“But your lamp?”
“Extinguished.”
“And the stream?”
“Disappeared.”
“Axel, my poor Axel, take courage!”
“Wait a little, I’m exhausted! I don’t have the strength to answer. But speak to me!”
“Courage,” resumed my uncle. “Don’t speak, listen to me. We’ve looked for you up and down the tunnel. Couldn’t find you. Ah! I wept much for you, my child! At last, assuming that you were still on the path of the Hansbach, we went back down and fired a few shots from our rifles. Now, if our voices are audible to each other, it’s purely an acoustic effect! Our hands cannot touch! But don’t despair, Axel! It’s already something that we can hear each other!”
During this time I had been thinking. A certain hope, still vague, was returning to my heart. Above all, there was one thing that it was important to me to find out. I placed my lips close to the wall and said:
“Uncle?”
“My boy?” came the reply after a few moments.
“We must first find out how far we are apart.”
“That’s easy.”
“You have your chronometer?”
“Yes.”
“Well, take it. Pronounce my name, noting exactly the second when you speak. I’ll repeat it as soon as it reaches me, and you’ll also note the exact moment when you get my answer.”
“Yes, and half the time between my call and your answer will indicate exactly the time my voice takes to reach you.”
“That’s it, Uncle.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Now, attention. I’m going to pronounce 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 have passed between the two words; so the sound takes twenty seconds. Now, at a rate of 1,020 feet per second, that adds up to 22,400 feet, or a league and a half, and one-eighth.”
“A league and a half!” I murmured.
“Eh! That can be overcome, Axel.”
“But must I go up or down?”
“Down—for this reason: We’ve arrived in a vast space where a large number of tunnels end. Yours must lead into it, for it seems as if all the clefts and crevices of the globe radiate out from this immense cavern where we are. So get up, and start walking. Walk on, drag yourself along, if necessary slide down the steep slopes, and you’ll find us with our arms open to receive you at the end of the path. Go ahead, my child, get going!”
These words cheered me up.
“Good-bye, Uncle!” I exclaimed. “I’m leaving. Our voices won’t be able to communicate anymore once I leave this place. So good-bye!”
.... “Good-bye, Axel, I’ll see you soon!”
These were the last words I heard.
This surprising conversation, carried on across the mass of the earth, with a distance of a league and a half between us, concluded with these words of hope. I prayed a prayer of gratitude to God, for he had guided me through these immense dark spaces to perhaps the only point where the voices of my companions could reach me.
This amazing acoustic effect is easily explained just in terms of the laws of physics. It came from the concave shape of the tunnel and the conducting power of the rock. There are many examples of this propagation of sounds which remain imperceptible in the intermediate spaces. I remember that this phenomenon has been observed in many places, among others on the inner gallery of the dome of St. Paul’s in London, and especially in the midst of those curious caverns in Sicily, those quarries near Syracuse, the most wonderful of which is known by the name of Ear of Dionysus.
These memories came back to my mind, and I realized clearly that since my uncle’s voice did reach me, there was no obstacle between us. Following the direction of the sound, I would logically reach him, if my strength did not fail me.
I therefore rose. I dragged myself rather than walked. The slope was steep. I let myself slide.
Soon the speed of my descent increased in a frightening way, and threatened to turn into a fall. I no longer had the strength to stop myself.
Suddenly the ground failed under my feet. I felt myself revolving in the air, striking against the craggy projections of a vertical tunnel, a real well; my head struck a sharp rock, and I lost consciousness.
XXIX
WHEN I REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS, I found myself in half-darkness, lying on thick blankets. My uncle was watching over me, to discover the least sign of life on my face. At my first sigh he took my hand; when I opened my eyes he uttered a cry of joy.
“He’s alive! He’s alive!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” I answered feebly.
“My child,” said my uncle, hugging me to his breast, “you’re saved.”
I was deeply touched by his tone as he uttered these words, and even more by the care that accompanied them. But it took trials such as this to trigger this kind of outpouring from the professor.
At this moment Hans came. He saw my hand in my uncle’s, and I dare say that his eyes expressed a deep satisfaction.
“God dag,” he said.
“Hello, Hans, hello,” I murmured. “And now, Uncle, tell me where we are at present?”
“Tomorrow, Axel, tomorrow. Now you’re still too weak. I’ve bandaged your head with compresses which must not be disturbed. Sleep now, and tomorrow I’ll tell you all.”
“But at least,” I insisted, “tell me what time it is, and what day?”
“Eleven o’clock at night, it’s Sunday today, August 9, and I won’t allow you to ask any more questions until the 10th.”
In truth I was very weak, and my eyes closed involuntarily. I needed a good night’s rest; and I therefore let myself doze off with the thought that my isolation had lasted four long days.
