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Journey to the Center of the Earth
Chapter 21. UNDER THE OCEAN
By the next day we had nearly forgotten our past sufferings.
The first feeling I had was surprise at not being thirsty, and I actually asked myself why.
The running stream, which flowed in small waves at my feet, was the clear answer.
We had a good breakfast, and then drank our fill of the excellent water.
I felt like a new man, ready to go anywhere my uncle chose to lead, I began to think.
Why shouldn't a man as firmly convinced as my uncle succeed, with so good a guide as worthy Hans, and so devoted a nephew as myself?
These were the bright ideas that came into my head.
Had anyone now offered to go back to the top of Mount Sneffels, I'd have refused in a most angry way.
But luckily there was no question of going up.
We were about to go down farther into the interior of the earth.
"Let us be moving," I cried, waking the echoes of the old world.
We started our march on Thursday at eight o'clock in the morning.
The great granite tunnel, as it turned in winding ways, showed now and then sharp bends, and looked like a labyrinth.
Its general direction, however, was to the southwest.
My uncle stopped several times to check his compass.
The gallery now began to slope downwards in a mostly horizontal way, falling about two inches for every furlong.
The murmuring stream flowed quietly at our feet.
I couldn't help comparing it to some familiar spirit, guiding us through the earth.
And I put my fingers in its warm water, which sang like a nymph as we went on.
My good mood began to take on a mythic tone.
As for my uncle he began to complain about the horizontal nature of the road.
His route, he found, was growing indefinitely long, instead of "sliding down the celestial ray," as he put it.
But we had no choice, and as long as our road led towards the centre however little progress we made there was no reason to complain.
Besides, from time to time the slopes were much steeper, the nymph sang more loudly, and we began to go down in earnest.
So far, however, I felt no bad sensation.
I hadn't yet left the excitement of finding water.
That day and the next we did a lot of horizontal and relatively little vertical travel.
By Friday evening, July 10, we estimated we were thirty leagues southeast of Reykjavik and about two and a half leagues deep.
We now had a rather startling surprise.
Under our feet there opened a horrible well.
My uncle was so pleased that he actually clapped his hands as he saw how steep and sharp the descent was.
"Ah ah!" he cried, in rapt delight, "this will take us a long way. Look at the projections of the rock. Hah!" he said, "it's a fearful staircase!"
Hans, however, who in all our troubles had never let go of the ropes, arranged them so as to prevent any accidents.
Our descent then began, Hans tightening the ropes as we carefully made the first steps.
I dare not call it a dangerous descent, for I was used to this work and saw it as an ordinary job.
This well was a kind of narrow opening in the massive granite known as a fissure.
The shrinkage of the earth's frame when it suddenly cooled had clearly caused it.
If it had ever served as a funnel through which the eruptive masses vomited by Sneffels passed, I would be baffled.
I couldn't explain why it had left no mark.
We were, in fact, going down a spiral, something like those winding staircases used in modern houses.
We had to stop about every quarter of an hour or so to rest our legs, Our calves ached.
We sat on a projecting rock with our legs hanging over and talked.
We ate a bite and drank from the pleasantly warm running stream that had not left us.
It's hardly necessary to say that in this oddly shaped fissure the Hansbach had become a waterfall at the cost of its size.
It was still, however, enough, and more, for our needs.
Besides we knew that as soon as the slope stopped being so steep the stream would go back to its peaceful course.
That moment it reminded me of my uncle's impatience and anger, when it flowed peacefully I pictured the calm of the Icelandic guide.
During the whole of two days, the sixth and seventh of July, we followed the extraordinary spiral staircase of the fissure.
We went two leagues farther into the crust of the earth, which put us five leagues below the level of the sea.
On the eighth however at twelve o'clock in the day the fissure suddenly took a much gentler slope still going southeast.
The road now became fairly easy and at the same time terribly monotonous.
It would have been hard for things to be otherwise.
Our strange journey had no chance of being varied by landscape and scenery, At least that was my thought.
At last, on Wednesday the fifteenth, we were seven leagues, twenty-one miles, below the surface and fifty leagues from the mountain of Sneffels.
Though, to tell the truth, we were very tired our health had stood up to all suffering and was in a very satisfactory state.
Our traveler's box of medicines hadn't even been opened.
My uncle carefully noted every hour the readings of the compass, the manometer, and the thermometer.
He later published those readings in his detailed scientific account of our remarkable voyage.
He was therefore able to give an exact report of our position.
When he then told me that we were fifty leagues in a horizontal direction from our starting point I couldn't keep from a loud exclamation.
"What's the matter now?" cried my uncle.
"Nothing very important only an idea has entered my head," was my answer.
"Well out with it my boy."
"It's my opinion that if your calculations are correct we're no longer under Iceland."
"Do you think so?"
"We can easily find out," I answered pulling out a map and compasses.
"You see," I said after careful measurement, "that I'm not wrong. We're far beyond Cape Portland and those fifty leagues to the southeast will take us into the open sea."
"Under the open sea," cried my uncle rubbing his hands with a pleased air.
"Yes," I cried, "no doubt old Ocean flows over our heads!"
"Well my dear boy what could be more natural!"
"Do you not know that near Newcastle there are coal mines that have been worked far out under the sea?"
Now my worthy uncle the Professor surely saw this discovery as a very simple fact, but to me the idea wasn't a pleasant one.
Yet, if you think, what mattered whether the plains and mountains of Iceland hung over us or the waves of the Atlantic Ocean?
The whole question rested on the strength of the granite roof above us.
Still I soon got used to the idea that the passage, now level, now flowing down, always went to the southeast.
It kept taking us deeper and deeper into the great abysses of Mother Earth.
Three days later on the eighteenth day of July on a Saturday we reached a kind of vast grotto.
My uncle here paid Hans his usual rix dollars and it was decided that the next day should be a day of rest.