A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A BAT­TLE OF MON­STERS

_Sat­ur­day, Au­gust 15_. - The sea un­bro­ken all round. No land in sight. The hori­zon seems ex­treme­ly dis­tant.

My head is still stu­pe­fied with the vivid re­al­ity of my dream.

My un­cle has had no dreams, but he is out of tem­per. He ex­am­ines the hori­zon all round with his glass, and folds his arms with the air of an in­jured man.

I re­mark that Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock has a ten­den­cy to re­lapse in­to an im­pa­tient mood, and I make a note of it in my log. All my dan­ger and suf­fer­ings were need­ed to strike a spark of hu­man. feel­ing out of him; but now that I am well his na­ture has re­sumed its sway. And yet, what cause was there for anger? Is not the voy­age pros­per­ing as favourably as pos­si­ble un­der the cir­cum­stances? Is not the raft spin­ning along with mar­vel­lous speed?

“-You seem anx­ious, my un­cle,” I said, see­ing him con­tin­ual­ly with his glass to his eye.

“Anx­ious! No, not at all.”

“Im­pa­tient, then?”

“One might be, with less rea­son than now.”

“Yet we are go­ing very fast.”

“What does that sig­ni­fy? I am not com­plain­ing that the rate is slow, but that the sea is so wide.”

I then re­mem­bered that the Pro­fes­sor, be­fore start­ing, had es­ti­mat­ed the length of this un­der­ground sea at thir­ty leagues. Now we had made three times the dis­tance, yet still the south­ern coast was not in sight.

“We are not de­scend­ing as we ought to be,” the Pro­fes­sor de­clares. “We are los­ing time, and the fact is, I have not come all this way to take a lit­tle sail up­on a pond on a raft.”

He called this sea a pond, and our long voy­age, tak­ing a lit­tle sail!

“But,” I re­marked, “since we have fol­lowed the road that Saknussemm has shown us -“

“That is just the ques­tion. Have we fol­lowed that road? Did Saknussemm meet this sheet of wa­ter? Did he cross it? Has not the stream that we fol­lowed led us al­to­geth­er astray?”

“At any rate we can­not feel sor­ry to have come so far. This prospect is mag­nif­icent, and -“

“But I don’t care for prospects. I came with an ob­ject, and I mean to at­tain it. There­fore don’t talk to me about views and prospects.”

I take this as my an­swer, and I leave the Pro­fes­sor to bite his lips with im­pa­tience. At six in the evening Hans asks for his wages, and his three rix dol­lars are count­ed out to him.

_Sun­day, Au­gust 16. _- Noth­ing new. Weath­er un­changed. The wind fresh­ens. On awak­ing, my first thought was to ob­serve the in­ten­si­ty of the light. I was pos­sessed with an ap­pre­hen­sion lest the elec­tric light should grow dim, or fail al­to­geth­er. But there seemed no rea­son to fear. The shad­ow of the raft was clear­ly out­lined up­on the sur­face of the waves.

Tru­ly this sea is of in­fi­nite width. It must be as wide as the Mediter­ranean or the At­lantic - and why not?

My un­cle took sound­ings sev­er­al times. He tied the heav­iest of our pick­ax­es to a long rope which he let down two hun­dred fath­oms. No bot­tom yet; and we had some dif­fi­cul­ty in haul­ing up our plum­met.

But when the pick was shipped again, Hans point­ed out on its sur­face deep prints as if it had been vi­olent­ly com­pressed be­tween two hard bod­ies.

I looked at the hunter.

“_Tän­der,_” said he.

I could not un­der­stand him, and turned to my un­cle who was en­tire­ly ab­sorbed in his cal­cu­la­tions. I had rather not dis­turb him while he is qui­et. I re­turn to the Ice­lander. He by a snap­ping mo­tion of his jaws con­veys his ideas to me.

“Teeth!” I cried, con­sid­er­ing the iron bar with more at­ten­tion.

Yes, in­deed, those are the marks of teeth im­print­ed up­on the met­al! The jaws which they arm must be pos­sessed of amaz­ing strength. Is there some mon­ster be­neath us be­long­ing to the ex­tinct races, more vo­ra­cious than the shark, more fear­ful in vast­ness than the whale? I could not take my eyes off this in­dent­ed iron bar. Sure­ly will my last night’s dream be re­alised?

These thoughts ag­itat­ed me all day, and my imag­ina­tion scarce­ly calmed down af­ter sev­er­al hours’ sleep.

