He approached my uncle, put his hand on his shoulder, and gently woke him. My uncle rose up.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Vatten!” replied the hunter.
It seems that under the impact of violent pain, everybody becomes polyglot. I did not know a word of Danish, and yet instinctively I understood our guide’s word.
“Water! water!” I exclaimed, clapping my hands and gesticulating like a madman.
“Water!” repeated my uncle. “Hvar?” he asked, in Icelandic.
“Nedat,” replied Hans.
Where? Down below! I understood it all. I seized the hunter’s hands, and pressed them while he looked at me calmly.
The preparations for our departure were not long in making, and we were soon on our way along a passage sloping down at a rate of two feet per fathom.
In an hour we had gone a thousand fathoms, and descended two thousand feet.
At that moment, I began to hear distinctly an unusual sound of something running inside the granite wall, a kind of dull rumbling like distant thunder. During the first half-hour of our walk, when we did not find the promised spring, I felt my anguish returning; but then my uncle told me the cause of these noises.
“Hans was not mistaken,” he said. “What you hear is the rushing of a torrent.”
“A torrent?” I exclaimed.
“There can be no doubt. A subterranean river is flowing around us.”
We hurried forward, overexcited because of our hope. I no longer sensed my fatigue. This sound of murmuring water was refreshing me already. It increased perceptibly. The torrent, after having for some time flowed over our heads, was now running within the left wall, roaring and bouncing. I often brushed with my hand over the rock, hoping to feel some seeping or moisture. But in vain.
Yet another half-hour passed. We put another half league behind us.
Then it became clear that the hunter had not been able to extend his investigation further during his absence. Guided by an instinct peculiar to mountaineers, to water-dowsers, he ‘felt’ this torrent through the rock, but he had certainly not seen the precious liquid; he had drunk nothing himself.
Soon it became obvious that if we continued on our walk, we would move away from the stream, whose noise was growing more faint.
We returned. Hans stopped at the precise point where the torrent seemed closest.
I sat near the wall, while the waters were rushing past me at a distance of two feet with extreme violence. But there was a thick granite wall still separating us from it.
Without reflection, without wondering if there was not some means of accessing this water, I gave way to a first moment of despair.
Hans looked at me, and I thought I saw a smile on his lips.
He rose and took the lamp. I followed him. He moved towards the wall. I looked on. He pressed his ear against the dry stone, and moved it slowly to and fro, listening intently. I understood at once that he was looking for the exact point where the torrent could be heard the loudest. He found that point on the left side of the tunnel, three feet from the ground.
How stirred up I was! I hardly dared guess what the hunter was about to do! But I had to understand and cheer him on when I saw him lay hold of the pickaxe to attack the rock.
“Saved!” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” exclaimed my uncle frantically. “Hans is right. Ah! Brave hunter! We wouldn’t have thought of this!”
Absolutely true! Such an expedient, however simple, would never have entered into our minds. Nothing more dangerous than to strike a blow of the pickaxe in this part of the earth’s structure. What if there were a collapse that would crush us all! What if the torrent, bursting through, would drown us in a sudden flood! There was nothing chimerical about these dangers; but still no fears of landslides of floods could stop us now, and our thirst was so intense that, to satisfy it, we would have dug into the very bottom of the ocean.
Hans set about the task which neither my uncle nor I could have accomplished. With impatience guiding our hands, we would have shattered the rock into a thousand fragments. The guide, by contrast, calm and moderate, gradually wore down the rock with a succession of light strokes, creating a six-inch opening. I could hear the noise of the torrent grow louder, and I thought I could already feel the healing water touch my lips.
The pickaxe had soon penetrated two feet into the granite partition. The work had lasted more than an hour. I writhed with impatience! My uncle wanted to use more forceful measures. I had some difficulty stopping him and he had already taken a pickaxe in his hand, when a sudden hissing was heard. A jet of water spurted out of the rock and hit the opposite wall.
Hans, almost thrown off his feet by the shock, could not hold back a cry of pain. I understood it when, just as I had plunged my own hands into the liquid jet, I shouted out loudly in my turn. The water was scalding hot.
“The water is a hundred degrees!” I exclaimed.
“Well, it’ll cool down,” my uncle replied.
The tunnel filled with steam, while a stream formed which lost itself in subterranean meanderings; soon we had the satisfaction of swallowing our first draught.
Ah! What enjoyment! What incomparable pleasure! What was this water? Where did it come from? No matter. It was water, and though it was still warm, it brought back to one’s heart the life that had been on the point of vanishing. I drank without stopping or even tasting.
It was only after a minute of enjoyment that I exclaimed, “Why, this water contains iron!”
“Excellent for the stomach,” replied my uncle, “and full of minerals ! This journey will be as good for us as going to Spa or Töplitz!”aw
“Well, it’s delicious!”
“Of course it is, water found two leagues underground should be. It has an inky flavor, which is not at all unpleasant. What an excellent resource Hans has found for us here! We’ll give his name to this wholesome creek.”
“Great!” I exclaimed.
