My eyes were dazzled by the intensity of the light, my ears deafened by the din of the thunder. I had to cling to the mast, which bent like a reed before the violence of the storm.
(Here my notes became very vague. I have only been able to find a few brief observations, which I had jotted down almost unconsciously. But their brevity and even their incoherence reveal the emotion which gripped me and give a better idea of the atmosphere than my memory could.)
Sunday, 23 August. Where are we? We have been carried along with indescribable rapidity.
Last night was dreadful, and the storm has not abated. We are living in a continuous din and uproar, our ears are bleeding, and it is impossible to exchange a single word.
The lightning is flashing all the time. I see zigzags which, after hurtling downwards, rebound and shoot up towards the granite ceiling. What if it should fall in? Other flashes of lightning fork or take the form of globes of fire which burst like bombs. But the general din does not appear to get any louder; it has passed the limit of intensity within which the human ear can hear, and if all the powder magazines in the world were to blow up together, we would not be able to make out more than we can now.
There is a constant emission of light from the under-surface of the clouds; electric matter is constantly being given off by their molecules. The gaseous elements of the air have obviously changed, for countless columns of water are soaring into the air and falling back in a foaming mass.
Where are we going? … My uncle is stretched out at full length at the end of the raft.
It is getting hotter. I look at the thermometer; it registers … (the figure is illegible).
Monday, 24 August. Will this never end? Is this dense atmosphere, now that it has changed, going to remain in this condition?
We are utterly worn out. Hans is the same as ever. The raft is still heading south-east, and we have travelled over 500 miles from Axel Island.
At midday the storm increased in violence. We had to make fast all our cargo, and we all lashed ourselves to the raft as well. The waves passed over our heads.
For three days we had not been able to exchange a single word. We opened our mouths and moved our lips, but no sound could be heard. We could not even make ourselves heard by shouting into one another’s ears.
My uncle came over to me and pronounced a few words. I think he said, ‘We are done for,’ but I am not sure.
I wrote down these words for him to read: ‘Let us lower the sail.’
He nodded in agreement.
He had scarcely lifted his head again before a ball of fire appeared on board the raft. The mast and the sail vanished together, and I saw them rising to a prodigious height, looking like the pterodactyl, that fantastic bird of prehistoric times.
We were paralysed with fear. The fireball, half white, half blue, and the size of a ten-inch shell, moved slowly over the raft, slowly, but revolving at an astonishing speed under the lash of the hurricane. It floated here and there, perched on one of the supports, leapt on to the provision bag, jumped lightly down, rebounded, and touched the powder canister. For a horrible moment I thought we were going to be blown up; but no, the dazzling ball moved away and approached Hans, who simply stared at it, my uncle, who fell on his knees to avoid it, and myself, pale and trembling under its hot glare. It pirouetted near my foot, which I tried to pull away, but in vain.
A smell of nitrous gas filled the air, entering our throats and filling our lungs to suffocation.
Why was I unable to move my foot? Was it riveted to the raft? Then I realized that the electric fireball had magnetized all the iron on board; the instruments, tools, and guns were moving about and clinking as they collided; the nails of my boots were clinging to an iron plate let into the wood.
At last, with a violent effort, I managed to pull my foot away just as the ball was going to seize it in its gyrations and carry me away too.
Suddenly there was a blaze of light. The ball had burst and we were covered with tongues of fire.
Then everything went dark. I just had time to make out my uncle stretched out on the raft, and Hans still at his tiller but ‘spitting fire’ under the influence of the electricity with which he was saturated.
Where are we going? Where are we going?
Tuesday, 25 August. I have just emerged from a long swoon. The storm is still raging; the forks of lightning are flashing about like a brood of serpents let loose in the sky.
Are we still at sea? Yes, and moving at an incalculable speed. We have passed under England, under the Channel, under France, perhaps under the whole of Europe.
I can hear a new noise! Surely it is the sound of the sea breaking on rocks! But then …
36
An Unpleasant Shock
Here ends what I have called the log, happily saved from the wreck, and I resume my narrative as before.
What happened when the raft was dashed against the reefs on the coast I cannot say. I felt myself being flung into the sea, and if I escaped death, if my body was not torn to pieces on the sharp rocks, that was because Hans’s strong arm snatched me from the abyss.
The brave Icelander carried me out of reach of the waves to a hot sandy beach where I found myself lying side by side with my uncle.
Then he returned to the rocks on which the furious waves were beating, to save what he could from the wreck. I was unable to speak, overcome as I was by fatigue and excitement; it took me a whole hour to recover.
Meanwhile the rain went on falling in a positive deluge, though with that violence which usually indicates that a storm is nearly over. A few overhanging rocks offered us a shelter from the torrential downpour. Hans prepared some food, which I could not even touch, and each of us, exhausted by three wakeful nights, fell into a painful sleep.
The next day the weather was magnificent. The sky and sea had calmed down with one accord. Every trace of the storm had disappeared when I awoke, to be greeted by the Professor’s cheerful voice. He was ominously gay.
