A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XXIII.

WA­TER DIS­COV­ERED

For a whole hour I was try­ing to work out in my deliri­ous brain the rea­sons which might have in­flu­enced this seem­ing­ly tran­quil hunts­man. The ab­sur­dest no­tions ran in ut­ter con­fu­sion through my mind. I thought mad­ness was com­ing on!

But at last a noise of foot­steps was heard in the dark abyss. Hans was ap­proach­ing. A flick­er­ing light was be­gin­ning to glim­mer on the wall of our dark­some prison; then it came out full at the mouth of the gallery. Hans ap­peared.

He drew close to my un­cle, laid his hand up­on his shoul­der, and gen­tly woke him. My un­cle rose up.

“What is the mat­ter?” he asked.

“_Wat­ten!_” replied the hunts­man.

No doubt un­der the in­spi­ra­tion of in­tense pain ev­ery­body be­comes en­dowed with the gift of divers tongues. I did not know a word of Dan­ish, yet in­stinc­tive­ly I un­der­stood the word he had ut­tered.

“Wa­ter! wa­ter!” I cried, 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 on me with­out mov­ing a mus­cle of his coun­te­nance.

The prepa­ra­tions for our de­par­ture were not long in mak­ing, and we were soon on our way down a pas­sage in­clin­ing two feet in sev­en. In an hour we had gone a mile and a quar­ter, and de­scend­ed two thou­sand feet.

Then I be­gan to hear dis­tinct­ly quite a new sound of some­thing run­ning with­in the thick­ness of the gran­ite wall, a kind of dull, dead rum­bling, like dis­tant thun­der. Dur­ing the first part of our walk, not meet­ing with the promised spring, I felt my agony re­turn­ing; but then my un­cle ac­quaint­ed me with the cause of the strange noise.

“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 in the great­est ex­cite­ment. I was no longer sen­si­ble of my fa­tigue. This mur­mur­ing of wa­ters close at hand was al­ready re­fresh­ing me. It was au­di­bly in­creas­ing. The tor­rent, af­ter hav­ing for some time flowed over our heads, was now run­ning with­in the left wall, roar­ing and rush­ing. Fre­quent­ly I touched the wall, hop­ing to feel some in­di­ca­tions of mois­ture: But there was no hope here.

Yet an­oth­er half hour, an­oth­er half league was passed.

Then it be­came clear that the hunter had gone no far­ther. Guid­ed by an in­stinct pe­cu­liar to moun­taineers he had as it were felt this tor­rent through the rock; but he had cer­tain­ly seen none of the pre­cious liq­uid; he had drunk noth­ing him­self.

Soon it be­came ev­ident that if we con­tin­ued our walk we should widen the dis­tance be­tween our­selves and the stream, the noise of which was be­com­ing fainter.

We re­turned. Hans stopped where the tor­rent seemed clos­est. I sat near the wall, while the wa­ters were flow­ing past me at a dis­tance of two feet with ex­treme vi­olence. But there was a thick gran­ite wall be­tween us and the ob­ject of our de­sires.

With­out re­flec­tion, with­out ask­ing if there were any means of procur­ing the wa­ter, I gave way to a move­ment of de­spair.

Hans glanced at me with, I thought, a smile of com­pas­sion.

He rose and took the lamp. I fol­lowed him. He moved to­wards the wall. I looked on. He ap­plied his ear against the dry stone, and moved it slow­ly to and fro, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly. I per­ceived at once that he was ex­am­in­ing to find the ex­act place where the tor­rent could be heard the loud­est. He met with that point on the left side of the tun­nel, at three feet from the ground.

I was stirred up with ex­cite­ment. I hard­ly dared guess what the hunter was about to do. But I could not but un­der­stand, and ap­plaud and cheer him on, when I saw him lay hold of the pick­axe to make an at­tack up­on the rock.

“We are saved!” I cried.

“Yes,” cried my un­cle, al­most fran­tic with ex­cite­ment. “Hans is right. Cap­ital fel­low! Who but he would have thought of it?”

Yes; who but he? Such an ex­pe­di­ent, how­ev­er sim­ple, would nev­er have en­tered in­to our minds. True, it seemed most haz­ardous to strike a blow of the ham­mer in this part of the earth’s struc­ture. Sup­pose some dis­place­ment should oc­cur and crush us all! Sup­pose the tor­rent, burst­ing through, should drown us in a sud­den flood! There was noth­ing vain in these fan­cies. But still no fears of falling rocks or rush­ing floods could stay us now; and our thirst was so in­tense that, to sat­is­fy it, we would have dared the waves of the north At­lantic.

