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21 - Under the Ocean - Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne · Classic Sci Fi Books - Daily

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