‘Well, my boy,’ he cried, ‘have you slept well?’
I could almost have imagined that we were in the house in the Königstrasse, that I was coming down to breakfast, and that I was going to marry poor Gräuben that very day.
Alas, if the tempest had sent the raft eastwards, we had passed under Germany, under my beloved city of Hamburg, under the street where there lived all that I loved most in the world. In that case we were separated by barely a hundred miles! But they were a hundred vertical miles of solid granite, and in reality we were more than two thousand miles apart.
All these painful thoughts crossed rapidly through my mind before I could answer my uncle’s question.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘don’t you want to tell me how you’ve slept?’
‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘I still feel rather done in, but that will pass.’
‘Of course it will. You’re just a little tired, that’s all.’
‘But you seem in very good spirits this morning, Uncle.’
‘Delighted, my boy, delighted! We’ve arrived!’
‘At the end of our expedition?’
‘No, but at the end of that apparently endless sea. Now we can start travelling by land again and really plunge into the bowels of the earth.’
‘Uncle, may I ask you a question?’
‘You may, Axel, you may.’
‘What about our return journey?’
‘Our return journey? You mean to say you are thinking about the return journey before we have even arrived?’
‘No, I only want to know how we are going to manage it.’
‘In the simplest way possible. Once we have reached the centre of the globe, we shall either find some new route to the surface, or we shall return in very humdrum fashion by the way we have come. I don’t imagine that it will close up behind us.’
‘Then we shall have to repair the raft.’
‘Of course.’
‘But have we got enough provisions to go on with the journey?’
‘Oh, yes. Hans is an able fellow, and I’m sure he will have saved most of the cargo. But let us go and make sure.’
We left the open grotto. I cherished the hope which was a fear at the same time: it seemed to me impossible that the terrible wreck of the raft should not have destroyed everything on board.
I was mistaken. On my arrival on the shore, I found Hans in the midst of a host of neatly arranged articles. My uncle shook hands with him with fervent gratitude, for with superhuman devotion, of which it would be difficult to find the equal, he had worked while we were asleep and had saved the most precious articles at the risk of his life.
Not that we had not suffered some serious losses, for instance our guns; but in the last analysis we could do without them. Our stock of powder, after nearly exploding during the storm, was intact.
‘Well,’ exclaimed the Professor, ‘if we haven’t any guns, we can’t go hunting, that’s all.’
‘Yes, but what about the instruments?’
‘Here is the manometer, the most useful of all, and the one for which I would willingly have given all the others. With it I can calculate how deep we are and know when we have reached the centre. Without it we might go too far and come out at the Antipodes!’
His gaiety was really ferocious.
‘But where’s the compass?’ I asked.
‘Here it is on this rock, in perfect condition, as well as the chronometer and the thermometers. Oh, that guide is a splendid fellow!’
There was no denying it: none of the instruments was missing, while, as for the tools and equipment, I could see the ladders, ropes, pickaxes, and so on laid out on the sand.
However, the question of provisions still had to be cleared up.
‘What about the provisions?’ I asked.
‘Let us see,’ replied the Professor.
The crates which contained them were arranged in a row on the shore in a perfect state of preservation; for the most part the sea had spared them, and what with biscuits, salt meat, gin, and dried fish, we had enough food for another four months.
‘Four months!’ cried the Professor. ‘Why, we have time to get there and back; and with what is left I will give a great dinner to my colleagues at the Johannaeum!’
I ought to have been used to my uncle’s character by now, yet the man still astonished me.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘we must replenish our stock of water with the rain the storm has left in all these granite basins so that we have no reason to be afraid of going thirsty. As for the raft, I will ask Hans to repair it as best he can, although I don’t imagine we shall need it again.’
‘Why not?’ I cried.
‘Just an idea of mine, my boy. I don’t think we shall get out by the way we came in.’
I looked at the Professor rather suspiciously, wondering whether he had not gone out of his mind. Yet he little knew how right he was.
‘Let’s go and have breakfast,’ he said.
I followed him on to a promontory, after he had given instructions to the guide. There, preserved meat, biscuits, and tea provided us with an excellent meal, indeed one of the best I have ever had. Hunger, the fresh air, peace and quiet after all the excitement of the past few days, all contributed to give me a good appetite.
During breakfast I asked the Professor where he thought we were.
‘That,’ I said, ‘strikes me as rather difficult to work out.’
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘it is certainly difficult to calculate exactly, indeed impossible, seeing that during these three days of storm I have been unable to keep a record of the raft’s speed and direction. All the same, we can make a rough estimate.’
‘Well, the last observation was made on the island with the geyser …!’
‘Axel Island, my boy. Don’t spurn the honour of having given your name to the first island discovered in the interior of the earth.’
‘All right, at Axel Island we had covered about 675 miles of this sea, and we were over 1,500 miles from Iceland.’
