A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XVII.

VER­TI­CAL DE­SCENT

Now be­gan our re­al jour­ney. Hith­er­to our toil had over­come all dif­fi­cul­ties, now dif­fi­cul­ties would spring up at ev­ery step.

I had not yet ven­tured to look down the bot­tom­less pit in­to which I was about to take a plunge The supreme hour had come. I might now ei­ther share in the en­ter­prise or refuse to move for­ward. But I was ashamed to re­coil in the pres­ence of the hunter. Hans ac­cept­ed the en­ter­prise with such calm­ness, such in­dif­fer­ence, such per­fect dis­re­gard of any pos­si­ble dan­ger that I blushed at the idea of be­ing less brave than he. If I had been alone I might have once more tried the ef­fect of ar­gu­ment; but in the pres­ence of the guide I held my peace; my heart flew back to my sweet Vir­landaise, and I ap­proached the cen­tral chim­ney.

I have al­ready men­tioned that it was a hun­dred feet in di­am­eter, and three hun­dred feet round. I bent over a pro­ject­ing rock and gazed down. My hair stood on end with ter­ror. The be­wil­der­ing feel­ing of vacu­ity laid hold up­on me. I felt my cen­tre of grav­ity shift­ing its place, and gid­di­ness mount­ing in­to my brain like drunk­en­ness. There is noth­ing more treach­er­ous than this at­trac­tion down deep abysses. I was just about to drop down, when a hand laid hold of me. It was that of Hans. I sup­pose I had not tak­en as many lessons on gulf ex­plo­ration as I ought to have done in the Frelsers Kirk at Copen­hagen.

But, how­ev­er short was my ex­am­ina­tion of this well, I had tak­en some ac­count of its con­for­ma­tion. Its al­most per­pen­dic­ular walls were bristling with in­nu­mer­able pro­jec­tions which would fa­cil­itate the de­scent. But if there was no want of steps, still there was no rail. A rope fas­tened to the edge of the aper­ture might have helped us down. But how were we to un­fas­ten it, when ar­rived at the oth­er end?

My un­cle em­ployed a very sim­ple ex­pe­di­ent to ob­vi­ate this dif­fi­cul­ty. He un­coiled a cord of the thick­ness of a fin­ger, and four hun­dred feet long; first he dropped half of it down, then he passed it round a la­va block that pro­ject­ed con­ve­nient­ly, and threw the oth­er half down the chim­ney. Each of us could then de­scend by hold­ing with the hand both halves of the rope, which would not be able to un­roll it­self from its hold; when two hun­dred feet down, it would be easy to get pos­ses­sion of the whole of the rope by let­ting one end go and pulling down by the oth­er. Then the ex­er­cise would go on again _ad in­fini­tum_.

“Now,” said my un­cle, af­ter hav­ing com­plet­ed these prepa­ra­tions, “now let us look to our loads. I will di­vide them in­to three lots; each of us will strap one up­on his back. I mean on­ly frag­ile ar­ti­cles.”

Of course, we were not in­clud­ed un­der that head.

“Hans,” said he, “will take charge of the tools and a por­tion of the pro­vi­sions; you, Ax­el, will take an­oth­er third of the pro­vi­sions, and the arms; and I will take the rest of the pro­vi­sions and the del­icate in­stru­ments.”

“But,” said I, “the clothes, and that mass of lad­ders and ropes, what is to be­come of them?”

“They will go down by them­selves.”

“How so?” I asked.

“You will see present­ly.”

My un­cle was al­ways will­ing to em­ploy mag­nif­icent re­sources. Obey­ing or­ders, Hans tied all the non-​frag­ile ar­ti­cles in one bun­dle, cord­ed them firm­ly, and sent them bod­ily down the gulf be­fore us.

I lis­tened to the dull thuds of the de­scend­ing bale. My un­cle, lean­ing over the abyss, fol­lowed the de­scent of the lug­gage with a sat­is­fied nod, and on­ly rose erect when he had quite lost sight of it.

“Very well, now it is our turn.”

Now I ask any sen­si­ble man if it was pos­si­ble to hear those words with­out a shud­der.

The Pro­fes­sor fas­tened his pack­age of in­stru­ments up­on his shoul­ders; Hans took the tools; I took the arms: and the de­scent com­menced in the fol­low­ing or­der; Hans, my un­cle, and my­self. It was ef­fect­ed in pro­found si­lence, bro­ken on­ly by the de­scent of loos­ened stones down the dark gulf.