_Mon­day, Au­gust 17. -_ I am try­ing to re­call the pe­cu­liar in­stincts of the mon­sters of the preadamite world, who, com­ing next in suc­ces­sion af­ter the mol­luscs, the crus­taceans and le fish­es, pre­ced­ed the an­imals of mam­malian race up­on the earth. The world then be­longed to rep­tiles. Those mon­sters held the mas­tery in the seas of the sec­ondary pe­ri­od. They pos­sessed a per­fect or­gan­isa­tion, gi­gan­tic pro­por­tions, prodi­gious strength. The sauri­ans of our day, the al­li­ga­tors and the crocodiles, are but fee­ble re­pro­duc­tions of their fore­fa­thers of prim­itive ages.

I shud­der as I re­call these mon­sters to my re­mem­brance. No hu­man eye has ev­er be­held them liv­ing. They bur­dened this earth a thou­sand ages be­fore man ap­peared, but their fos­sil re­mains, found in the argilla­ceous lime­stone called by the En­glish the lias, have en­abled their colos­sal struc­ture to be per­fect­ly built up again and anatom­ical­ly as­cer­tained.

I saw at the Ham­burg mu­se­um the skele­ton of one of these crea­tures thir­ty feet in length. Am I then fat­ed - I, a denizen of earth - to be placed face to face with these rep­re­sen­ta­tives of long ex­tinct fam­ilies? No; sure­ly it can­not be! Yet the deep marks of con­ical teeth up­on the iron pick are cer­tain­ly those of the crocodile.

My eyes are fear­ful­ly bent up­on the sea. I dread to see one of these mon­sters dart­ing forth from its sub­ma­rine cav­erns. I sup­pose Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock was of my opin­ion too, and even shared my fears, for af­ter hav­ing ex­am­ined the pick, his eyes tra­versed the ocean from side to side. What a very bad no­tion that was of his, I thought to my­self, to take sound­ings just here! He has dis­turbed some mon­strous beast in its re­mote den, and if we are not at­tacked on our voy­age -

I look at our guns and see that they are all right. My un­cle no­tices it, and looks on ap­prov­ing­ly.

Al­ready wide­ly dis­turbed re­gions on the sur­face of the wa­ter in­di­cate some com­mo­tion be­low. The dan­ger is ap­proach­ing. We must be on the look out.

_Tues­day, Au­gust 18. _- Evening came, or rather the time came when sleep weighs down the weary eye­lids, for there is no night here, and the cease­less light wea­ries the eyes with its per­sis­ten­cy just as if we were sail­ing un­der an arc­tic sun. Hans was at the helm. Dur­ing his watch I slept.

Two hours af­ter­wards a ter­ri­ble shock awoke me. The raft was heaved up on a wa­tery moun­tain and pitched down again, at a dis­tance of twen­ty fath­oms.

“What is the mat­ter?” shout­ed my un­cle. “Have we struck land?”

Hans point­ed with his fin­ger at a dark mass six hun­dred yards away, ris­ing and falling al­ter­nate­ly with heavy plunges. I looked and cried:

“It is an enor­mous por­poise.”

“Yes,” replied my un­cle, “and there is a sea lizard of vast size.”

“And far­ther on a mon­strous crocodile. Look at its vast jaws and its rows of teeth! It is div­ing down!”

“There’s a whale, a whale!” cried the Pro­fes­sor. “I can see its great fins. See how he is throw­ing out air and wa­ter through his blow­ers.”

And in fact two liq­uid columns were ris­ing to a con­sid­er­able height above the sea. We stood amazed, thun­der­struck, at the pres­ence of such a herd of ma­rine mon­sters. They were of su­per­nat­ural di­men­sions; the small­est of them would have crunched our raft, crew and all, at one snap of its huge jaws.

Hans wants to tack to get away from this dan­ger­ous neigh­bour­hood; but he sees on the oth­er hand en­emies not less ter­ri­ble; a tor­toise forty feet long, and a ser­pent of thir­ty, lift­ing its fear­ful head and gleam­ing eyes above the flood.

Flight was out of the ques­tion now. The rep­tiles rose; they wheeled around our lit­tle raft with a ra­pid­ity greater than that of ex­press trains. They de­scribed around us grad­ual­ly nar­row­ing cir­cles. I took up my ri­fle. But what could a ball do against the scaly ar­mour with which these enor­mous beasts were clad?

