Fate plays these tricks on me!" he exclaimed. "The elements conspire against me! Air, fire and water join their efforts to oppose my journey! Well then! They'll find out what my will power is made of. I will not yield, I will not take a single step backwards, and we'll see whether man or nature wins out!"

Standing on the rock, enraged, threatening, Otto Lidenbrock seemed to challenge the G.o.ds like the fierce Ajax.bp But I thought it appropriate to intervene and restrain this irrational energy. But I thought it appropriate to intervene and restrain this irrational energy.

"Listen to me," I said to him in a firm voice. "There's a limit to ambition down here; we can't struggle against the impossible. We're ill-equipped for another sea voyage; one can't travel five hundred leagues on a paltry a.s.semblage of wood beams, with a blanket for a sail, a stick for a mast, and the winds unleashed against us. We cannot steer, we're a plaything for the storms, and it's madness to attempt this impossible crossing for a second time!"

I was able to unfold this series of irrefutable reasons for ten minutes without being interrupted, but only because of the inattention of the professor, who did not hear a word of my arguments.

"To the raft!" he shouted.

That was his reply. It was no use begging him or flying into a rage, I was up against a will harder than granite.

Hans was finis.h.i.+ng up the repairs of the raft at that moment. One would have thought that this strange being guessed my uncle's plans. He had reinforced the vessel with a few pieces of surturbrand. He had already hoisted a sail in whose folds the wind was playing.

The professor said a few words to the guide, and immediately he put everything on board and arranged everything for our departure. The air was rather clear, and the north-west wind blew steadily.

What could I do? Stand alone against the two of them? Impossible. If only Hans had taken my side. But no! The Icelander seemed to have given up any will of his own and to have made a vow of self-denial. I could not get anything out of a servant so beholden to his master. I had to go along.

I was therefore about to take my usual place on the raft when my uncle stopped me with his hand.

"We won't leave until tomorrow," he said.

I made the gesture of a man who is resigned to anything.

"I must not neglect anything," he resumed; "and since fate has driven me to this part of the coast, I won't leave it until I've explored it."

To understand this remark, one must know that we had come back to the north sh.o.r.e, but not to the exact point of our first departure. Port Grauben must have been further to the west. Therefore, nothing more reasonable than to explore carefully the surroundings of this new landing spot.

"Let's go on discovery!" I said.

And leaving Hans to his activities, we started off together. The s.p.a.ce between the water and the foot of the cliffs was considerable. It took us half an hour to get to the wall of rock. Our feet crushed innumerable sh.e.l.ls of all shapes and sizes in which the animals of the earliest ages had lived. I also saw enormous turtle sh.e.l.ls that were more than fifteen feet in diameter. They had belonged to those gigantic glyptodonts of the Pliocene period,bq of which the modern turtle is but a small reduction. The ground was in addition strewn with a lot of stone fragments, s.h.i.+ngles of a sort that had been rounded by the waves and arranged in successive lines. This led me to the remark that at one time the sea must have covered this ground. of which the modern turtle is but a small reduction. The ground was in addition strewn with a lot of stone fragments, s.h.i.+ngles of a sort that had been rounded by the waves and arranged in successive lines. This led me to the remark that at one time the sea must have covered this ground.

On the scattered rocks, now out of their reach, the waves had left manifest traces of their pa.s.sage.