I dropped as it were, fran­ti­cal­ly clutch­ing the dou­ble cord with one hand and but­tress­ing my­self from the wall with the oth­er by means of my stick. One idea over­pow­ered me al­most, fear lest the rock should give way from which I was hang­ing. This cord seemed a frag­ile thing for three per­sons to be sus­pend­ed from. I made as lit­tle use of it as pos­si­ble, per­form­ing won­der­ful feats of equi­lib­ri­um up­on the la­va pro­jec­tions which my foot seemed to catch hold of like a hand.

When one of these slip­pery steps shook un­der the heav­ier form of Hans, he said in his tran­quil voice:

“_Gif akt!_ “

“At­ten­tion!” re­peat­ed my un­cle.

In half an hour we were stand­ing up­on the sur­face of a rock jammed in across the chim­ney from one side to the oth­er.

Hans pulled the rope by one of its ends, the oth­er rose in the air; af­ter pass­ing the high­er rock it came down again, bring­ing with it a rather dan­ger­ous show­er of bits of stone and la­va.

Lean­ing over the edge of our nar­row stand­ing ground, I ob­served that the bot­tom of the hole was still in­vis­ible.

The same manœuvre was re­peat­ed with the cord, and half an hour af­ter we had de­scend­ed an­oth­er two hun­dred feet.

I don’t sup­pose the mad­dest ge­ol­ogist un­der such cir­cum­stances would have stud­ied the na­ture of the rocks that we were pass­ing. I am sure I did trou­ble my head about them. Pliocene, miocene, eocene, cre­ta­ceous, juras­sic, tri­as­sic, per­mi­an, car­bonif­er­ous, de­vo­ni­an, sil­uri­an, or prim­itive was all one to me. But the Pro­fes­sor, no doubt, was pur­su­ing his ob­ser­va­tions or tak­ing notes, for in one of our halts he said to me:

“The far­ther I go the more con­fi­dence I feel. The or­der of these vol­canic for­ma­tions af­fords the strongest con­fir­ma­tion to the the­ories of Davy. We are now among the prim­itive rocks, up­on which the chem­ical op­er­ations took place which are pro­duced by the con­tact of el­emen­tary bases of met­als with wa­ter. I re­pu­di­ate the no­tion of cen­tral heat al­to­geth­er. We shall see fur­ther proof of that very soon.”

No vari­ation, al­ways the same con­clu­sion. Of course, I was not in­clined to ar­gue. My si­lence was tak­en for con­sent and the de­scent went on.

An­oth­er three hours, and I saw no bot­tom to the chim­ney yet. When I lift­ed my head I per­ceived the grad­ual con­trac­tion of its aper­ture. Its walls, by a gen­tle in­cline, were draw­ing clos­er to each oth­er, and it was be­gin­ning to grow dark­er.

Still we kept de­scend­ing. It seemed to me that the falling stones were meet­ing with an ear­li­er re­sis­tance, and that the con­cus­sion gave a more abrupt and dead­ened sound.

As I had tak­en care to keep an ex­act ac­count of our manœuvres with the rope, which I knew that we had re­peat­ed four­teen times, each de­scent oc­cu­py­ing half an hour, the con­clu­sion was easy that we had been sev­en hours, plus four­teen quar­ters of rest, mak­ing ten hours and a half. We had start­ed at one, it must there­fore now be eleven o’clock; and the depth to which we had de­scend­ed was four­teen times 200 feet, or 2,800 feet.

At this mo­ment I heard the voice of Hans.

“Halt!” he cried.

I stopped short just as I was go­ing to place my feet up­on my un­cle’s head.

“We are there,” he cried.

“Where?” said I, step­ping near to him.

“At the bot­tom of the per­pen­dic­ular chim­ney,” he an­swered.

“Is there no way far­ther?”

“Yes; there is a sort of pas­sage which in­clines to the right. We will see about that to-​mor­row. Let us have our sup­per, and go to sleep.”

The dark­ness was not yet com­plete. The pro­vi­sion case was opened; we re­freshed our­selves, and went to sleep as well as we could up­on a bed of stones and la­va frag­ments.

When ly­ing on my back, I opened my eyes and saw a bright sparkling point of light at the ex­trem­ity of the gi­gan­tic tube 3,000 feet long, now a vast tele­scope.

It was a star which, seen from this depth, had lost all scin­til­la­tion, and which by my com­pu­ta­tion should be 46; _Ur­sa mi­nor._ Then I fell fast asleep.