And Hansbachax it was from that moment.
Hans was none the prouder. After a moderate draught, he went to rest in a corner with his usual calm.
“Now,” I said, “we mustn’t lose this water.”
“What for?” my uncle replied. “I imagine that the source is inexhaustible.”
“Never mind! Let’s fill the leather bottle and our flasks, and then we can try to stop up the opening.”
My advice was followed. Hans tried to stop the cut in the wall with pieces of granite and tow. It was not an easy task. One scalded one’s hands without succeeding; the pressure was too strong, and our efforts remained fruitless.
“It’s obvious,” I said, “that the upper reaches of this course of water are very high up, judging by the force of the jet.”
“No doubt,” answered my uncle. “If this column of water is 32,000 feet high, it has a thousand atmospheres of pressure. But I’ve got an idea.”
“What idea?”
“Why should we trouble ourselves to close up this opening?”
“Because...”
I could not come up with a reason.
“When our flasks are empty, are we sure we’ll be able to fill them again?”
“No, obviously.”
“Well, then let’s allow the water to run on. It’ll flow down, and will both guide and refresh us on the way.”
“That’s well planned!” I exclaimed. “With this stream as our guide, there’s no reason why we should not succeed in our undertaking.”
“Ah! You’re coming around to my way of thinking, my boy,” said the professor laughing.
A jet of water spurted out of the rock and hit the opposite wall.
“I’m not coming around to it, I’m with it.”
“Just a moment! Let’s start by resting for a few hours.”
I had really forgotten that it was night. The chronometer soon informed me of that fact; and soon all of us, sufficiently restored and refreshed, fell into a deep sleep.
XXIV
THE NEXT MORNING, WE had already forgotten all our sufferings. At first, I was amazed that I was no longer thirsty, and wondered about the reason. The creek murmuring at my feet provided the answer.
We had breakfast, and drank of this excellent ferrous water. I felt completely restored, and quite resolved to push on. Why would not so firmly convinced a man as my uncle succeed, with so industrious a guide as Hans and so ‘determined’ a nephew as myself? Such were the beautiful ideas that floated into my brain! If it had been proposed to me to return to the summit of Snaefells, I would have indignantly declined.
But fortunately, all we had to do was descend. “Let’s take off!” I exclaimed, awakening the ancient echoes of the globe with my enthusiastic tone.
We resumed our walk on Thursday at eight in the morning. The granite tunnel meandered in sinuous contortions and confronted us with unexpected turns in what appeared to be the intricacies of a labyrinth; but, on the whole, its main direction was always southeast. My uncle constantly checked his compass to keep track of the ground we had covered.
The tunnel stretched almost horizontally, with at most two inches of slope per fathom. The stream ran gently murmuring at our feet. I compared it to a friendly spirit guiding us underground, and with my hand I caressed the tepid naiad whose songs accompanied our steps. My good mood spontaneously led me to this mythological train of thought.
As for my uncle, a man of the vertical, he raged against the horizontal route. His path prolonged itself indefinitely, and instead of sliding down along the earth’s radius, in his words, it followed the hypotenuse. But we did not have any choice, and as long as we were making progress toward the center, however slowly, we could not complain.
From time to time, at any rate, the slopes became steeper; the naiad began to rush down with a roar, and we descended with her to a greater depth.
On the whole, that day and the next we made considerable headway horizontally, very little vertically.
On Friday evening, July 10, according to our calculations, we were thirty leagues south-east of Reykjavik, and at a depth of two and a half leagues.
At our feet a rather frightening well then opened up. My uncle could not keep from clapping his hands when he calculated the steepness of its slopes.
“This’ll take us a long way,” he exclaimed, “and easily, because the projections in the rock make for a real staircase!”
The ropes were tied by Hans in such a way as to prevent any accident. The descent began. I can hardly call it dangerous, because I was already familiar with this kind of exercise.
This well was a narrow cleft cut into the rock, of the kind that’s called a ‘fault.’ The contraction of the earth’s frame in its cooling period had obviously produced it. If it had at one time been a passage for eruptive matter thrown up by Snaefells, I could not understand why this material had left no trace. We kept going down a kind of spiral staircase which seemed almost to have been made by the hand of man.
Every quarter of an hour we were forced to stop, to get the necessary rest and restore the flexibility of our knees. We then sat down on some projecting rock, let our legs hang down, and chatted while we ate and drank from the stream.
Needless to say, in this fault the Hansbach had turned into a waterfall and lost some of its volume; but there was enough, more than enough, to quench our thirst. Besides, on less steep inclines, it would of course resume its peaceable course. At this moment it reminded me of my worthy uncle, in his frequent fits of impatience and anger, whereas on gentle slopes it ran with the calmness of the Icelandic hunter.
On July 11 and 12, we kept following the spiral curves of this singular well, penetrating two more leagues into the earth’s crust, which added up to a depth of five leagues below sea level. But on the 13th, about noon, the fault fell in a much gentler slope of about forty-five degrees towards the south-east.
