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29 - On the Waters - A Raft Voyage - Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne · Classic Sci Fi Books - Daily

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Chapter twenty nine, On the waters a raft voyage on the thirteenth of August.
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We were up betimes. There was no time to be lost. We
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now had to inaugurate a new kind of lock of motion, which would have
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the advantage of being rapid and not fatiguing. A mast made of two pieces
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of wood fastened together to give additional strength, a yard made from another one,
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the sail, a linen sheet from our bed. We were fortunately in
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a want of cordage, and the whole on trial appeared solid and seaworthy.
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At six o'clock in the morning, when the eager and enthusiastic Professor gave the
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signal to embark the victors. The luggage, all our instruments, our weapons,
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and a goodly supply of sweet water which we had collected from springs in
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the rocks were placed on the raft. Hans had, with considerable ingenus,
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t contrieved a rudder which enabled him to guide the floating apparatus with ease.
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He took the tiller as a matter of course the worthy man was as good
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a sailor as he was a guide and duck hunter, and then let go
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the painter, which held us to the shore. The sail was brought to
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the wind, and we made a rapid offing. Our sea voyage had at
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length commenced, and once more we were making for distant and unknown regions.
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Just as we were about to leave the little port where the raft had been
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constructed, my uncle, who was very strong as to geographic domenclature, wanted
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to give it a name, and, among others, suggested mine. Well,
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said I, before you decide, I have another to propose. Well
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out with it, I should like to call it Gretchen. Port Gretchen will
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sound very well on our future map. Well, then, Port Gretchen,
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let it be, said the professor. And thus it was that the memory
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of my dear girl was attached to our adventurous and memorable expedition. When we
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left the shore, the wind was blowing from the northward and eastward. We
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went directly before the wind, at a much greater speed than might have been
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expected from a raft. The dense layers of atmosphere at that depth had great
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propelling power and acted upon the sail with considerable force. At the end of
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an hour, my uncle, who had been taking careful observations, was enabled
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to judge of the rapidity with which we moved. It was far beyond anything
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seen in the upper world. If he said, we continue to advance at
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our present rate, we shall have traveled at least thirty leagues in twenty four
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hours with a mere raft. This is an almost incredible velocity. I certainly
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was surprised, and without making any reply, went forward upon the raft.
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Already the northern shore was fading away. On the edge of the horizon.
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The two shores appeared to separate more and more, leaving a wide and open
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space for our departure. Before me, I could see nothing but the vast
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and apparently limitless sea upon which we floated. The only living objects in sight
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deute and dark clouds cast their gray shadows below, shadows which seemed to crush
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that colorless and sullen water by their weight. Anything more suggestive of gloom and
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of regions of nether darkness. I never beheld silvery raids of electric light reflected
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here and there upon some small spots of water brought up luminous sparkles in the
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long wake of our cumbrous park. Presently we were folly out of sight of
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land. Not a vestiag could be seen, nor any indication of where we
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were going so still, ill and motionless, did we seem without any distant
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point to fix our eyes on that? But for the phosphoric light at the
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wake of the raft, I should have fancied that we were still and motionless.
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But I knew that we were advancing at a very rapid rate. About
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twelve o'clock in the day, vast collections of seaweed were discovered surrounding us on
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all sides. I was aware of the extraordinary vegetive power of these plants,
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which have been known to creep along the bottom of the Great Ocean and stop
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the advance of large ships. But never were seaweeds ever seen so gigantic and
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wonderful as those of the Central Sea. I could well imagine how seen at
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a distance, tossing and heaving on the summit of the billows, the long
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lines of algae have been taken for living things, and thus have been fertile
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sources of the beliefs in sea serpents. Our rafts were past great specimen of
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fucus and sea wrack, from three to four thousand feet in length, immense
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incredibly long, looking like snakes that stretched out far beyond our horizon. It
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afforded me great amusement to gaze on their variegated ribbon like endless lengths. Hour
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after our passed without our coming to the termination of these floating weeds. If
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my astonishment increased, my patience was well nigh exhausted. What natural force could
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possibly have produced such abnormal and extraordinary plants. What must have been the aspect
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of the globe during the first centuries of its formation, when under the combined
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action of heat and humidity, the vegetable kingdom occupied its vast surface to the
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exclusion of everything else. These were considerations of never ending interest for the geologist
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and the philosopher. All this while we were lancing on our journey, and
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at length night came. But as I had remarked the evening before, the
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luminous state of the atmosphere was in nothing diminished. Whatever was the cause,
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it was a phenomenon upon the duration of which we could calculate with certainty.
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As soon as our supper had been disposed of, and some little speculative conversation
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indulged in, I stretched myself at the foot of the mast and presently went
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to sleep. Hans remained motionless at the tiller, allowing the raft to rise
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and fall on the waves, the wind being aft, and the sail square.
