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Journey to the Center of the Earth
Chapter 32. THE BATTLE OF THE ELEMENTS
Friday, August 21st. This morning the magnificent geyser had wholly disappeared.
The wind had freshened up, and we were fast leaving the neighborhood of Henry's Island.
Even the roaring sound of the mighty column was lost to the ear.
The weather, if, under the circumstances, we may use such an expression, is about to change very suddenly.
The atmosphere is being gradually loaded with vapors, which carry with them the electricity formed by the constant evaporation of the saline waters.
The clouds are slowly but sensibly falling towards the sea, and are assuming a dark-olive texture.
The electric rays can scarcely pierce the opaque curtain that has fallen like a drop scene before this wondrous theater.
On its stage another terrible drama is soon to be enacted.
This time it's no fight of animals, it's the fearful battle of the elements.
I feel that I'm very peculiarly influenced, as all creatures are on land when a deluge is about to take place.
The cumuli, a perfectly oval cloud piled to the south, looked awful and sinister, with the pitiless aspect seen before a storm.
The air is extremely heavy, the sea is comparatively calm.
In the distance, the clouds have assumed the appearance of enormous balls of cotton, or rather pods, piled one above the other in picturesque confusion.
By degrees, they appear to swell out, break, and gain in number what they lose in grandeur.
Their heaviness is so great that they're unable to lift themselves from the horizon.
Under the influence of the upper currents of air they're gradually broken up and become much darker.
They then look like a single, formidable layer.
Now and then a lighter cloud, still lit from above, rebounds on this grey carpet and is lost in the opaque mass.
There can be no doubt that the entire atmosphere is saturated with electric fluid.
I'm myself wholly impregnated, my hairs literally stand on end as if under the influence of a galvanic battery.
If one of my companions ventured to touch me, I think he'd receive rather a violent and unpleasant shock.
About ten o'clock in the morning, the symptoms of the storm became more thorough and decisive.
The wind appeared to soften down as if to take breath for a renewed attack.
The vast funereal pall above us looked like a huge bag, the cave of AEolus where the storm collected its forces for attack.
I tried all I couldn't to believe in the menacing signs of the sky, and yet I couldn't avoid saying, as it were involuntarily.
"I believe we're going to have bad weather."
The Professor made me no answer, remaining silent and staring fixedly at the dark horizon.
He was in a horrible, in a detestable humor to see the ocean stretching interminably before his eyes.
On hearing my words he simply shrugged his shoulders.
"We shall have a tremendous storm," I said again, pointing to the horizon.
"These clouds are falling lower and lower upon the sea, as if to crush it."
A great silence prevailed, the wind wholly ceased.
Nature assumed a dead calm, and ceased to breathe.
Upon the mast, where I noticed a sort of slight ignis fatuus, the sail hangs in loose heavy folds.
The raft is motionless in the midst of a dark heavy sea without undulation, without motion, it's as still as glass.
But as we're making no progress, what's the use of keeping up the sail?
It may cause our perdition if the tempest should suddenly strike us without warning.
"Let us lower the sail," I said, "it's only an act of common prudence."
"No no," cried my uncle, in an exasperated tone.
"A hundred times no."
"Let the wind strike us and do its worst, let the storm sweep us away where it'll."
"Only let me see the glimmer of some coast of some rocky cliffs, even if they dash our raft into a thousand pieces."
"No keep up the sail no matter what happens."
These words were scarcely uttered when the southern horizon underwent a sudden and violent change.
The long accumulated vapors were resolved into water, and the air required to fill up the void produced became a wild and raging tempest.
It came from the most distant corners of the mighty cavern.
It raged from every point of the compass.
It roared it yelled it shrieked with glee as of demons let loose.
The darkness increased and became indeed darkness visible.
The raft rose and fell with the storm, and bounded over the waves.
My uncle was cast headlong upon the deck.
I with great difficulty dragged myself towards him.
He held with might and main to the cable's end and gazed with pleasure at the spectacle of the unchained elements.
Hans never moved a muscle, his long hair lay plastered to his motionless face.
His long hair, driven hither and thither by the tempest and scattered wildly over his motionless face, gave him a most extraordinary appearance.
Every single hair was illuminated by little sparkling sprigs.
His countenance presents the extraordinary appearance of an antediluvian man, a true contemporary of the Megatherium.
Still the mast holds good against the storm.
The sail spreads out and fills like a soap bubble about to burst.
The raft rushes on at a pace impossible to estimate.
It moves less swiftly than the water beneath it, whose speed is shown by the lines flying right and left in its wake.
"The sail the sail!" I cried, making a trumpet of my hands, and then endeavoring to lower it.
"Let it alone!" said my uncle, more exasperated than ever.
"Nej," said Hans, gently shaking his head.
Nevertheless, the rain formed a roaring cataract before this horizon of which we were in search, and to which we were rushing like madmen.
But before this wilderness of waters reached us, the mighty veil of cloud was torn in twain and the sea began to foam wildly.
The electricity, produced by some vast and extraordinary chemical action in the upper layer of cloud, is brought into play.
To the fearful claps of thunder are added dazzling flashes of lightning, such as I had never seen.
The flashes crossed one another, hurled from every side, while the thunder came pealing like an echo.
The mass of vapor becomes incandescent, and the hailstones which strike the metal of our boots and our weapons are actually luminous.
The waves as they rise appear to be fire-eating monsters, beneath which seethes an intense fire, their crests surmounted by combs of flame.