Hans set about the task which my un­cle and I to­geth­er could not have ac­com­plished. If our im­pa­tience had armed our hands with pow­er, we should have shat­tered the rock in­to a thou­sand frag­ments. Not so Hans. Full of self pos­ses­sion, he calm­ly wore his way through the rock with a steady suc­ces­sion of light and skil­ful strokes, work­ing through an aper­ture six inch­es wide at the out­side. I could hear a loud­er noise of flow­ing wa­ters, and I fan­cied I could feel the de­li­cious flu­id re­fresh­ing my parched lips.

The pick had soon pen­etrat­ed two feet in­to the gran­ite par­ti­tion, and our man had worked for above an hour. I was in an agony of im­pa­tience. My un­cle want­ed to em­ploy stronger mea­sures, and I had some dif­fi­cul­ty in dis­suad­ing him; still he had just tak­en a pick­axe in his hand, when a sud­den hiss­ing was heard, and a jet of wa­ter spurt­ed out with vi­olence against the op­po­site wall.

Hans, al­most thrown off his feet by the vi­olence of the shock, ut­tered a cry of grief and dis­ap­point­ment, of which I soon un­der-. stood the cause, when plung­ing my hands in­to the spout­ing tor­rent, I with­drew them in haste, for the wa­ter was scald­ing hot.

“The wa­ter is at the boil­ing point,” I cried.

“Well, nev­er mind, let it cool,” my un­cle replied.

The tun­nel was fill­ing with steam, whilst a stream was form­ing, which by de­grees wan­dered away in­to sub­ter­ranean wind­ings, and soon we had the sat­is­fac­tion of swal­low­ing our first draught.

Could any­thing be more de­li­cious than the sen­sa­tion that our burn­ing in­tol­er­able thirst was pass­ing away, and leav­ing us to en­joy com­fort and plea­sure? But where was this wa­ter from? No mat­ter. It was wa­ter; and though still warm, it brought life back to the dy­ing. I kept drink­ing with­out stop­ping, and al­most with­out tast­ing.

At last af­ter a most de­light­ful time of re­viv­ing en­er­gy, I cried, “Why, this is a chaly­beate spring!”

“Noth­ing could be bet­ter for the di­ges­tion,” said my un­cle. “It is high­ly im­preg­nat­ed with iron. It will be as good for us as go­ing to the Spa, or to Tö­plitz.”

“Well, it is de­li­cious!”

“Of course it is, wa­ter should be, found six miles un­der­ground. It has an inky flavour, which is not at all un­pleas­ant. What a cap­ital source of strength Hans has found for us here. We will call it af­ter his name.”

“Agreed,” I cried.

And Hans­bach it was from that mo­ment.

Hans was none the proud­er. Af­ter a mod­er­ate draught, he went qui­et­ly in­to a cor­ner to rest.

“Now,” I said, “we must not lose this wa­ter.”

“What is the use of trou­bling our­selves?” my un­cle, replied. “I fan­cy it will nev­er fail.”

“Nev­er mind, we can­not be sure; let us fill the wa­ter bot­tle and our flasks, and then stop up the open­ing.”

My ad­vice was fol­lowed so far as get­ting in a sup­ply; but the stop­ping up of the hole was not so easy to ac­com­plish. It was in vain that we took up frag­ments of gran­ite, and stuffed them in with tow, we on­ly scald­ed our hands with­out suc­ceed­ing. The pres­sure was too great, and our ef­forts were fruit­less.

“It is quite plain,” said I, “that the high­er body of this wa­ter is at a con­sid­er­able el­eva­tion. The force of the jet shows that.”

“No doubt,” an­swered my un­cle. “If this col­umn of wa­ter is 32,000 feet high - that is, from the sur­face of the earth, it is equal to the weight of a thou­sand at­mo­spheres. But I have got an idea.”

“Well?”

“Why should we trou­ble our­selves to stop the stream from com­ing out at all?”

“Be­cause –” Well, I could not as­sign a rea­son.

“When our flasks are emp­ty, where shall we fill them again? Can we tell that?”

No; there was no cer­tain­ty.

“Well, let us al­low the wa­ter to run on. It will flow down, and will both guide and re­fresh us.”

“That is well planned,” I cried. “With this stream for our guide, there is no rea­son why we should not suc­ceed in our un­der­tak­ing.”

“Ah, my boy! you agree with me now,” cried the Pro­fes­sor, laugh­ing.

“I agree with you most hearti­ly.”

“Well, let us rest awhile; and then we will start again.”

I was for­get­ting that it was night. The chronome­ter soon in­formed me of that fact; and in a very short time, re­freshed and thank­ful, we all three fell in­to a sound sleep.