Journey to the Centre of the Earth

  Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? Here was obviously a chance of reaching safety. The most urgent necessity was therefore to find the Hansbach again.

  I stood up, and, leaning on my iron-shod stick, I started walking back up the gallery. The slope was rather steep. I walked along hopefully and unhesitatingly, knowing that I had no choice.

  For half an hour I met with no obstacle. I tried to recognize my way by the shape of the tunnel, the projection of certain rocks, the arrangement of the bends. But no distinguishing feature caught my attention, and soon I discovered that this gallery could not bring me back to the fork, for it came to a dead end. I bumped into an impenetrable wall and fell on the rock floor.

  I cannot describe the terror and despair which seized upon me then. I lay there aghast. My last hope had just been shattered against that granite wall.

  Lost in that labyrinth whose winding passages criss-crossed in all directions, I could not hope to find a way out: I was doomed to die the most horrible of deaths. Strange to relate, it occurred to me that if my fossilized remains were found one day, their presence seventy-five miles below the surface would lead to some earnest scientific speculations!

  I tried to speak aloud, but only hoarse sounds passed between my dry lips and I lay there panting for breath.

  In the midst of this anguish a new terror took hold of me. My lamp had been damaged in my fall. I had no means of repairing it, and its light was failing and would soon go out.

  I watched the glow from the electric current gradually fading in the filament of the lamp. A procession of moving shadows passed along the darkening walls. I no longer dared to blink my eyes for fear of losing the slightest glimmer of this fleeting light. Every moment it seemed to me that it was about to vanish and that darkness was closing in on me.

  Finally a last gleam flickered in the lamp. I watched it anxiously, concentrating the full power of my eyes on it, as on the last sensation of light which they were ever to experience, until at last it went out and I was plunged into unfathomable darkness.

  A terrible cry burst from my lips. On earth, even on the darkest night, light never entirely abdicates its rights. It may be subtle and diffuse, but however little there may be the eye finally perceives it. Here there was none. The total darkness made me a blind man in the full meaning of the word.

  At this point I lost my head. I stood up with my arms stretched out before me, trying to feel my way. I started dashing haphazardly through that inextricable maze, going downwards all the time, running through the earth’s crust like an inhabitant of the subterranean galleries, crying, shouting, yelling, bruising myself on the jagged rocks, falling and getting up again, trying to drink the blood which was running down my face, and constantly expecting to run into some wall and dash my head to pieces.

  I shall never know where this mad flight took me. After several hours, doubtless utterly exhausted, I fell headlong on the floor and fainted.

  28

  I Hear Voices

  When I regained consciousness, my face was wet with tears. I cannot say how long I had been unconscious, for I no longer had any means of telling the time. Never had any human being been so isolated or forsaken as I was then.

  After my fall I had lost a great deal of blood, and could feel that I was covered with it. How sorry I felt that I was not dead, and that that ordeal still lay ahead of me! I did not want to think any more, and, overwhelmed by pain, I rolled myself across to the foot of the opposite wall.

  I was just about to lose consciousness again, and hoping for complete annihilation, when a loud noise struck my ears. It was like a roll of thunder, and I could hear the sound-waves gradually fading away in the distant depths of the abyss.

  Where could this noise come from? From some subterranean phenomenon, I imagined, such as an explosion of gas or the fall of some great pillar of the globe.

  I went on listening, in case the noise was repeated. A quarter of an hour went by. Silence reigned in the gallery. I could not hear even the beating of my heart.

  All of a sudden my ear, which happened to be resting against the wall, appeared to catch the sound of words – vague, indistinguishable, and remote, but none the less words. I gave a start.

  ‘It’s a hallucination!’ I thought.

  But no – listening more attentively, I definitely heard a murmur of voices, though I was too weak to make out what they were saying. Yet somebody was speaking, I was sure of that.

  For a moment I was afraid that the words might be my own, brought back to me by an echo. Perhaps I had cried out without knowing. I closed my lips tightly and laid my ear against the wall again.

  ‘Yes, somebody is definitely speaking!’

  Even when I dragged myself a few feet farther along the wall, I could still hear distinctly. I managed to make out certain vague, strange, incomprehensible words, which reached me as if they had been uttered in a whisper. The word forlorad was repeated several times, in a sorrowful tone of voice.

  What did it mean? Who was speaking? Obviously either my uncle or Hans. But if I could hear them, they could hear me.

  ‘Help!’ I cried with all my might. ‘Help!’

  I listened, straining my ears for some reply from the darkness, a shout, even a sigh. There was nothing to be heard. A few minutes went by. A whole world of ideas came crowding into my mind. It occurred to me that perhaps my weakened voice was unable to carry to my companions.

  ‘For it’s they,’ I said to myself. ‘What other men could be seventy-five miles underground?’

  I listened again. Moving my ear about over the wall, I found a place where the voices seemed to sound most clearly. The word forlorad reached me again, followed by that roll of thunder which had roused me from my lethargy.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘no. It isn’t through the rock that those voices are reaching me. The wall is solid granite, and the loudest explosion couldn’t come through it. This noise is coming along the gallery itself, by some peculiar acoustic effect.’