Next morning, on awakening, I looked around me. My bed, made up of all our traveling blankets, had been made in a charming grotto, adorned with splendid stalagmites, and whose ground was covered with fine sand. It was half-dark. There was no torch, no lamp, yet an explicable lightness from outside seeped in through a narrow opening in the grotto. I also heard a vague and indistinct noise, something like the murmuring of waves breaking on a pebbled shore, and at times the whistling of wind.
I wondered whether I was really awake, whether I was still dreaming, whether my brain, injured by the fall, was not perceiving purely imaginary noises. Yet neither eyes nor ears could be so utterly deceived.
“It’s a ray of daylight,” I thought, “seeping in through this cleft in the rock! That really is the murmuring of waves! That’s the whistling of wind! Am I quite mistaken, or have we returned to the surface of the earth? Has my uncle given up the expedition, or might it have happily concluded?”
I was asking myself these unanswerable questions when the professor entered.
“Good morning, Axel!” he said joyfully. “I bet that you’re doing well.”
“Yes, indeed,” I said, sitting up on the blankets.
“You should be, because you’ve slept quietly. Hans and I watched you by turns, and we noticed that your recovery was making good progress.”
“Indeed, I do feel a great deal better, and I’ll give you proof of that presently if you’ll let me have my breakfast.”
“You’ll eat, my lad. The fever has left you. Hans rubbed your wounds with some ointment or other of which the Icelanders keep the secret, and they’ve healed marvelously. Our hunter is a splendid fellow!”
While he talked, my uncle prepared a few provisions, which I devoured eagerly, in spite of his instructions. All the while I overwhelmed him with questions which he answered promptly.
I then learned that my providential fall had brought me exactly to the extremity of an almost vertical shaft; and as I had landed in the midst of an accompanying torrent of stones, the least of which would have been enough to crush me, the conclusion was that a part of the rock m
ass had come down with me. This frightening vehicle had transported me in this way to the arms of my uncle, where I fell bleeding, unconscious.
“Really,” he said to me, “it’s amazing that you’ve not been killed a hundred times over. But, by God, let’s not separate again, or we risk never seeing each other again.”
“Not separate!” The journey was not over, then? I opened my eyes wide in astonishment, which immediately triggered the question:
“What’s the matter, Axel?”
“I have a question to ask you. You say that I’m safe and sound?”
“Undoubtedly”
“And all my limbs unbroken?”
“Certainly.”
“And my head?”
“Your head, except for a few bruises, is perfectly fine and on your shoulders, where it ought to be.”
“Well then, I’m afraid my brain is troubled.”
“Troubled!”
“Yes. We haven’t returned to the surface of the globe?”
“No, certainly not!”
“Then I must be crazy, because I see daylight, I hear the wind blowing, and the sea breaking on the shore!”
“Ah! is that all?”
“Will you explain ...?”
“I won’t explain anything because it’s inexplicable; but you’ll soon see and understand that the science of geology has not spoken its last word yet.”
“Then let’s go,” I exclaimed, rising up quickly.
“No, Axel, no! The open air might be bad for you.”
“Open air?”
“Yes, the wind is rather strong. I don’t want you to expose yourself like that.”
“But I assure you that I’m perfectly well.”
“A little patience, my boy. A relapse would get us into trouble, and we have no time to lose, because the passage may be long.”
“The passage?”
“Yes, rest today, and tomorrow we’ll set sail.”
“Set sail!”
This last word made me jump up.
What! Set sail! Did we then have a river, a lake, a sea at our disposal ? Was there a ship anchored in some underground harbor?
My curiosity was aroused to the maximum. My uncle tried in vain to restrain me. When he saw that my impatience would do me more harm than satisfying my desire, he gave in.
I dressed in haste. As a precaution, I wrapped myself in one of the blankets, and stepped out of the grotto.
XXX
AT FIRST I SAW nothing. My eyes, unaccustomed to the light, closed quickly. When I was able to reopen them, I stood more stunned even than amazed.
“The sea!” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” my uncle replied, “the Lidenbrock Sea, and I like to believe that no other navigator will ever dispute me the honor of discovery and the right to name it after myself!”
A vast surface of water, the beginnings of a lake or an ocean, spread far away beyond the range of the eye. The deeply indented shore met the lapping of the waves with a fine, golden sand, strewn with those small shells that were once inhabited by the first beings of creation. The waves broke on this shore with the resonant murmur that is typical of vast enclosed spaces. A light foam was blown away by the breeze of a moderate wind, and some spray fell on my face. On this gently sloping shore, about a hundred fathoms from the edge of the waves, rested the foot of enormous cliffs that rose up widening to an immeasurable height. Some of them, dividing the beach with their sharp ridge, formed capes and promontories eaten away by the erosive force of the surf. Farther on, the eye discerned their sharply outlined mass against the hazy background of the horizon.
It was a real ocean, with the irregular outline of earthly shores, but deserted and frighteningly wild.