The path then became easy and perfectly monotonous. It could hardly be otherwise. The journey could not vary by changes in the landscape.
Finally on Wednesday, the 15th, we were seven leagues underground and about fifty leagues away from Snaefells. Although we were a little tired, our health was still reassuringly good, and the medicine kit had not yet been opened.
My uncle noted every hour the indications of the compass, the chronometer, the manometer, and the thermometer just as he has published them in his scientific report of his journey. He could therefore easily identify our location. When he told me that we had gone fifty leagues horizontally, I could not repress an exclamation.
“What’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
“Nothing, I was just thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
“That if your calculations are correct we’re no longer underneath Iceland.”
“Do you think so?”
“It’s easy enough to find out.”
I made my compass measurements on the map.
“I’m not mistaken,” I said. “We have left Cape Portland behind, and those fifty leagues place us right under the sea.”
“Right under the sea,” my uncle repeated, rubbing his hands.
“So the ocean is right above our heads!” I exclaimed.
“Bah! Axel, what would be more natural? Aren’t there coal mines at Newcastle that extend far under the sea?”
It was all very well for the professor to call this so simple, but the idea that I was walking around under masses of water kept worrying me. And yet it really mattered very little whether it was the plains and mountains of Iceland that were suspended over our heads or the waves of the Atlantic, as long as the granite structure was solid. At any rate, I quickly got used to this idea, for the tunnel, sometimes straight, sometimes winding, as unpredictable in its slopes as in its turns, but always going south-east and penetrating ever deeper, led us rapidly to great depths.
Four days later, on Saturday, July 18, in the evening, we arrived at a kind of rather large grotto; my uncle paid Hans his three weekly rix-dollars, and it was settled that the next day, Sunday, should be a day of rest.
XXV
I THEREFORE WOKE UP on Sunday morning without the usual preoccupations of an immediate departure. And even though we were in the deepest abyss, that was still pleasant. In any case, we had gotten used to this troglodyte life. I hardly thought of sun, stars, moon, trees, houses, and towns anymore, or of any of those earthly superfluities which sublunary beings have turned into necessities. Being fossils, we did not care about such useless wonders.
The grotto was an immense hall. Along its granite floor our faithful stream ran gently. At this distance from its spring, the water had the same temperature as its surroundings and could be drunk without difficulty.
After breakfast the professor wanted to devote a few hours to putting his daily notes in order.
“First,” he said, “I’ll calculate our exact position. I hope, after our return, to draw a map of our journey, a kind of vertical section of the globe which will retrace the itinerary of our expedition.”
“That’ll be very interesting, Uncle; but are your observations sufficiently accurate?”
“Yes; I’ve carefully noted the angles and the slopes. I’m sure there’s no mistake. Let’s see where we are now. Take your compass, and note the direction.”
I looked at the instrument and replied after careful study:
“East-a-quarter-south-east.”
“Good,” answered the professor, writing down the observation and calculating quickly. “I infer that we’ve gone eighty-five leagues from our point of departure.”
“So we’re under the mid-Atlantic?”
“Exactly.”
“And perhaps at this very moment there’s a storm unleashed above, and ships over our heads are being tossed by the waves and the hurricane?”
“Possible.”
“And whales are lashing the roof of our prison with their tails?”
“Don’t worry, Axel, they won’t manage to break it. But let’s go back to our calculat
ion. We’re eighty-five leagues south-east of the foot of Snaefells, and I estimate that we’re at a depth of sixteen leagues.”
“Sixteen leagues!” I exclaimed.
“No doubt.”
“But that’s the upper limit that science has calculated for the thickness of the earth’s crust.”
“I don’t deny it.”
“And here, according to the law of increasing temperature, there should be a heat of 1,500°C!”
“‘Should,’ my boy.”
“And all this solid granite could not remain solid and would be completely molten.”
“You see that it’s not so, and that, as so often happens, facts contradict theories.”
“I’m forced to agree, but it does amaze me.”
“What does the thermometer say?”
“27 and 6/10°C.”
“Therefore the scholars are wrong by 1,474 and 4/10°. So the proportional increase in temperature is a mistake. So Humphry Davy was right. So I am not wrong in following him. What do you say now?”
“Nothing.”
In truth, I had a great deal to say. In no way did I accept Davy’s theory. I still believed in core heat, although I did not feel its effects. I preferred to believe, really, that this chimney of an extinct volcano was covered with a refractive lava coating that did not allow the heat to pass through its walls.
But without bothering to find new arguments, I simply accepted the situation such as it was.
“Uncle,” I resumed, “I believe all your calculations are accurate, but allow me to draw one rigorous conclusion from them.”
“Go ahead, my boy.”
“At the latitude of Iceland, where we now are, the radius of the earth is about 1,583 leagues?”
“1,583 leagues and 1/3.”
“Let’s say 1,600 leagues in round numbers. Out of 1,600 leagues we have covered twelve?”
“Just as you say.”
“Perhaps at this very moment there’s a storm unleashed above.”
“And these twelve by going 85 leagues diagonally?”