A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CALM PHILO­SOPH­IC DIS­CUS­SIONS

Here I end what I may call my log, hap­pi­ly saved from the wreck, and I re­sume my nar­ra­tive as be­fore.

What hap­pened when the raft was dashed up­on the rocks is more than I can tell. I felt my­self hurled in­to the waves; and if I es­caped from death, and if my body was not torn over the sharp edges of the rocks, it was be­cause the pow­er­ful arm of Hans came to my res­cue.

The brave Ice­lander car­ried me out of the reach of the waves, over a burn­ing sand where I found my­self by the side of my un­cle.

Then he re­turned to the rocks, against which the fu­ri­ous waves were beat­ing, to save what he could. I was un­able to speak. I was shat­tered with fa­tigue and ex­cite­ment; I want­ed a whole hour to re­cov­er even a lit­tle.

But a del­uge of rain was still falling, though with that vi­olence which gen­er­al­ly de­notes the near ces­sa­tion of a storm. A few over­hang­ing rocks af­ford­ed us some shel­ter from the storm. Hans pre­pared some food, which I could not touch; and each of us, ex­haust­ed with three sleep­less nights, fell in­to a bro­ken and painful sleep.

The next day the weath­er was splen­did. The sky and the sea had sunk in­to sud­den re­pose. Ev­ery trace of the aw­ful storm had dis­ap­peared. The ex­hil­arat­ing voice of the Pro­fes­sor fell up­on my ears as I awoke; he was omi­nous­ly cheer­ful.

“Well, my boy,” he cried, “have you slept well?”

Would not any one have thought that we were still in our cheer­ful lit­tle house on the Königstrasse and that I was on­ly just com­ing down to break­fast, and that I was to be mar­ried to Gräuben that day?

Alas! if the tem­pest had but sent the raft a lit­tle more east, we should have passed un­der Ger­many, un­der my beloved town of Ham­burg, un­der the very street where dwelt all that I loved most in the world. Then on­ly forty leagues would have sep­arat­ed us! But they were forty leagues per­pen­dic­ular of sol­id gran­ite wall, and in re­al­ity we were a thou­sand leagues asun­der!

All these painful re­flec­tions rapid­ly crossed my mind be­fore I could an­swer my un­cle’s ques­tion.

“Well, now,” he re­peat­ed, “won’t you tell me how you have slept?”

“Oh, very well,” I said. “I am on­ly a lit­tle knocked up, but I shall soon be bet­ter.”

“Oh,” says my un­cle, “that’s noth­ing to sig­ni­fy. You are on­ly a lit­tle bit tired.”

“But you, un­cle, you seem in very good spir­its this morn­ing.”

“De­light­ed, my boy, de­light­ed. We have got there.”

“To our jour­ney’s end?”

“No; but we have got to the end of that end­less sea. Now we shall go by land, and re­al­ly be­gin to go down! down! down!”

“But, my dear un­cle, do let me ask you one ques­tion.”

“Of course, Ax­el.”

“How about re­turn­ing?”

“Re­turn­ing? Why, you are talk­ing about the re­turn be­fore the ar­rival.”

“No, I on­ly want to know how that is to be man­aged.”

“In the sim­plest way pos­si­ble. When we have reached the cen­tre of the globe, ei­ther we shall find some new way to get back, or we shall come back like de­cent folks the way we came. I feel pleased at the thought that it is sure not to be shut against us.”

“But then we shall have to re­fit the raft.”

“Of course.”

“Then, as to pro­vi­sions, have we enough to last?”

“Yes; to be sure we have. Hans is a clever fel­low, and I am sure he must have saved a large part of our car­go. But still let us go and make sure.”

We left this grot­to which lay open to ev­ery wind. At the same time I cher­ished a trem­bling hope which was a fear as well. It seemed to me im­pos­si­ble that the ter­ri­ble wreck of the raft should not have de­stroyed ev­ery­thing on board. On my ar­rival on the shore I found Hans sur­round­ed by an as­sem­blage of ar­ti­cles all ar­ranged in good or­der. My un­cle shook hands with him with a live­ly grat­itude. This man, with al­most su­per­hu­man de­vo­tion, had been at work all the while that we were asleep, and had saved the most pre­cious of the ar­ti­cles at the risk of his life.

Not that we had suf­fered no loss­es. For in­stance, our firearms; but we might do with­out them. Our stock of pow­der had re­mained un­in­jured af­ter hav­ing risked blow­ing up dur­ing the storm.

“Well,” cried the Pro­fes­sor, “as we have no guns we can­not hunt, that’s all.”

“Yes, but how about the in­stru­ments?”

“Here is the aneroid, the most use­ful of all, and for which I would have giv­en all the oth­ers. By means of it I can cal­cu­late the depth and know when we have reached the cen­tre; with­out it we might very like­ly go be­yond, and come out at the an­tipodes!”

Such high spir­its as these were rather too strong.

“But where is the com­pass? I asked.

“Here it is, up­on this rock, in per­fect con­di­tion, as well as the ther­mome­ters and the chronome­ter. The hunter is a splen­did fel­low.”

There was no deny­ing it. We had all our in­stru­ments. As for tools and ap­pli­ances, there they all lay on the ground - lad­ders, ropes, picks, spades, etc.

