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21 - Under the Ocean - Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne · Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty one under the Ocean. By the next day
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  Speaker 1: we had nearly forgotten all our past sufferings. The first
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  Speaker 1: sensation I had experienced was surprise at not being thirsty,
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  Speaker 1: and I actually asked myself the reason. The running stream,
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  Speaker 1: which flowed in rippling wavelets at my feet was the
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  Speaker 1: satisfactory reply. We breakfasted with a good appetite, and then
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  Speaker 1: drank our fill of the excellent water. I felt myself
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  Speaker 1: quite a new man, ready to go anywhere my uncle
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  Speaker 1: chose to lead. I began to think, why should not
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  Speaker 1: a man as seriously convinced as my uncle succeed with
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  Speaker 1: so excellent a guide as worthy Hans, and so devoted
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  Speaker 1: a nephew as myself. These were the brilliant ideas which
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  Speaker 1: now invaded my brain. Had the proposition now been made
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  Speaker 1: to go back to the summit of Mount Sneffels, I
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  Speaker 1: should have declined the offer in a most indignant manner.
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  Speaker 1: But fortunately there was no question of going up. We
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  Speaker 1: are about to distend farther into the interior of the earth.
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  Speaker 1: Let us be moving, I cried, awakening the echoes of
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  Speaker 1: the old world. We resumed our march on Thursday at
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  Speaker 1: eight o'clock in the morning. The great granite tunnel, as
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  Speaker 1: it went round by sinuous and winding ways, presented every
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  Speaker 1: now and then sharp turns, and in fact all the
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  Speaker 1: appearance of a labyrinth. Its direction, however, was in general
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  Speaker 1: toward the southwest. My uncle made several pauses in order
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  Speaker 1: to consult his compass. The gallery now began to trend
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  Speaker 1: downwards in a horizontal direction, with about two inches of
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  Speaker 1: fall in every furlong. The murmuring stream flowed quietly at
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  Speaker 1: our feet. I could not but compare it to some
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  Speaker 1: familiar spirit guiding us through the earth, and I dabbled
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  Speaker 1: my fingers in its tepid water, which sang like a naiad.
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  Speaker 1: As we progressed, my good humor began to assume a
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  Speaker 1: mythological character. As for my uncle, he began to complain
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  Speaker 1: of the horizontal character of the road. His route, he found,
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  Speaker 1: began to be indefinitely prolonged instead of sliding down the
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  Speaker 1: celestial ray, according to his expression, But we had no choice,
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  Speaker 1: and as long as our road led toward the center,
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  Speaker 1: however little progress we made, there was no reason to complain. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: from time to time the slopes were much greater. The
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  Speaker 1: Naiad sang more loudly, and we began to dip downward
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  Speaker 1: in earnest as. Yet, however, I felt no panful sensation.
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  Speaker 1: I had not got over the excitement of the discovery
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  Speaker 1: of water. That day and the next we did a
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  Speaker 1: considerable amount of horizontal and relatively little vertical traveling. On
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  Speaker 1: Friday evening, the tenth of July, according to our estimation,
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  Speaker 1: we ought to have been thirty leagues to the southeast
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  Speaker 1: of Rekivik, and about two leagues and a half deep.
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  Speaker 1: We now received a rather startling surprise. Under our feet
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  Speaker 1: there opened a horrible well. My uncle was so delighted
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  Speaker 1: that he actually clapped his hands as he saw how
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  Speaker 1: steep and sharp was the descent. Ah ah, he cried
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  Speaker 1: in rapturous delight. This takes us a long way. Look
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  Speaker 1: at the projections of the rock. Ha, he claimed, It's
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  Speaker 1: a fearful staircase. Hans, however, who in all our troubles
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  Speaker 1: had never given up the ropes, took care so to
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  Speaker 1: dispose of them as to prevent any accidents. Our descent
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  Speaker 1: then began. I dare not call it a perilous descent,
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  Speaker 1: for I was already too familiar with that sort of
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  Speaker 1: work to look upon it as anything but a very
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  Speaker 1: ordinary affair. This well was a kind of narrow opening
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  Speaker 1: in the massive granite, of the kind known as a fissure.
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  Speaker 1: The contraction of the terrestrial scaffolding when it suddenly cooled,
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  Speaker 1: had been evidently the cause. If it had ever served
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  Speaker 1: in former times as a kind of funnel through which
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  Speaker 1: passed the eruptive masses vomited by Snaefels, I was at
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  Speaker 1: a loss to explain how it had left no mark.