  I listened once more, and this time I distinctly heard my name. It was my uncle who had pronounced it. He was talking to the guide, and forlorad was a Danish word!

  Then everything became clear to me. To make myself heard, I had to speak along the wall, which would conduct the sound of my voice just as a wire conducts electricity.

  But there was no time to lose. If my companion moved even a few steps away, the acoustic effect would be destroyed. I therefore drew close to the wall and, speaking as clearly as possible, said:

  ‘Uncle Lidenbrock!’

  I waited in extreme anxiety. Sound does not travel very fast, and a dense atmosphere does not increase its speed, but only its intensity. A few seconds, which seemed like centuries, went by, and at last these words reached me:

  ‘Axel! Axel! Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ I replied.

  ‘Where are you, my boy?’

  ‘Lost, in absolute darkness.’

  ‘But your lamp?’

  ‘It has gone out.’

  ‘And the stream?’

  ‘Disappeared.’

  ‘Axel, my poor boy, cheer up!’

  ‘Wait a moment, I’m exhausted. I haven’t the strength to reply. But speak to me!’

  ‘Courage,’ my uncle went on. ‘Don’t speak, but just listen to me. We’ve been up and down the gallery looking for you, all in vain. Oh, I’ve wept for you, my boy! Finally, thinking you were still somewhere on the Hansbach, we came back downstream, firing our guns. Now, though our voices can meet, that is just an acoustic effect, and our hands cannot touch. But don’t despair, Axel. It is already something to be able to hear each other.’

  In the meantime I had been thinking, and a little hope, faint as yet, returned to me. First of all there was something I had to know. I put my lips close to the wall and said:

  ‘Uncle!’

  ‘Yes, my boy?’ came the reply a few seconds later.

  ‘To begin with we must know how far apart we are.’

  ‘Th
at’s easy.’

  ‘You have your chronometer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, take it and say my name, noting the exact second when you speak. I will repeat it as soon as I hear it, and you will again note the exact second at which my reply reaches you.’

  ‘Right; and half the time taken between my call and your reply will be the time my voice takes to reach you.’

  ‘That’s it, Uncle.’

  ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, get ready. I’m going to call your name.’

  I put my ear to the wall, and as soon as the name ‘Axel’ reached me, I immediately replied: ‘Axel,’ then waited.

  ‘Forty seconds,’ said my uncle. ‘Forty seconds went by between the two words, so sound takes twenty seconds to cover the distance between us. Now at 1,020 feet a second, that makes 20,400 feet, or just under four miles.’

  ‘Four miles!’ I murmured.

  ‘Oh, that’s not an impossible distance, Axel.’

  ‘But should I go up or down?’

  ‘Down – and I’ll tell you why. We are in a huge cavern, with a great many galleries leading into it. The one you are in is sure to bring you here, because all these cracks and fissures seem to radiate from the cavern we are in. So get up and start walking. Drag yourself along if need be, slide down the steep slopes, and you find our arms ready to welcome you at the end. Now on your way, my boy, on your way!’

  These words cheered me up.

  ‘Good-bye, Uncle,’ I cried. ‘I’m leaving now. We shan’t be able to talk to one another after I’ve left this place. So good-bye.’

  ‘Au revoir, Axel, au revoir!’

  These were the last words I heard. This astonishing conversation, conducted through the earth over a distance of nearly four miles, ended on this note of hope. I offered up my thanks to God, for He had led me through those huge dark spaces to what was perhaps the only spot where my companions’ voices could have reached me.

  This amazing acoustic effect is easy to explain on scientific grounds: it was due to the shape of the gallery and the conducting power of the rock. There are a good many examples of this propagation of sounds which cannot be heard in the intervening space. The phenomenon has been observed in various places, including the Whispering Gallery at St Paul’s in London, and especially in those curious caves near Syracuse in Sicily, of which the most remarkable in this respect is called the Ear of Dionysius.

  These instances came to my mind, and I realized that since my uncle’s voice had reached me, there could be no obstacle between us. Following the course taken by the sound, I was bound to arrive at its starting-point, provided my strength did not fail me.

  I therefore got up and set off, dragging myself along rather than walking. The slope was quite steep, and I let myself slide.

  Soon the speed of my descent increased at an alarming rate, until it began to be more of a fall. I no longer had the strength to stop myself.

  All of a sudden the ground disappeared from under my feet. I felt myself falling down a vertical shaft and bouncing off the projections on the walls. My head hit a sharp rock and I lost consciousness.

  29

  Saved

  When I came to, I was in semi-darkness, stretched out on some thick rugs. My uncle was watching my face for some sign of life. At my first sigh he took my hand, and when I opened my eyes he gave a cry of joy.

  ‘He’s alive! He’s alive!’ he cried.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered feebly.

  ‘My dear boy,’ said my uncle, clasping me in his arms, ‘you are saved!’

  I was deeply touched by the affectionate tone in which he uttered these words, and even more by the gesture which accompanied them. But it required an occasion such as this to bring out the Professor’s real tenderness.

  At that moment Hans came up, and I think I may safely say that there was joy in his eyes when he saw my uncle holding my hand.