‘Good. Let us start from that point and count four days of storm, during which our rate cannot have been less than 200 miles every twenty-four hours.’
‘I agree. That would make 800 miles to be added.’
‘Yes, and the Lidenbrock Sea would be about 1,500 miles from shore to shore. Do you realize, Axel, that it can compete with the Mediterranean in size?’
‘Yes, especially if we have only crossed the width of it!’
‘Which is perfectly possible.’
‘Another curious thing,’ I added, ‘is that if our calculations are correct, we have now got the Mediterranean over our heads.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, because we are 2,250 miles from Reykjavik.’
‘That’s a tidy distance, my boy; but we can’t say for sure that we are under the Mediterranean and not under Turkey or the Atlantic unless we are certain that our direction has not changed.’
‘I feel sure it hasn’t. The wind seemed to be constant, so I think this shore must be south-east of Port Gräuben.’
‘Well, we can easily find out by consulting the compass. Let us go and see what it says.’
The Professor made for the rock on which Hans had placed the instruments. He was gay and cheerful, rubbing his hands and striking attitudes like a young man. I followed him, curious to know whether I had been right in my estimate.
Arriving at the rock, my uncle took the compass, and examined the needle, which after a few oscillations took up a fixed position.
My uncle looked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Then he turned to me in amazement.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
He motioned to me to examine the instrument. I gave an exclamation of surprise. The north tip of the needle was pointing to what we supposed to be the south! It was pointing inland instead of out to sea!
I shook the compass and examined it carefully; it was in perfect condition. In whatever position I placed the compass, the needle stubbornly returned to this unexpected direction.
There seemed to be no doubt that during the storm a sudden change of wind had occurred which we had not noticed, and had brought the raft back to the shore which my uncle thought he had left behind him.
37
A Human Skull
It would be impossible to describe the succession of emotions which seized hold of Professor Lidenbrock –stupefaction, incredulity, and finally anger. I have never seen a man so startled at first, and so furious afterwards. The fatigues of the crossing, the dangers we had undergone, had all to be repeated.
But my uncle rapidly regained control of himself.
‘So. Fate is having fun with me, is it?’ he cried. ‘The elements are in league against me! Air, fire, and water combine to block my way! Well, they are going to find out just how strong-willed I am! I won’t give in, I won’t move back an inch, and we shall see whether man or Nature will get the upper hand!’
Standing on the rock, angry and menacing, Otto Lidenbrock, like Ajax, seemed to be hurling defiance at the gods. But I thought it best to intervene and put a check on his wild fury.
‘Listen to me,’ I said firmly. ‘There is a limit to every sort of ambition in this world, and we can’t do the impossible. We are ill-equipped for a sea voyage, because nobody can sail a thousand miles on a collection of rotten beams, with a blanket for a sail, a stick for a mast, and a contrary wind blowing. Unable to steer, and at the mercy of every storm, we should be mad to try that impossible crossing a second time!’
I was able to expound these irrefutable arguments for ten minutes without interruption, but simply because the Professor was not taking any notice of me and did not hear a single word I said.
‘To the raft!’ he cried.
That was his only reply. It was no use my arguing, begging, losing my temper: I came up against a will harder than granite.
Hans had just finished repairing the raft, as if the strange creature had guessed my uncle’s intentions. He strengthened the cr
aft with a few pieces of surturbrand. A sail had already been run up and the wind was playing in its folds.
The Professor said a few words to the guide, who promptly placed all our effects on board and got ready to cast off. The sky was fairly clear and the wind blowing steadily from the north-west.
What could I do? Stand up to the two of them? That was impossible. If only Hans had taken my side! But the Icelander seemed to have renounced all will of his own and taken a vow of abnegation. I could not get anything out of a servant so feudally devoted to his master. There was nothing to be done but press on.
I was therefore going to take my usual place on the raft when my uncle placed his hand on my shoulder.
‘We shan’t leave till tomorrow,’ he said.
I made a gesture of complete resignation.
‘I must neglect nothing,’ he went on, ‘and since Fate has driven me on to this part of the coast, I won’t leave it until I have explored it.’
This remark will be understood when I explain that, if we had returned to the north shore, it was not at the place from which we had started. Port Gräuben, we decided, must be farther west. Nothing could be more sensible, therefore, than to make a thorough inspection of this new region.
‘Let’s start exploring!’ I said.
And leaving Hans to his work, we set off. The space between the water and the foot of the cliffs was extremely wide at this point. It would take half an hour to reach the wall of rock. We were crushing underfoot countless shells of all shapes and sizes, in which prehistoric creatures had lived. I also noticed some huge carapaces, often over fifteen feet in diameter, which had belonged to those gigantic glyptodons of the Pleiocene Period of which the modern tortoise is just a greatly reduced copy. The ground was also strewn with stones, arranged in rows and looking like pebbles rounded by the waves. This led me to think that the sea must have covered this region at one time. On the scattered rocks, which were now out of their reach, the waves had left clear traces of their passage.