Read the chapter
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Chapter 41. HUNGER
Hunger, when it lasts a long time, is temporary madness!
The brain works without the food it needs, and the most strange ideas fill the mind.
Until then I had never known what hunger really meant, I was about to understand it.
And yet, three months before I could tell my terrible story of starvation, as I thought.
As a boy I used to take frequent walks near the Professor's house.
My uncle always acted with a plan.
And he believed that, besides the day of rest and worship, there should be a day for recreation.
So I was always free to do as I liked on Wednesdays.
Now, since I wanted to combine the useful and the pleasant, my favorite hobby was bird nesting.
I had one of the best egg collections in the town.
They were sorted and kept under glass.
There was a certain wood which I could reach by getting up early and taking the cheap train, arriving at eleven in the morning.
There I'd study plants or rocks as I liked.
My uncle was always pleased to get specimens for his herbarium and stones to look at.
When I had filled my bag, I searched for nests.
After about two hours of hard work I one day sat down by a stream to eat my simple but plentiful lunch.
How the memory of the spiced sausage, the wheat bread, and the beer makes my mouth water now!
I'd have given every hope of worldly wealth for such a meal, but to my story.
While sitting there I looked up at the ruins of an old castle not far off.
It was the remains of a historic house, covered in ivy, and now falling to pieces.
While looking I saw two eagles circling above the top of a tall tower.
I soon became sure that there was a nest.
In all my collection I still lacked eggs of the native eagle and the large owl.
My mind was made up, I'd reach the top of that tower, or die trying.
I went nearer and checked the ruins.
The old staircase had fallen in years before.
The outer walls were still standing, there was no chance that way unless I relied only on the ivy.
This, as I soon found, was useless.
There remained the chimney, which still rose to the top and had once carried off the smoke from every floor of the tower.
Up this I decided to go, it was narrow and rough, and so easier to climb.
I took off my coat and crept into the chimney.
Looking up I saw a small, light opening, showing the top of the chimney.
Up I went, for some time using my hands and knees like a chimney sweep.
It was slow work, but with many projections the task was fairly easy.
In this way I reached half way.
The chimney then became narrower, the air was close and, at last, I stuck fast, I could climb no higher.
There was no doubt of this, and no choice but to go down and give up my glorious prize in despair.
I yielded and tried to descend, but I couldn't move.
Some unseen and mysterious obstacle stopped me.
In an instant the full horror of my situation hit me.
I couldn't move either way and was doomed to a terrible death by starvation.
In a boy's mind, however, there's a great amount of hope.
And I began to think of all sorts of plans to escape my fate.
At first I didn't need food right away, having had an excellent meal, and so I had time to think.
My first thought was to try and move the mortar with my hand.
If I had had a knife something might have been done, but that useful tool was in my coat pocket.
I soon found that all efforts like this were useless, and that all I could hope to do was wriggle downwards.
But though I pulled and struggled and tried to turn, it was all in vain.
I couldn't move an inch either way.
And time went by quickly, My early rising probably made me sleepy, and I slowly grew drowsy.
I slept and woke in darkness, ravenously hungry.
Night had come and I still couldn't move.
I was tightly bound and didn't manage to change my position an inch, I groaned aloud.
Never since the days of my happy childhood when it was hard to wait from meal to meal had I really felt hunger.
The feeling was as new as it was painful.
I began to lose my head and to scream and cry out in my pain.
Something came, startled by my noise, it was a harmless lizard, but it seemed a disgusting reptile to me.
Again I made the old ruins echo with my cries and at last I so exhausted myself that I fainted.
How long I lay in a kind of trance or sleep I can't say, but when I woke again it was day.
How ill I felt and how hunger still gnawed at me is hard to say.
I was too weak to shout now, far too weak to struggle.
Suddenly I was startled by a voice.
"Are you there, Henry?" said my uncle's voice.
"Are you there, my boy?"
I could only answer faintly, but I also made a desperate effort to turn.
Some mortar fell, To this I owed being found.
When the search began it was easy to see that mortar and small pieces of stone had recently fallen from above.
Hence my uncle's shout, caused by the newly fallen mortar and small stones.
"Be calm," he cried, "if we pull down the whole ruin you shall be saved."
Those were delicious words, but I had little hope.
Soon, about a quarter of an hour later, I heard a voice above me at one of the upper fireplaces.
"Are you below or above?" it asked.
"Below," I replied.
In an instant a basket was lowered with milk, a biscuit, and an egg.
My uncle was afraid to give too much food at once.
I drank the milk first, for thirst had almost deadened my hunger.
Then, much refreshed, I ate my bread and the hard egg.
They were now working at the wall, I could hear a pickax.
To avoid danger from that tool I struggled, the belt around my waist, caught on a stone, came loose.
I was free and only avoided falling down by a quick motion of my hands and knees.
