Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (31 page)

In spite of darkness, noise, surprise, and anxiety, I understood what had happened.

Beyond the rock that had exploded, there was an abyss. The explosion had triggered a kind of earthquake in this ground riven by fissures, the abyss had opened up, and the ocean turned current was taking us down into it.

I gave myself up for lost.

An hour, two hours passed, what do I know! We gripped each other’s elbows, clutched each other’s hands so as not to be thrown off the raft. Extremely violent shocks occurred whenever it hit against the wall. Yet these shocks were rare, from which I concluded that the tunnel was widening considerably. It was no doubt the path that Saknussemm had taken; but instead of taking it by ourselves, we had through our carelessness brought a whole ocean along with us.

These ideas, it will be understood, came to my mind in a vague and obscure form. I had difficulty putting them together during this headlong race that resembled a fall. Judging by the air that was lashing my face, its speed was faster than an express train. Lighting a torch in these conditions was therefore impossible, and our last electric device had broken at the moment of the explosion.

I was therefore very surprised when I suddenly saw a light shining near me. It lit up Hans’ calm face. The skillful hunter had managed to light the lantern, and even though it flickered and seemed about to go out, it threw some light into the awful darkness.

The tunnel was large. I was right in that. The dim light did not allow us to see both its walls at once. The slope of the water that was carrying us along exceeded that of the most difficult rapids in America. Its surface seemed made up of a sheaf of arrows shot with extreme force. I cannot convey my impression with a better comparison. The raft, sometimes seized by an eddy, spun round as it moved along. When it approached the walls of the tunnel I shone the light of the lantern on them, and I could judge its speed by seeing rock projections turn into continuous shapes, so that we seemed caught in a net of moving lines. I estimated that our speed was close to thirty leagues an hour.

My uncle and I looked at each other with frantic eyes, clinging to the stump of the mast which had snapped at the moment of the catastrophe. We turned our backs to the air current so as not to be choked by the speed of a movement that no human power could check.

In the meantime, hours passed. Our situation did not change, but an incident complicated matters.

When I tried to put our cargo into somewhat better order, I found that the greater part of the items onboard had disappeared at the moment of the explosion, when the sea broke in on us so violently! I wanted to know exactly what to count on as far as resources, and with the lantern in my hand I began my investigation. Of our instruments nothing was left except the compass and the chronometer. Our stock of ropes and ladders was reduced to a bit of cord coiled around the stump of the mast. No pickaxe, no pick, no hammer and, irreversible misfortune, we had only one day’s food supplies left!

I searched every nook and cranny on the raft, the smallest spaces between the wood beams, the joints and the planks. Nothing! Our food supplies were reduced to one bit of dried meat and a few biscuits.

I stared stupidly! I did not want to understand! And yet, why worry about this danger? Even if we had had food supplies for months, for years, how could we get out of the depths where the irresistible torrent was taking us? Why fear the tortures of hunger when death threatened us in so many other forms? Would there be enough time to die of starvation?

Nevertheless, due to an inexplicable vagary of the imagination, I forgot the immediate peril next to the dangers of the future, which appeared to me in all their horror. At any rate, perhaps we would be able to escape from the fury of the torrent and return to the surface of the globe. How? I do not know. Where? No matter. One chance in a thousand is still a chance, while death from starvation left us no hope, however remote.

It occurred to me that I should tell my uncle everything, show him the straits to which we were reduced, and calculate exactly how much time we had left to live. But I had the courage to keep silent. I wanted to leave him all his calm.

At that moment the light from our lantern became dimmer and dimmer, and then went out completely. The wick had burnt itself out. The darkness became absolute again. We could no longer hope to chase away the impenetrable blackness. We still had one torch left, but we could not have kept it lighted. So, like a child, I closed my eyes firmly so as not to see all that darkness.

After a rather long interval of time, our speed increased. I noticed it by the sensation of the air on my face. The slope of the water torrent became extremely steep. I really believe we were no longer gliding along. We were falling. I had the inner impression of an almost vertical fall. My uncle’s and Hans’ hands, clutching my arms, held on to me forcefully.

Suddenly, after an interval of time I could not estimate, I felt something like a shock; the raft had not struck against any hard object, but had suddenly stopped in its fall. An enormous spout of water, an immense liquid column crashed down on us. I was choking. I was drowning ...

But this sudden flood did not last. In a few seconds I found myself in the open air again, which I inhaled with all the force of my lungs. My uncle and Hans squeezed my arm to the point of almost breaking it, and the raft was still carrying all three of us.

I THINK IT MUST then have been about ten at night. The first of my senses which began to function again after this last bout was that of hearing. Almost immediately I heard, and it was a genuine act of hearing, I heard silence fall in the tunnel after the roars had filled my ears for long hours. At last these words of my uncle’s reached me like a murmur:

“We’re going up!”

“What do you mean?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, we’re going up! Up!”

I stretched out my arm; I touched the wall, and drew back my hand bleeding. We were going up with extreme rapidity.

“The torch! The torch!” shouted the professor.

Hans managed to light it, not without difficulty, and the flame, staying upright in spite of the rising movement, threw enough light to illuminate the scene.

“Just as I thought,” said my uncle. “We are in a narrow tunnel, less than four fathoms in diameter. The water has reached the bottom of the chasm, rises back up to its level and carries us with it.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know, but we must be ready for anything. We’re rising at a speed that I’d estimate at two fathoms per second, that’s 120 fathoms per minute or more than three and a half leagues an hour. At that rate, one makes progress.”

“Yes, if nothing stops us, if this well has an exit! But what if it’s blocked, what if the air is compressed through the pressure of this water column, what if we’re crushed!”