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  Speaker 1: We were, in fact descending in a spiral, something like
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  Speaker 1: those winding staircases in use in modern homes. We were
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  Speaker 1: compelled every quarter of an hour or thereabouts to down
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  Speaker 1: in order to rest our legs our calves ached. We
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  Speaker 1: then seated ourselves on some projecting rock, with our legs
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  Speaker 1: hanging over, and gossiped while we ate a mouthful, drinking
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  Speaker 1: still from the pleasantly warm running stream, which had not
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  Speaker 1: deserted us. It is scarcely necessary to say that in
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  Speaker 1: this curiously shaped fissure the Hansbach had become a cascade.
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  Speaker 1: To the detriment of its size. It was still, however,
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  Speaker 1: sufficient and more for our wants. Besides, we knew that
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  Speaker 1: as soon as the declivity ceased to be so abrupt,
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  Speaker 1: the stream must resume its peaceful course. At this moment
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  Speaker 1: it reminded me of my uncle his impatience and rage,
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  Speaker 1: while when it flowed more peacefully, I pictured to myself
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  Speaker 1: the placidity of the Icelandic guide. During the whole of
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  Speaker 1: two days, the sixth and seventh of July, we followed
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  Speaker 1: the extraordinary spiral staircase of the fissure, penetrating two leagues
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  Speaker 1: farther into the crust of the earth, which put us
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  Speaker 1: five leagues below the level of the sea. On the eighth, however,
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  Speaker 1: at twelve o'clock in the day, the fissure suddenly assumed
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  Speaker 1: a much more gentle slope, still trending in a southeast direction.
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  Speaker 1: The road now became comparatively easy and at the same
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  Speaker 1: time dreadfully monotonous. It would have been difficult for matters
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  Speaker 1: to have turned out otherwise. Our peculiar journey had no
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  Speaker 1: chance of being diversified by landscape and scenery at all events,
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  Speaker 1: such was my idea. At length. On Wednesday, the fifteenth,
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  Speaker 1: we were actually seven leagues twenty one miles below the
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  Speaker 1: surface of the earth, and fifty leagues distant from the
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  Speaker 1: mountain of Snaefels. Though if the truth betoldld, we were
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  Speaker 1: very tired, our health had resisted all suffering and was
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  Speaker 1: in a most satisfactory state. Our traveler's box of medicaments
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  Speaker 1: had not even been opened. My uncle was careful to
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  Speaker 1: note every hour the indications of the compass, of the manometer,
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  Speaker 1: and of the thermometer, all of which he afterwards published
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  Speaker 1: in his elaborate philosophical and scientific account of our remarkable voyage.
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  Speaker 1: He was therefore able to give an exact relation of
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  Speaker 1: the situation. When therefore he informed me that we were
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  Speaker 1: fifty leagues in a horizontal direction, distant from our starting point.
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  Speaker 1: I could not suppress a loud exclamation. What is the
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  Speaker 1: matter now, cried my uncle. Nothing very important. Only an
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  Speaker 1: idea has entered my head, was my reply. Well out
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  Speaker 1: with it, my boy. It is my opinion that, if
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  Speaker 1: your calculations are correct, we are no longer under Iceland.
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  Speaker 1: Do you think so? We can very easily find out,
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  Speaker 1: I replied, pulling out a map and compasses. You see,
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  Speaker 1: I said, after careful measurement, that I am not mistaken.
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  Speaker 1: We are far beyond Cape Portland and those fifty leagues
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  Speaker 1: to the southeast will take us into the open sea.
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  Speaker 1: Under the open sea, cried my uncle, rubbing his hands
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  Speaker 1: with a delighted air. Yes, I cried, no doubt, old
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  Speaker 1: ocean flows over our heads. Well, my dear boy, what
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  Speaker 1: can be more natural? Do you not know that in
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  Speaker 1: the neighborhood of Newcastle there are coal mines which have
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  Speaker 1: been worked far out under the sea. Now, my worthy uncle,
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  Speaker 1: the Professor, no doubt, regarded this discovery as a very
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  Speaker 1: simple fact. But to me the idea was by no
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  Speaker 1: means a pleasant one. And Yet, when one came to
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  Speaker 1: think the matter over seriously, what mattered it whether the
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  Speaker 1: plains and mountains of Iceland were suspended over our devoted
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  Speaker 1: heads or the mighty billows of the Atlantic Ocean. The
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  Speaker 1: whole question rested on the solidity of the granite roof
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  Speaker 1: above us. However, I soon got used to the ideal,
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  Speaker 1: for the passage, now level, now running down, and still
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  Speaker 1: always to the southeast, kept going deeper and deeper into
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  Speaker 1: the profound abysses of Mother Earth. Three days later, on
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  Speaker 1: the eighteenth of July, on a Saturday, we reached a
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  Speaker 1: kind of vast grotto. My uncle here paid Hans his
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  Speaker 1: usual ricks dollars, and it was decided that the next
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  Speaker 1: day should be a day of rest. End of chapter