My eyes are dazzled, blinded by the intensity of light, my ears are deafened by the awful roar of the elements.
I'm compelled to hold onto the mast, which bends like a reed beneath the storm's violence, unlike any seen by mariners.
Here my traveling notes become very incomplete, loose and vague.
I have only been able to make out one or two fugitive observations, jotted down in a mere mechanical way.
But even their brevity, even their obscurity, show the emotions which overcame me.
Sunday, August 23rd, Where have we got to?
In what region are we wandering? We're still carried forward with inconceivable rapidity.
The night has been fearful, something not to be described.
The storm shows no signs of cessation.
We exist in the midst of an uproar which has no name.
The detonations as of artillery are incessant.
Our ears literally bleed, we're unable to exchange a word or hear each other speak.
The lightning never ceases to flash for a single instant.
I can see the zigzags after a rapid dart strike the arched roof of this mightiest of mighty vaults.
If it were to give way and fall upon us!
Other lightnings plunge their forked streaks in every direction, and take the form of globes of fire, which explode like bombshells over a beleaguered city.
The general crash and roar don't apparently increase, it has already gone far beyond what human ear can appreciate.
If all the powder magazines in the world were to explode together, it would be impossible for us to hear worse noise.
There's a constant emission of light from the storm clouds, and the electric matter is incessantly released.
The gaseous principles of the air are out of order, innumerable columns of water rush up like waterspouts and fall back in foam.
Whither are we going? My uncle still lies at full length upon the raft, without speaking without taking any note of time.
The heat increases, I look at the thermometer, to my surprise it indicates The exact figure is here rubbed out in my manuscript.
Monday, August 24th, this terrible storm will never end.
Why shouldn't this state of the atmosphere, so dense and murky, once modified, again remain definitive?
We're utterly broken and harassed by fatigue.
Hans remains just as usual, the raft runs to the southeast invariably.
We have now already run two hundred leagues from the newly discovered island.
About twelve o'clock the storm became worse than ever.
We're obliged now to fasten every bit of cargo tightly on the deck of the raft, or everything would be swept away.
We make ourselves fast, too, each man lashing the other.
The waves drive over us, so that several times we're actually under water.
We had been under the painful necessity of abstaining from speech for three days and three nights.
We opened our mouths, we moved our lips, but no sound came.
Even when we placed our mouths to each other's ears it was the same.
The wind carried the voice away, and we could hear nothing but its roar.
My uncle once contrived to get his head close to mine after several almost vain endeavors.
He appeared to my nearly exhausted senses to articulate some word.
I had a notion, more from intuition than anything else, that he said to me, "We're lost."
I took out my notebook, from which under the most desperate circumstances I never parted, and wrote a few words as legibly as I could.
"Take in sail."
With a deep sigh he nodded his head and acquiesced.
His head had scarcely time to fall back into the position from which he had momentarily raised it.
Then a disk or ball of fire appeared on the very edge of the raft, our devoted our doomed craft.
The mast and sail are carried away bodily, and I see them swept away to a prodigious height like a kite.
We were frozen, actually shivered with terror.
The ball of fire, half white, half azure-colored, about the size of a ten-inch bombshell, moved along, turning with prodigious rapidity to leeward of the storm.
It ran about here, there, and everywhere.
It clambered up one of the bulwarks of the raft and leaped upon the sack of provisions.
Then it finally descended lightly, fell like a football, and landed on our powder barrel.
Horrible situation, an explosion of course was now inevitable.
By heaven's mercy, it wasn't so, the explosion did not occur, to our relief.
The dazzling disk moved on one side and approached Hans.
He looked at it with singular fixity.
It then approached my uncle, who cast himself on his knees to avoid it.
It came towards me as I stood pale and shuddering in the dazzling light and heat, and pirouetted round my feet, which I endeavored to withdraw.
An odor of nitrous gas filled the whole air, it penetrated to the throat, to the lungs, I felt ready to choke.
Why is it that I can't withdraw my feet?
Are they riveted to the flooring of the raft?
No, no. I will not, we must not risk it in such a storm.
The fall of the electric globe has turned all the iron on board into loadstones.
The instruments, the tools, and the arms are clanging together with awful and horrible noise.
The nails of my heavy boots adhere closely to the plate of iron incrusted in the wood, I can't withdraw my foot.
It's the old story again of the mountain of adamant.
At last, by a violent and almost superhuman effort, I tear it away.
The ball, still executing its gyratory motions, is about to run round it and would have dragged me with it.
Oh what intense stupendous light, blinding every eye and setting the waves aflame!
The globe of fire bursts we're enveloped in cascades of living fire, which flood the space around with luminous matter.
Then all went out and darkness once more fell upon the deep!
I had just time to see my uncle once more, cast apparently senseless on the flooring of the raft.
Hans was at the helm, "spitting fire" under the influence of the electricity which seemed to have gone through him.
Whither are we going, I ask? and echo answers, Whither?
Then the roar grew louder, and white foam rushed up against the rocks nearby.
Tuesday, August 25th, I have just come out of a long fainting fit.
The awful, hideous storm continues, lightning grows more vivid and pours out its fiery wrath like serpents in the air.
Are we still upon the sea? Yes, and being carried along with incredible velocity.
We have passed under England, under the Channel, under France, probably under the whole extent of Europe.
Another awful clamor in the distance, this time it's certain that the sea is breaking upon the rocks at no great distance, then-
Then the roar intensified as waves crashed suddenly against nearby hidden rocks.