“Axel,” replied the professor with great calm, “our situation is almost desperate, but there are some chances of escape, and it’s these that I’m considering. If we might perish at any moment, we might also be saved at any moment. So let’s be ready to take advantage of the most minute circumstance.”

“But what should we do?”

“Recover our strength by eating.”

At these words, I looked at my uncle with a frantic eye. What I had been unwilling to reveal had to be said at last:

“Eat?” I repeated.

“Yes, without delay.”

The professor added a few words in Danish. Hans shook his head.

“What!” exclaimed my uncle. “Our food supplies are lost?”

“Yes, this is all the food we have left! One piece of dried meat for the three of us!”

My uncle looked at me without wanting to grasp my words.

“Well then!” I said, “do you still think we might be saved?”

My question received no answer.

An hour passed. I began to feel the pangs of a violent hunger. My companions were also suffering, and none of us dared touch this miserable rest of food.

In the meantime, we were still rising at extreme speed. Sometimes the air cut our breath short, like aeronauts who ascend too rapidly. But while they feel the cold in proportion to their rise into the atmospheric strata, we were subject to the diametrically opposite effect. The heat was increasing at a disturbing rate and certainly must have reached 40°C at that moment.

What did that kind of change mean? So far, the facts had confirmed Davy’s and Lidenbrock’s theories; so far the special conditions of non-conducting rocks, electricity and magnetism had modified the general laws of nature and given us a moderate temperature, for the theory of fire at the core remained in my view the only true and explainable one. Were we going back to an environment where these phenomena applied in all their rigor, and where the heat was completely melting rocks down? I feared so and said to the professor:

“If we’re neither drowned nor shattered to pieces, nor starved to death, there’s still a chance that we might be burned alive.”

He confined himself to shrugging his shoulders and returned to his reflections.

Another hour passed and, except a slight increase in temperature, no incident changed the situation.

“Let’s see,” he said, “we must make a decision.”

“Make a decision?” I replied.

“Yes. We must recover our forces. If we try to prolong our existence by a few hours by rationing this rest of food, we’ll be weak until the end.”

“Yes, the end, which is not far off.”

“Well then! If a chance of escape appears, if a moment of action is necessary, where are we going to find the strength to act if we allow ourselves to be weakened by starvation?”

“Ah, Uncle, when this piece of meat has been eaten, what do we have left?”

“Nothing, Axel, nothing. But will it do you any more good to devour it with your eyes? Your reasoning is that of man without willpower, a being without energy!”

“Then you don’t despair?” I exclaimed irritably

“No!” replied the professor firmly

“What! You still think there’s a chance of escape?”

“Yes! Yes, certainly! As long as the heart beats, as long as the flesh pulsates, I can’t admit that any creature endowed with willpower needs to be overwhelmed by despair.”

What words! A man who pronounced them under such circumstances was certainly of no ordinary cast of mind.

“Well,” I said, “what do you plan to do?”

“Eat what food is left down to the last crumb and recover our lost strength. If this meal is our last, so be it! But at least we’ll once more be men and not exhausted.”

“Well then! Let’s eat it up!” I exclaimed.

My uncle took the piece of meat and the few biscuits which had escaped the shipwreck; he divided them into three equal portions and distributed them. That resulted in about a pound of nourishment for each. The professor ate greedily, with a kind of feverish eagerness; myself, without pleasure, in spite of my hunger almost with disgust; Hans quietly, moderately, chewing small mouthfuls without any noise, relishing them with the calm of a man untouched by any anxiety about the future. By digging around he had found a flask of gin; he offered it to us, and this beneficial liquor succeeded in cheering me up a little.

“Fortrafflig,” said Hans, drinking in his turn.

“Excellent!” replied my uncle.

I had regained some hope. But our last meal was over. It was at that time five in the morning.

Man is constituted in such a way that health is a purely negative state; once hunger is satisfied, it is difficult to imagine the horrors of starvation; one must feel them to understand them. For that reason, a few mouthfuls of meat and biscuit after our long fast helped us overcome our past suffering.

But after the meal, we each of us fell deep into thought. What was Hans thinking of, that man of the far West who seemed dominated by the fatalist resignation of the East? As for me, my thoughts consisted only of memories, and those took me back to the surface of the globe which I should never have left. The house in the Konigstrasse, my poor Graüben, the good Martha flitted like visions before my eyes, and in the gloomy rumblings that shook the rock I thought I could distinguish the noise of the cities of the earth.

My uncle, always “doing business,” carefully examined the nature of our surroundings with the torch in his hand; he tried to determine his location from the examination of the layered strata. This calculation, or more precisely this estimate, could be no more than approximate; but a scholar is always a scholar if he manages to remain calm, and certainly Professor Lidenbrock had this quality to an uncommon degree.

I heard him murmur geological terms; I understood them, and in spite of myself I got interested in this last study

“Eruptive granite,” he was saying. “We’re still in the primitive period ; but we’re going up, up! Who knows?”

Who knows? He kept on hoping. With his hand he explored the vertical wall, and a few moments later he resumed:

“Here’s gneiss! Here’s mica schist! Good! Soon the Transition period, and then . . .”

What did the professor mean? Could he measure the thickness of the terrestrial crust above our heads? Had he any means of making this calculation? No. He did not have the manometer, and no estimate could replace it.

In the meantime the temperature kept rising at a fast rate, and I felt immersed into a burning atmosphere. I could only compare it to the heat emanating from the furnaces of a foundry at the moment when the molten metal is being poured. Gradually, Hans, my uncle and I had been forced to take off our jackets and vests; the lightest piece of clothing turned into a source of discomfort, even suffering.

“Are we rising toward a fiery furnace?” I exclaimed, at a moment when the heat increased.

“No,” replied my uncle, “that’s impossible! That’s impossible!”

“Yet,” I said, touching the wall, “this wall is burning hot.”