Still there was the ques­tion of pro­vi­sions to be set­tled, and I asked - “How are we off for pro­vi­sions?”

The box­es con­tain­ing these were in a line up­on the shore, in a per­fect state of preser­va­tion; for the most part the sea had spared them, and what with bis­cuits, salt meat, spir­its, and salt fish, we might reck­on on four months’ sup­ply.

“Four months!” cried the Pro­fes­sor. “We have time to go and to re­turn; and with what is left I will give a grand din­ner to my friends at the Jo­han­næum.”

I ought by this time to have been quite ac­cus­tomed to my un­cle’s ways; yet there was al­ways some­thing fresh about him to as­ton­ish me.

“Now,” said he, “we will re­plen­ish our sup­ply of wa­ter with the rain which the storm has left in all these gran­ite basins; there­fore we shall have no rea­son to fear any­thing from thirst. As for the raft, I will rec­om­mend Hans to do his best to re­pair it, al­though I don’t ex­pect it will be of any fur­ther use to us.”

“How so?” I cried.

“An idea of my own, my lad. I don’t think we shall come out by the way that we went in.”

I stared at the Pro­fes­sor with a good deal of mis­trust. I asked, was he not touched in the brain? And yet there was method in his mad­ness.

“And now let us go to break­fast,” said he.

I fol­lowed him to a head­land, af­ter he had giv­en his in­struc­tions to the hunter. There pre­served meat, bis­cuit, and tea made us an ex­cel­lent meal, one of the best I ev­er re­mem­ber. Hunger, the fresh air, the calm qui­et weath­er, af­ter the com­mo­tions we had gone through, all con­tribut­ed to give me a good ap­petite.

Whilst break­fast­ing I took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to put to my un­cle the ques­tion where we were now.

“That seems to me,” I said, “rather dif­fi­cult to make out.”

“Yes, it is dif­fi­cult,” he said, “to cal­cu­late ex­act­ly; per­haps even im­pos­si­ble, since dur­ing these three stormy days I have been un­able to keep any ac­count of the rate or di­rec­tion of the raft; but still we may get an ap­prox­ima­tion.”

“The last ob­ser­va­tion,” I re­marked, “was made on the is­land, when the geyser was -“

“You mean Ax­el Is­land. Don’t de­cline the hon­our of hav­ing giv­en your name to the first is­land ev­er dis­cov­ered in the cen­tral parts of the globe.”

“Well,” said I, “let it be Ax­el Is­land. Then we had cleared two hun­dred and sev­en­ty leagues of sea, and we were six hun­dred leagues from Ice­land.”

“Very well,” an­swered my un­cle; “let us start from that point and count four days’ storm, dur­ing which our rate can­not have been less than eighty leagues in the twen­ty-​four hours.”

“That is right; and this would make three hun­dred leagues more.”

“Yes, and the Lieden­brock sea would be six hun­dred leagues from shore to shore. Sure­ly, Ax­el, it may vie in size with the Mediter­ranean it­self.”

“Es­pe­cial­ly,” I replied, “if it hap­pens that we have on­ly crossed it in its nar­row­est part. And it is a cu­ri­ous cir­cum­stance,” I added, “that if my com­pu­ta­tions are right, and we are nine hun­dred leagues from Re­jki­avik, we have now the Mediter­ranean above our head.”

“That is a good long way, my friend. But whether we are un­der Turkey or the At­lantic de­pends very much up­on the ques­tion in what di­rec­tion we have been mov­ing. Per­haps we have de­vi­at­ed.”

“No, I think not. Our course has been the same all along, and I be­lieve this shore is south-​east of Port Grauben.”

“Well,” replied my un­cle, “we may eas­ily as­cer­tain this by con­sult­ing the com­pass. Let us go and see what it says.”

The Pro­fes­sor moved to­wards the rock up­on which Hans had laid down the in­stru­ments. He was gay and full of spir­its; he rubbed his hands, he stud­ied his at­ti­tudes. I fol­lowed him, cu­ri­ous to know if I was right in my es­ti­mate. As soon as we had ar­rived at the rock my un­cle took the com­pass, laid it hor­izon­tal­ly, and ques­tioned the nee­dle, which, af­ter a few os­cil­la­tions, present­ly as­sumed a fixed po­si­tion. My un­cle looked, and looked, and looked again. He rubbed his eyes, and then turned to me thun­der­struck with some un­ex­pect­ed dis­cov­ery.

“What is the mat­ter?” I asked.

He mo­tioned to me to look. An ex­cla­ma­tion of as­ton­ish­ment burst from me. The north pole of the nee­dle was turned to what we sup­posed to be the south. It point­ed to the shore in­stead of to the open sea! I shook the box, ex­am­ined it again, it was in per­fect con­di­tion. In what­ev­er po­si­tion I placed the box the nee­dle per­ti­na­cious­ly re­turned to this un­ex­pect­ed quar­ter. There­fore there seemed no rea­son to doubt that dur­ing the storm there had been a sud­den change of wind un­per­ceived by us, which had brought our raft back to the shore which we thought we had left so long a dis­tance be­hind us.