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All he had to do was to keep his oar in the center.
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Ever since we had taken our departure from the newly named Port Gretchen, my
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worthy uncle had directed me to keep a regular log of our day's navigation,
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with instructions to put down even the most minute particulars, every interesting and curious
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phenomenon, the direction of the wind, our rate of sailing, the distance
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we went, in a word, every incident of our extraordinary voyage from our
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log. Therefore I tell the story of our voyage on the Central Sea Friday,
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August fourteenth, a steady breeze from the northwest, raft progressing with extreme
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rapidity and going perfectly straight. Coasts still dimly visible about thirty leagues to leeward,
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nothing to be seen beyond the horizon in front. The extraordinary intensity of
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the light neither increases nor diminishes. It is singularly stationary. The weather remarkably
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fine. That is to say, the clouds have ascended very high and are
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light and fleecy, and surrounded by an atmosphere resembling silver infusion thermometer plus thirty
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two degrees centigrade about twelve o'clock in the day. Our guide hands, having
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prepared and baited a hawk, cast his line into the subterranean waters. The
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bait he used was a small piece of meat, by means of which she
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concealed his hawk. Anxious as I was, I was for a long time
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doomed to disappointment. Were these waters supplied with fish or not? That was
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the important question. No, was my decided answer. Then there came a
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sudden and rather hard hug. Hans coolly drew it in, and with it
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a fish, which struggled violently to escape. A fish cried, my uncle,
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it's a sturgeon, I cried, certainly a small sturgeon. The professor
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examined the fish carefully, noting every characteristic and he did not coincide in my
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opinion. The fish had a flat head, round body, and the lower
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extreme discovered with bony scales. Its mouth was fully with our teeth. The
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pectoral fins, which were highly developed, sprouted direct from the body, which
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properly speaking, had no tail. The animals certainly belonged to the order in
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which naturalists classed the sturgeon, but it differed from that fish in many essential
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particulars. My uncle, after all, was not mistaken. After a long
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and patient examination, he said, this fish, my dear boy, belongs
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to a family which has been extinct for ages, and of which no trace
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has ever been found on Earth, except fossil remains in the Devonian strata.
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You do not mean to say, I cried, that we have captured a
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live specimen of a fish belonging to the primitive stock that existed before the deluge.
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We have, said the professor, who all this time was continuing his
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observations, And you may see by careful examination that these fossils fish have no
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identity with existing species to hold in one's hand. Therefore, a living specimen
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of the order is enough to make a naturalist happy for life. But cried
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I, to what family does it belong to? The order of ganoids,
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an order of fish having angular scales covered with bright animal forming one of the
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family of the cephaluspides, of the genus Sir Well, Sir, I remarked,
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as I noticed my uncle hesitated to conclude, to the genus Derychtis.
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Yes, I'm certain of it. Still, though I'm confident of the correctness
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of my surmise, these fish offers star notice a remarkable peculiarity never known to
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exist in any other fish, but those which are the natives of subterranean waters,
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wells, lakes, in caverns and such like hidden poles. And what
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may that be? It is blind blind, I cried, much surprised.
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Not only blind, continued the professor, but absolutely without organs of sight.
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I now examined our discovery for myself. It was singular, to be sure,
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but it was really a fact. This, however, might be a
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solitary instance. I suggested. The hook was painted again and once more thrown
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into the water. This subterranean ocean must have been tolerably well supplied with fish,
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for in two hours we took a large number of pterichtys, as well
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as other fish belonging to another supposed extinct family, the Dipteridis, a genius
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of fish furnished with two fins only, whence the name. Though my uncle
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could not class it exactly, all without exception, however, were blind.
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This unexpected capture enabled us to renew our stock of provisions in a very satisfactory
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way. We were now convinced that this subterranean sea contained only fish known to
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us as fossil specimens, and fish and reptiles alike were all the more perfect
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the farther back they dated their origin. We began to hope that we should
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find some of those saurians which science has succeeded in reconstructing from bits of bone
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and cartilage. I took up the telescope and carefully examined the horizon. Looked
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over the whole sea. It was utterly and entirely deserted. Doubtless, we
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were still too near the coast. After an examination of the ocean, I
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looked upward towards the strange and mysterious sky. Why should not one of the
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birds reconstructed by the immortal Cuvier, flappy stupendous wings aloft in the dull strata
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of subterranean air. It would, of course find quite sufficient food from the
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fish in the sea. I gazed for some time upon the void a bow.
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It was as silent and as deserted as the shores we had but lately
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left. Nevertheless, though I could neither see nor discover anything, my imagination
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carried me away into wild hypothesis. I was in a kind of waking dream.
