CHAPTER XXIV.
WELL SAID, OLD MOLE! CANST THOU WORK I' THE GROUND SO FAST?
By the next day we had forgotten all our sufferings. At first, I waswondering that I was no longer thirsty, and I was for asking for thereason. The answer came in the murmuring of the stream at my feet.
We breakfasted, and drank of this excellent chalybeate water. I feltwonderfully stronger, and quite decided upon pushing on. Why shouldnot so firmly convinced a man as my uncle, furnished with soindustrious a guide as Hans, and accompanied by so determined anephew as myself, go on to final success? Such were the magnificentplans which struggled for mastery within me. If it had been proposedto me to return to the summit of Snaefell, I should have indignantlydeclined.
Most fortunately, all we had to do was to descend.
"Let us start!" I cried, awakening by my shouts the echoes of thevaulted hollows of the earth.
On Thursday, at 8 a.m., we started afresh. The granite tunnel windingfrom side to side, earned us past unexpected turns, and seemed almostto form a labyrinth; but, on the whole, its direction seemed to besouth-easterly. My uncle never ceased to consult his compass, to keepaccount of the ground gone over.
The gallery dipped down a very little way from the horizontal,scarcely more than two inches in a fathom, and the stream ran gentlymurmuring at our feet. I compared it to a friendly genius guiding usunderground, and caressed with my hand the soft naiad, whosecomforting voice accompanied our steps. With my reviving spiritsthese mythological notions seemed to come unbidden.
As for my uncle, he was beginning to storm against the horizontalroad. He loved nothing better than a vertical path; but this wayseemed indefinitely prolonged, and instead of sliding along thehypothenuse as we were now doing, he would willingly have droppeddown the terrestrial radius. But there was no help for it, and aslong as we were approaching the centre at all we felt that we mustnot complain.
From time to time, a steeper path appeared; our naiad then began totumble before us with a hoarser murmur, and we went down with her toa greater depth.
On the whole, that day and the next we made considerable wayhorizontally, very little vertically.
On Friday evening, the 10th of July, according to our calculations,we were thirty leagues south-east of Rejkiavik, and at a depth of twoleagues and a half.
At our feet there now opened a frightful abyss. My uncle, however,was not to be daunted, and he clapped his hands at the steepness ofthe descent.
"This will take us a long way," he cried, "and without muchdifficulty; for the projections in the rock form quite a staircase."
The ropes were so fastened by Hans as to guard against accident, andthe descent commenced. I can hardly call it perilous, for I wasbeginning to be familiar with this kind of exercise.
This well, or abyss, was a narrow cleft in the mass of the granite,called by geologists a 'fault,' and caused by the unequal cooling ofthe globe of the earth. If it had at one time been a passage foreruptive matter thrown out by Snaefell, I still could not understandwhy no trace was left of its passage. We kept going down a kind ofwinding staircase, which seemed almost to have been made by the handof man.
Every quarter of an hour we were obliged to halt, to take a littlenecessary repose and restore the action of our limbs. We then satdown upon a fragment of rock, and we talked as we ate and drank fromthe stream.
Of course, down this fault the Hansbach fell in a cascade, and lostsome of its volume; but there was enough and to spare to slake ourthirst. Besides, when the incline became more gentle, it would ofcourse resume its peaceable course. At this moment it reminded me ofmy worthy uncle, in his frequent fits of impatience and anger, whilebelow it ran with the calmness of the Icelandic hunter.
On the 6th and 7th of July we kept following the spiral curves ofthis singular well, penetrating in actual distance no more than twoleagues; but being carried to a depth of five leagues below the levelof the sea. But on the 8th, about noon, the fault took, towards thesouth-east, a much gentler slope, one of about forty-five degrees.
Then the road became monotonously easy. It could not be otherwise,for there was no landscape to vary the stages of our journey.
On Wednesday, the 15th, we were seven leagues underground, and hadtravelled fifty leagues away from Snaefell. Although we were tired,our health was perfect, and the medicine chest had not yet hadoccasion to be opened.
My uncle noted every hour the indications of the compass, thechronometer, the aneroid, and the thermometer the very same which hehas published in his scientific report of our journey. It wastherefore not difficult to know exactly our whereabouts. When he toldme that we had gone fifty leagues horizontally, I could not repressan exclamation of astonishment, at the thought that we had now longleft Iceland behind us.
"What is the matter?" he cried.
"I was reflecting that if your calculations are correct we are nolonger under Iceland."
"Do you think so?"
"I am not mistaken," I said, and examining the map, I added, "We havepassed Cape Portland, and those fifty leagues bring us under the wideexpanse of ocean."
"Under the sea," my uncle repeated, rubbing his hands with delight.
"Can it be?" I said. "Is the ocean spread above our heads?"
"Of course, Axel. What can be more natural? At Newcastle are therenot coal mines extending far under the sea?"
It was all very well for the Professor to call this so simple, but Icould not feel quite easy at the thought that the boundless ocean wasrolling over my head. And yet it really mattered very little whetherit was the plains and mountains that covered our heads, or theAtlantic waves, as long as we were arched over by solid granite. And,besides, I was getting used to this idea; for the tunnel, now runningstraight, now winding as capriciously in its inclines as in itsturnings, but constantly preserving its south-easterly direction, andalways running deeper, was gradually carrying us to very great depthsindeed.
Four days later, Saturday, the 18th of July, in the evening, wearrived at a kind of vast grotto; and here my uncle paid Hans hisweekly wages, and it was settled that the next day, Sunday, should bea day of rest.