A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XXIV.

WELL SAID, OLD MOLE! CANST THOU WORK I’ THE GROUND SO FAST?

By the next day we had for­got­ten all our suf­fer­ings. At first, I was won­der­ing that I was no longer thirsty, and I was for ask­ing for the rea­son. The an­swer came in the mur­mur­ing of the stream at my feet.

We break­fast­ed, and drank of this ex­cel­lent chaly­beate wa­ter. I felt won­der­ful­ly stronger, and quite de­cid­ed up­on push­ing on. Why should not so firm­ly con­vinced a man as my un­cle, fur­nished with so in­dus­tri­ous a guide as Hans, and ac­com­pa­nied by so de­ter­mined a nephew as my­self, go on to fi­nal suc­cess? Such were the mag­nif­icent plans which strug­gled for mas­tery with­in me. If it had been pro­posed to me to re­turn to the sum­mit of Snæfell, I should have in­dig­nant­ly de­clined.

Most for­tu­nate­ly, all we had to do was to de­scend.

“Let us start!” I cried, awak­en­ing by my shouts the echoes of the vault­ed hol­lows of the earth.

On Thurs­day, at 8 a.m., we start­ed afresh. The gran­ite tun­nel wind­ing from side to side, earned us past un­ex­pect­ed turns, and

seemed al­most to form a labyrinth; but, on the whole, its di­rec­tion seemed to be south-​east­er­ly. My un­cle nev­er ceased to con­sult his com­pass, to keep ac­count of the ground gone over.

The gallery dipped down a very lit­tle way from the hor­izon­tal, scarce­ly more than two inch­es in a fath­om, and the stream ran gen­tly mur­mur­ing at our feet. I com­pared it to a friend­ly ge­nius guid­ing us un­der­ground, and ca­ressed with my hand the soft na­iad, whose com­fort­ing voice ac­com­pa­nied our steps. With my re­viv­ing spir­its these mytho­log­ical no­tions seemed to come un­bid­den.

As for my un­cle, he was be­gin­ning to storm against the hor­izon­tal road. He loved noth­ing bet­ter than a ver­ti­cal path; but this way seemed in­def­inite­ly pro­longed, and in­stead of slid­ing along the hy­pothenuse as we were now do­ing, he would will­ing­ly have dropped down the ter­res­tri­al ra­dius. But there was no help for it, and as long as we were ap­proach­ing the cen­tre at all we felt that we must not com­plain.

From time to time, a steep­er path ap­peared; our na­iad then be­gan to tum­ble be­fore us with a hoars­er mur­mur, and we went down with her to a greater depth.

On the whole, that day and the next we made con­sid­er­able way hor­izon­tal­ly, very lit­tle ver­ti­cal­ly.

On Fri­day evening, the 10th of Ju­ly, ac­cord­ing to our cal­cu­la­tions, we were thir­ty leagues south-​east of Re­jki­avik, and at a depth of two leagues and a half.

At our feet there now opened a fright­ful abyss. My un­cle, how­ev­er, was not to be daunt­ed, and he clapped his hands at the steep­ness of the de­scent.

“This will take us a long way,” he cried, “and with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty; for the pro­jec­tions in the rock form quite a stair­case.”

The ropes were so fas­tened by Hans as to guard against ac­ci­dent, and the de­scent com­menced. I can hard­ly call it per­ilous, for I was be­gin­ning to be fa­mil­iar with this kind of ex­er­cise.

This well, or abyss, was a nar­row cleft in the mass of the gran­ite, called by ge­ol­ogists a ‘fault,’ and caused by the un­equal cool­ing of the globe of the earth. If it had at one time been a pas­sage for erup­tive mat­ter thrown out by Snæfell, I still could not un­der­stand why no trace was left of its pas­sage. We kept go­ing down a kind of wind­ing stair­case, which seemed al­most to have been made by the hand of man.

Ev­ery quar­ter of an hour we were obliged to halt, to take a lit­tle nec­es­sary re­pose and re­store the ac­tion of our limbs. We then sat down up­on a frag­ment of rock, and we talked as we ate and drank from the stream.

Of course, down this fault the Hans­bach fell in a cas­cade, and lost some of its vol­ume; but there was enough and to spare to slake our thirst. Be­sides, when the in­cline be­came more gen­tle, 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, while be­low it ran with the calm­ness of the Ice­landic hunter.

On the 6th and 7th of Ju­ly we kept fol­low­ing the spi­ral curves of this sin­gu­lar well, pen­etrat­ing in ac­tu­al dis­tance no more than two leagues; but be­ing car­ried to a depth of five leagues be­low the lev­el of the sea. But on the 8th, about noon, the fault took, to­wards the south-​east, a much gen­tler slope, one of about forty-​five de­grees.

Then the road be­came monotonous­ly easy. It could not be oth­er­wise, for there was no land­scape to vary the stages of our jour­ney.

On Wednes­day, the 15th, we were sev­en leagues un­der­ground, and had trav­elled fifty leagues away from Snæfell. Al­though we were tired, our health was per­fect, and the medicine chest had not yet had oc­ca­sion to be opened.

My un­cle not­ed ev­ery hour the in­di­ca­tions of the com­pass, the chronome­ter, the aneroid, and the ther­mome­ter the very same which he has pub­lished in his sci­en­tif­ic re­port of our jour­ney. It was there­fore not dif­fi­cult to know ex­act­ly our where­abouts. When he told me that we had gone fifty leagues hor­izon­tal­ly, I could not re­press an ex­cla­ma­tion of as­ton­ish­ment, at the thought that we had now long left Ice­land be­hind us.

“What is the mat­ter?” he cried.

“I was re­flect­ing that if your cal­cu­la­tions are cor­rect we are no longer un­der Ice­land.”

“Do you think so?”

“I am not mis­tak­en,” I said, and ex­am­in­ing the map, I added, “We have passed Cape Port­land, and those fifty leagues bring us un­der the wide ex­panse of ocean.”

“Un­der the sea,” my un­cle re­peat­ed, rub­bing his hands with de­light.

“Can it be?” I said. “Is the ocean spread above our heads?”

“Of course, Ax­el. What can be more nat­ural? At New­cas­tle are there not coal mines ex­tend­ing far un­der the sea?”

It was all very well for the Pro­fes­sor to call this so sim­ple, but I could not feel quite easy at the thought that the bound­less ocean was rolling over my head. And yet it re­al­ly mat­tered very lit­tle whether it was the plains and moun­tains that cov­ered our heads, or the At­lantic waves, as long as we were arched over by sol­id gran­ite. And, be­sides, I was get­ting used to this idea; for the tun­nel, now run­ning straight, now wind­ing as capri­cious­ly in its in­clines as in its turn­ings, but con­stant­ly pre­serv­ing its south-​east­er­ly di­rec­tion, and al­ways run­ning deep­er, was grad­ual­ly car­ry­ing us to very great depths in­deed.

Four days lat­er, Sat­ur­day, the 18th of Ju­ly, in the evening, we ar­rived at a kind of vast grot­to; and here my un­cle paid Hans his week­ly wages, and it was set­tled that the next day, Sun­day, should be a day of rest.