If my eyes were able to range widely over this great sea, it was because a special “light” illuminated its most minor details. It was not the light of the sun, with its shafts of brightness and the splendid radiation of its beams, nor was it the pale and uncertain gleam of the night star, which is only a reflection without heat. No. The illuminating power of this light, its trembling diffusiveness, its clear, dry whiteness, its low temperature and its brightness which surpassed that of the moon showed that it must obviously be of electric origin. It was like an aurora borealis, a constant cosmic phenomenon that filled a cavern large enough to contain an ocean.
The vault suspended above my head, the sky, so to speak, seemed made up of vast clouds, shifting and moving steam, which through condensation had to turn into torrential rain on certain days. I would have thought that under such high atmospheric pressure, there could be no evaporation; and yet, for a physical reason that eluded me, large clouds of steam extended in the air. But at that time ‘the weather was good.’ The electric layers produced astonishing effects of light on the highest clouds. Deep shadows were sketched on their lower wreaths, and often, between two separate layers, a beam pierced through to us with remarkable intensity. But overall it was not the sun because its light had no heat. Its effect was sad, supremely melancholy. Instead of a firmament glittering with stars, I sensed a granite vault above these clouds that crushed me with all its weight, and all this space, enormous it was, would not have been enough for the movement of the humblest satellite.
Then I remembered the theory of an English captain, who likened the earth to a vast hollow sphere,ay inside of which the air remained luminous because of the immense pressure, while its two stars, Pluto and Proserpine,az followed their mysterious orbits there. Could he have been right?
We were in reality imprisoned inside an immense cavity. Its width was impossible to judge, since the shore ran as far as the eye could reach, and so was its length, for the eye soon came to a halt at a somewhat indistinct horizon. As for its height, it must have exceeded several leagues. Where this vault rested on its granite base no eye could tell; but there was a cloud suspended in the atmosphere whose height we estimated at two thousand fathoms, a greater height than that of any terrestrial steam, due no doubt to the considerable density of the air.
The word “cavern” obviously does not convey any idea of this immense space; but the words of the human language are inadequate for one who ventures into the abyss of earth.
I did not know, at any rate, what geological fact would explain the existence of such a cavity. Had the cooling of the globe been able to produce it? I knew of certain famous caverns from the descriptions of travelers, but had never heard of any with such dimensions.
Even if the grotto of Guachara in Colombia, visited by Humboldt, ba had not yielded the secret of its depth to the scholar who explored 2,500 feet of it, it probably did not extend much farther. The immense mammoth cave in Kentucky is of gigantic proportions, since its vaulted roof rises five hundred feet above an unfathomable lake, and travelers have explored more than ten leagues without finding the end. But what were these cavities compared to the one which I was now admiring, with its sky of steam, its electric radiation, and its vast enclosed ocean? My imagination felt powerless before such immensity.
I gazed on all these wonders in silence. Words failed me to express my feelings. I felt as if I were witnessing phenomena on some distant planet, Uranus or Neptune, of which my “terrestrial” nature had no knowledge. For such novel sensations, new words were needed, and my imagination failed to supply them. I gazed, I thought, I admired with amazement mingled with a certain amount of fear.
The unforeseen nature of this spectacle brought healthy color back to my cheeks. I treated myself with astonishment, and was effecting a cure with this new therapy; besides, the keenness of the very dense air reinvigorated me, supplying more oxygen to my lungs.
It will be easy to understand that after an imprisonment of forty-seven days in a narrow tunnel, it was an infinite pleasure to breathe this air full of moisture and salt.
So I had no reason to regret that I had left my dark grotto. My uncle, already used to these wonders, was no longer astonished.
“You feel strong enough to walk a little?” he asked me.
“Yes, certainly,” I answered, “and nothing could be more pleasant.”
“Well, take my arm, Axel, and let’s follow the meanderings of the shore.”
I eagerly accepted, and we began to walk along the edge of this new ocean. On the left steep cliffs, piled on top of one another, formed a titanic heap with a prodigious appearance. Down their sides flowed innumerable waterfalls, which turned into limpid, resounding streams. A few bits of steam, leaping from rock to rock, marked the location of hot springs, and streams flowed gently toward the shared basin, taking the slopes as an opportunity to murmur even more pleasantly.
Among these streams I recognized our faithful traveling companion, the Hansbach, which came to lose itself quietly in the ocean, just as if it had done nothing else since the beginning of the world.
“We’ll miss it,” I said, with a sigh.
“Bah!” replied the professor, “this one or another one, what does it matter?”
I found this remark rather ungrateful.
But at that moment my attention was attracted to an unexpected spectacle. At a distance of five hundred feet, at the turn of a high promontory, a high, tufted, dense forest appeared before our eyes. It consisted of moderately tall trees shaped like normal parasols, with precise geometrical outlines. The currents of wind seemed to have no impact on their leaves, and in the midst of the breezes they stood unswerving like a clump of petrified cedars.