In ten minutes more I was in my uncle's arms after two days and nights in that horrible prison.
My occasional delirium prevented me from counting time.
I was weeks recovering from that awful starvation adventure and yet what was that to the hideous sufferings I now endured?
After dreaming for some time and thinking of other matters I looked around again.
We were still rising with fearful speed.
Every now and then the air seemed to stop our breathing as it does for balloonists when the balloon goes up too fast.
But if they feel a degree of cold with height we felt the opposite.
The heat began to rise in a most threatening and strange way.
I can't say the exact average but I think it must have reached one hundred twenty two degrees Fahrenheit.
What did this strange change in temperature mean?
As far as we had gone so far the facts had shown the theories of Davy and of Lidenbrock to be right.
Until now special conditions, hard rocks, electricity, magnetism, had modified nature's laws and produced a moderate temperature for us.
For me the theory of the central fire remained the only explainable one.
Were we then going to reach a place where these phenomena would act in full force and where the heat would melt the rocks?
That was my natural fear and I didn't hide it from my uncle.
My way of saying it might be blunt and harsh, but I couldn't help it.
"If we aren't drowned or smashed into pancakes and if we don't die of starvation we have the satisfaction of knowing that we must be burned alive."
My uncle, in the face of this harsh attack, only shrugged his shoulders and went back to his thoughts whatever they were.
An hour passed and except for a slight increase in the temperature nothing changed our situation.
My uncle at last, of his own accord, broke the silence.
"Well, Henry, my boy," he said in a cheerful way, "we must make up our minds."
"Make up our minds to what?" I asked with real surprise.
"Well to something."
"We must at whatever risk regain our physical strength."
"If we make the fatal mistake of saving our little remaining food we may lengthen our life a few hours but we'll stay weak to the end."
"Yes," I growled, "to the end. That however won't keep us waiting long."
Well, only let a chance of safety come.
Only allow that a moment of action is needed.
Where shall we find the means to act if we let ourselves be reduced to physical weakness by lack of food?
"When this piece of meat is eaten, Uncle, what hope will remain to us?"
"None my dear Henry none."
"But will it do you any good to stare at it?"
"You seem to me to reason like one without will or decision like a being without energy."
"Then," I cried, angrily beyond explanation, "you don't mean to tell me that you that you haven't lost all hope."
"Certainly not," replied the Professor with great coolness.
"You mean to tell me Uncle that we shall get out of this monstrous underground shaft?"
"While there's life there's hope."
I want to say, Henry, that as long as a man's heart beats and his flesh quivers, I won't allow a thinking, willing being to despair.
What nerve! The man placed in a position like ours must have been very brave to speak like that.
"Well," I cried, "what do you mean to do?"
"Eat what remains of the food we have in our hands."
"Let us swallow the last crumb."
"It'll be Heaven willing our last meal."
"Well never mind instead of being exhausted skeletons we shall be men."
"True," I muttered in a despairing tone, "let us eat our fill."
"We must," replied my uncle with a deep sigh, "call it what you'll."
My uncle took a piece of the remaining meat and some crusts of biscuit which had survived the wreck.
He carefully divided everything into three equal parts for each of them.
Each had one pound of food to last him while he remained inside the earth.
Each now acted according to his own character.
My uncle the Professor ate quickly but clearly without appetite, eating as if by a mechanical action.
I put the food in my mouth and hungry as I was chewed my piece without pleasure and without satisfaction.
Hans the guide as if he had been hunting eider down swallowed every mouthful as though it were a usual thing.
He looked like a man ready to enjoy both plenty and total lack.
Hans probably was no more used to starvation than we were but his hardy Icelandic nature had prepared him for many sufferings.
As long as he got his three rix dollars every Saturday night he was ready for anything.
The fact was Hans never worried much except about his money.
He had agreed to serve a certain man for fixed pay.
No matter what evils happened to his employer or to himself, he never complained so long as his wages were paid.
Suddenly my uncle woke up, he had seen a smile on our guide's face, I couldn't understand it.
"What's the matter?" said my uncle.
"Schiedam," said the guide, producing a bottle of this precious drink.
We drank the Schiedam slowly, feeling its warmth revive our tired bodies.
My uncle and I'll own to our dying day that from this we got strength to live until the last bitter moment.
That precious bottle of Hollands was really only half full but under the circumstances it was nectar.
It took some minutes for my uncle and me to form a decided opinion on the subject.
The worthy Professor drank about half a pint and didn't seem able to drink more.
"Fortrafflig," said Hans swallowing nearly all that was left.
"Excellent very good," said my uncle with as much pleasure as if he had just come from the steps of the club at Hamburg.
I had begun to feel as if there had been one gleam of hope.
Now all thought of the future vanished!
We had eaten our last ounce of food and it was five o'clock in the morning.