We stood dumb with fear. They ap­proach us close: on one side the crocodile, on the oth­er the ser­pent. The re­main­der of the sea mon­sters have dis­ap­peared. I pre­pare to fire. Hans stops me by a ges­ture. The two mon­sters pass with­in a hun­dred and fifty yards of the raft, and hurl them­selves the one up­on the oth­er, with a fury which pre­vents them from see­ing us.

At three hun­dred yards from us the bat­tle was fought. We could dis­tinct­ly ob­serve the two mon­sters en­gaged in dead­ly con­flict. But it now seems to me as if the oth­er an­imals were tak­ing part in the fray - the por­poise, the whale, the lizard, the tor­toise. Ev­ery mo­ment I seem to see one or oth­er of them. I point them to the Ice­lander. He shakes his head neg­ative­ly.

“_Tva,_” says he.

“What two? Does he mean that there are on­ly two an­imals?”

“He is right,” said my un­cle, whose glass has nev­er left his eye.

“Sure­ly you must be mis­tak­en,” I cried.

“No: the first of those mon­sters has a por­poise’s snout, a lizard’s head, a crocodile’s teeth; and hence our mis­take. It is the ichthyosaurus (the fish lizard), the most ter­ri­ble of the an­cient mon­sters of the deep.”

“And the oth­er?”

“The oth­er is a ple­siosaurus (al­most lizard), a ser­pent, ar­moured with the cara­pace and the pad­dles of a tur­tle; he is the dread­ful en­emy of the oth­er.”

Hans had spo­ken tru­ly. Two mon­sters on­ly were cre­at­ing all this com­mo­tion; and be­fore my eyes are two rep­tiles of the prim­itive world. I can dis­tin­guish the eye of the ichthyosaurus glow­ing like a red-​hot coal, and as large as a man’s head. Na­ture has en­dowed it with an op­ti­cal ap­pa­ra­tus of ex­treme pow­er, and ca­pa­ble of re­sist­ing the pres­sure of the great vol­ume of wa­ter in the depths it in­hab­its. It has been ap­pro­pri­ate­ly called the sauri­an whale, for it has both the swift­ness and the rapid move­ments of this mon­ster of our own day. This one is not less than a hun­dred feet long, and I can judge of its size when it sweeps over the wa­ters the ver­ti­cal coils of its tail. Its jaw is enor­mous, and ac­cord­ing to nat­ural­ists it is armed with no less than one hun­dred and eighty-​two teeth.

The ple­siosaurus, a ser­pent with a cylin­dri­cal body and a short tail, has four flap­pers or pad­dles to act like oars. Its body is en­tire­ly cov­ered with a thick ar­mour of scales, and its neck, as flex­ible as a swan’s, ris­es thir­ty feet above the waves.

Those huge crea­tures at­tacked each oth­er with the great­est an­imos­ity. They heaved around them liq­uid moun­tains, which rolled even to our raft and rocked it per­ilous­ly. Twen­ty times we were near cap­siz­ing. Hiss­ings of prodi­gious force are heard. The two beasts are fast locked to­geth­er; I can­not dis­tin­guish the one from the oth­er. The prob­able rage of the con­queror in­spires us with in­tense fear.

One hour, two hours, pass away. The strug­gle con­tin­ues with un­abat­ed fe­roc­ity. The com­bat­ants al­ter­nate­ly ap­proach and re­cede from our raft. We re­main mo­tion­less, ready to fire. Sud­den­ly the ichthyosaurus and the ple­siosaurus dis­ap­pear be­low, leav­ing a whirlpool ed­dy­ing in the wa­ter. Sev­er­al min­utes pass by while the fight goes on un­der wa­ter.

All at once an enor­mous head is dart­ed up, the head of the ple­siosaurus. The mon­ster is wound­ed to death. I no longer see his scaly ar­mour. On­ly his long neck shoots up, drops again, coils and un­coils, droops, lash­es the wa­ters like a gi­gan­tic whip, and writhes like a worm that you tread on. The wa­ter is splashed for a long way around. The spray al­most blinds us. But soon the rep­tile’s agony draws to an end; its move­ments be­come fainter, its con­tor­tions cease to be so vi­olent, and the long ser­pen­tine form lies a life­less log on the labour­ing deep.

As for the ichthyosaurus - has he re­turned to his sub­ma­rine cav­ern? or will he reap­pear on the sur­face of the sea?