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I thought I saw on the surface of the water, those enormous antediluvian
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turtles as big as floating islands. Upon those dull and somber shores, passed
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the spectral row of the mammiferes of early days, the great Liptotherium found in
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the cavernous hollow of the Brazilian Hills, the Mesicotherium, a native of the
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glacial regions of Siberia. Farther on, the pachydermatus Lofrodon, the gigantic tapir,
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which conceal it selt behind rocks, ready to do battle for each spray,
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with the Anuplotherium, a singular animal partaking of the nature of the rhanochrous,
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the horse, the hippopotamus, and the camel. There was the giant
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mastodon, twisting and turning his horrid trunk with which he crushed the rocks of
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the shore to powder, while the megatherium his back raised like a cat in
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a passion, his enormous claw stretched out dug into the earth for food,
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at the same time that he awoke the sonorous echos of the whole place with
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its terrible roar. Higher up still, the first monkey ever seen on the
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face of the globe clambered gamboling and playing up the granite hills. Still farther
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away ran the pterodactyl with the winged hand, gliding or rather sailing through the
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dense and compressed air like a huge pat Above all, near the leaden granitic
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sky were immense birds, more powerful than the cassowari and the ostrich, which
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spread their mighty wings and fluttered against the huge stone vault of the inland sea.
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I thought, such was the effect of my imagination that I saw this
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whole tribe of antediluvian creatures. I carried myself back to far ages long before
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man existed, when in fact the earth was in too imperfect a state for
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him to live upon it. My dream was of countless ages before the existence
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of man. The mammifers first disappeared, then the mighty birds, then the
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reptiles of the Secondary period, presently the fish, the crustas, here the
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mollusks, and finally the vertebratar the sophiths of the period of Transition, in
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their turn, sank into annihilation. The whole panorama of the world, world's
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life before the historic period seemed to be borne over again, And mine was
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the only human heart that beat in this unpeopled world. There were no more
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seasons, there were no more climates. The natural heat of the world increased
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unceasingly and neutralized that of the great radiant Sun. Vegetation was exaggerated in an
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extraordinary manner. I passed like a shadow in the midst of brushwood as lofty
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as the giant trees of California, and trod underfoot the moist and humid soil,
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reeking with the rank and varied vegetation. I leaned against the huge column
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like trunks of giant trees, to which those of Canada were as ferns.
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Whole ages passed, hundreds upon hundreds of years were concentrated into a single day.
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Next, unrolled before me like a panorama, came the great and wondrous
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series of terrestrial transformations. Plants disappeared, the granity, rocks lost all trace
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of solidity. The liquid state was suddenly substituted for that which had before existed.
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This was caused by intense heat acting on the organic matter of the Earth.
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The waters flowed over the whole surface of the globe. They boiled,
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they were volatilized, or turned into vapor. A kind of steam cloud wrapped
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the whole Earth, the globe itself becoming at last nothing but one huge sware
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of gas, indescribable in color between white, heat and red, as big
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and as brilliant as the sun. In the very center of this prodigious mass
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fourteen hundred thousand times as large as our globe, I was whirled round in
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space and brought in the close conjunction with the planets. My body was subtilized,
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or rather become volatile and commingled in a state of atomic vapor with the
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prodigious clouds, which rushed forward like a mighty comet into infinite space. What
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an extraordinary dream? Where would it finally take me? My feverish hand began
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to write down the marvelous details, details more like the imaginings of a lunatic
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than anything sober and real. I had during this period of hallucination, forgotten
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everything, the professor, the guide, and the raft on which we were
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floating. My mind was in a state of semi oblivion. What is the
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murder? Hurry said my uncle. Suddenly my eyes, which were wide opened
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like those of a somnambulist, were fixed upon him, But I did not
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see him, nor could I clearly make out anything around me. Take care,
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my boy, again, cried my uncle. You will fall into the
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sea. Has he uttered these words, I felt myself seized on the other
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side by the firm hand of our devoted guide. Had it not been for
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the presence of mind of Hans, I must infallibly have fallen into the waves
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and been drowned. Have you gone mad? Cried my uncle, shaking me
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on the other side. What what is the matter? I said, at
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last, coming to myself. Are you ill, henry, continued the professor
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in an anxious tone. No, no, but I have had an extraordinary
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dream. It, however, has passed away all now since, while,
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I added, looking around me with the strangely puzzled eyes. All right,
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said my uncle, A beautiful breeze, a splendid sea. We are going
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along at a rapid rate, and if I am not out in my calculations,
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we shall soon see land. I shall not be sorry to exchange the
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narrow limits of our raft for the mysterious strand of the subterranean ocean. As
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my uncle uttered these words, I rose and carefully scanned the horizon. But
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the line of water was still confounded with the lowering clouds that hang aloft and
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in the distance appeared to touch the edge of the water. End of Chapter
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twenty nine,