  ‘God dag,’ he said.

  ‘Good day, Hans, good day,’ I murmured. ‘And now, Uncle, tell me where we are.’

  ‘Tomorrow, Axel, tomorrow. Just now you are too weak. I have bandaged your head with compresses which must not be disturbed; so sleep now, and tomorrow I will tell you everything.’

  ‘But at least tell me what time it is, and what day.’

  ‘It’s eleven o’clock at night, and today is Sunday the ninth of August. I forbid you to ask me any more questions until the tenth.’

  I was indeed very weak, and my eyes shut of their own accord. I needed a good night’s rest, and I therefore let myself drop off to sleep, with the thought that I had been alone for three days.

  The next morning, on awakening, I looked round me. My bed, made up of all our travelling-rugs, was installed in a delightful grotto, adorned with magnificent stalagmites and carpeted with fine sand. It was half-light. There was no torch or lamp burning, yet certain in explicable gleams of light were filtering in through a narrow opening in the grotto. I could also hear a vague, mysterious murmur, something like the sound of waves breaking on a shore, and now and then a noise like the whistling of wind.

  I wondered whether I was really awake, whether I was dreaming, whether my brain had been cracked in my fall and I was hearing purely imaginary noises. But neither my eyes nor my ears could be deceived to this extent.

  ‘That really is a ray of daylight,’ I thought, ‘slipping in through that cleft in the rocks! That really is the murmur of the waves and the whistling of the wind! Am I utterly mistaken, or have we returned to the surface of the earth? Has my uncle given up the expedition or brought it to a successful conclusion?’

  I was asking myself these unanswerable questions when the Professor appeared.

  ‘Good morning, Axel,’ he said gaily. ‘I’m ready to wager that you are feeling better!’

  ‘I am indeed,’ I said, sitting up on the rugs.

  ‘That isn’t surprising, because you have slept well. Hans and I took turns in watching over you, and we could see you visibly recovering.’

  ‘I certainly feel in fine shape, and I’m ready to prove it by making short work of anything you give me in the way of breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, you shall have something to eat, my boy. The fever has left you. Hans rubbed your wounds with some secret Icelandic ointment, and they have healed up wonderfully. He really is a splendid fellow!’

  While he was talking, my uncle prepared some food for me which I wolfed down, in spite of his advice to eat slowly. Meanwhile I plied him with questions which he answered straight away.

  I then learnt that my providential fall had brought me to the end of an almost perpendicular shaft; and as I had landed in the midst of a torrent of stones, the smallest of which would have been enough to kill me, it looked as if a loose portion of the rock had come down with me. This frightening vehicle had carried me, bleeding and unconscious, right into my uncle’s arms.

  ‘It really is a miracle,’ he told me, ‘that you weren’t killed a hundred times over. For heaven’s sake don’t let us get separated again, or we might be parted for good.’

  Not get separated again? Then the expedition wasn’t over? I opened my eyes wide in astonishment, and this immediately brought the question:

  ‘What’s the matter, Axel?’

  ‘I want to ask you something. You say that I’m safe and sound?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And none of my limbs is broken.’

  ‘Not a single one.’

  ‘And my head?’

  ‘Apart from a few bruises, your head is perfectly all right, and set firmly on your shoulders.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid that my brain is affected.’

  ‘Your brain affected?’

  ‘Yes. We haven’t returned to the surface, have we?’

  ‘No, certainly not.’

  ‘Then I must be mad, because I can see daylight, and I can hear the wind blowing and the sea breaking on the shore.’

  ‘Oh, is that all?’

&nbs
p; ‘Won’t you explain?’

  ‘I can’t explain anything, because it’s inexplicable; but you shall see for yourself, and then you’ll realize that geologists have still a lot to learn.’

  ‘Then let’s go out!’ I cried, sitting up.

  ‘No, Axel! The open air might be bad for you.’

  ‘The open air?’

  ‘Yes, the wind is rather strong. I don’t want you to risk going out in it.’

  ‘But I tell you I feel perfectly well.’

  ‘Have a little patience, my boy. A relapse would cause us a lot of trouble, and we have no time to lose, for the voyage may be a long one.’

  ‘The voyage?’

  ‘Yes … Rest today, and tomorrow we’ll set sail.’

  ‘Set sail?’

  I sat up with a start. Set sail? Did that mean there was a river, a lake, or sea outside? Was there a ship waiting for us, anchored in some underground harbour?

  My curiosity was aroused to fever-pitch, and my uncle tried in vain to restrain me. When he saw that my impatience was likely to do me more harm than the satisfaction of my curiosity, he gave way.

  I dressed quickly. As an extra precaution I wrapped one of the rugs around me and then I left the grotto.

  30

  An Underground Sea

  At first I saw nothing. My eyes, which had grown unaccustomed to light, abruptly closed. When I managed to open them again, I was more astounded than delighted.

  ‘The sea!’ I cried.

  ‘Yes,’ said my uncle, ‘the Lidenbrock Sea – for I don’t imagine that any other explorer is likely to dispute my claim to having discovered it and my right to call it by my name!’