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Journey to the Center of the Earth
Chapter 29. ON THE WATERS. A RAFT VOYAGE
On the thirteenth of August we were up early.
There was no time to lose, we now had to begin a new kind of movement, which would be fast and not tiring.
A mast of two joined timbers, a yard from another piece, and a sail of linen from our bed.
We were luckily not short of rope, and the whole seemed strong and seaworthy.
At six o'clock in the morning the eager, excited Professor gave the signal to get on board.
The food, the luggage, all our instruments, our weapons, and a good supply of fresh water were placed on the raft.
We had collected the water from springs in the rocks.
Hans had, with considerable skill, made a rudder, which let him steer the floating platform easily.
He took the tiller, as a matter of course.
The worthy man was as good a sailor as he was a guide and duck hunter.
I then let go the rope which held us to the shore, the sail was set to the wind, and we moved off quickly.
Our sea voyage had at last begun, and once more we were heading for distant and unknown regions.
Just as we were about to leave the little port, where the raft had been made.
My uncle, who was very strong on geographic names, wanted to give it a name.
Among others, he suggested my name, saying Port Gretchen would honour me.
"Well," said I, "before you decide I have another to suggest."
"Well, out with it."
"I'd like to call it Gretchen. Port Gretchen will sound very good on our future map."
"Well then, Port Gretchen let it be," said the Professor.
And so the memory of my dear girl was attached to our adventurous and memorable expedition.
When we left the shore the wind was blowing from the north and east.
We went directly before the wind at a much greater speed than one would expect from a raft.
The dense layers of air at that depth had great force and pushed the sail with strong power.
After an hour, my uncle, who had been making careful observations, could judge the speed at which we moved.
It was far beyond anything seen in the upper world.
If," he said, "we keep going at this rate, we'll have covered thirty leagues in twenty-four hours. With a mere raft this is incredible speed.
I was certainly surprised, and without answering went forward on the raft.
Already the northern shore was fading at the edge of the horizon.
The two shores seemed to separate more and more, leaving a wide open space for our voyage.
Before me I could see nothing but the vast and seemingly endless sea on which we floated, the only living things in sight.
Huge dark clouds cast grey shadows below, shadows which seemed to press that colourless and sad water by their weight.
I never saw anything more suggestive of gloom and lower darkness.
Silvery rays of electric light, reflected here.
There on small spots of water, made bright sparkles in the long wake of our slow craft.
Soon we were completely out of sight of land, not a trace could be seen, nor any sign of where we were going.
If it weren't for the phosphorescent light at the wake of the raft, I'd have thought we stood still.
So still and motionless did we seem, without any distant point to fix our eyes on.
But I knew that we were moving at a very fast rate.
Around noon, great collections of seaweed were found all around us.
I knew these plants' extraordinary growth could creep along the ocean bottom and halt the progress of large ships.
But seaweeds had never been seen so gigantic and strange as those of the Central Sea.
I could imagine how, seen from a distance, the long lines of algae rising on wave tops were taken for living things.
This mistake would therefore have helped to cause the belief in sea serpents.
Our raft passed fucus or seawrack three to four thousand feet long, immense, looking like snakes stretching far beyond our horizon.
It gave me great pleasure to look at their coloured ribbon like endless lengths.
Hour after hour passed without our reaching the end of these floating weeds.
If my wonder grew, my patience was nearly gone.
What natural force could have produced such unusual and extraordinary plants?
What must have been the look of the globe during the first centuries of its formation?
Under the combined action of heat and moisture, the plant world covered its vast surface to the exclusion of everything else.
These were matters of never ending interest for the geologist and the thinker.
We continued our journey into night, and, as I had noted the evening before, the air's brightness did not lessen.
Whatever the cause, it was a phenomenon whose duration we could be sure of.
After supper and a little speculative talk, I lay down at the foot of the mast and soon fell asleep.
Hans stayed still at the tiller, letting the raft rise and fall on the waves.
The wind being behind, and the sail square, all he had to do was to keep his oar in the middle.
Ever since we had left the newly named Port Gretchen, my worthy uncle had told me to keep a regular log of our day's navigation.
He instructed me to note even the smallest details and every interesting or odd phenomenon.
He told me to record the wind's direction, our speed, the distance we went, in short, every event.
From our log, therefore, I tell the story of our voyage on the Central Sea.
Friday, August 14th, a steady breeze from the northwest.
Raft moving with extreme speed, and going perfectly straight.
Coast still faintly visible about thirty leagues to leeward.
Nothing to be seen beyond the horizon ahead.
The extraordinary strength of the light neither increases nor decreases.
It's strangely unchanging, the weather remarkably fine.
The clouds have risen very high, are light and soft, and are surrounded by an air like silver in melting.
Thermometer, 32 degrees centigrade, showing a heavy, warm subterranean atmosphere.
Around noon our guide Hans, having prepared and baited a hook, cast his line into the subterranean waters.
The bait he used was a small piece of meat, by which he hid his hook.
Anxious as I was, I was for a long time doomed to disappointment.
Were these waters full of fish or not?
That was the important question, No, was my decided answer.
Then there came a sudden and rather strong pull.
Hans calmly drew it in, and with it a fish, which struggled violently to escape.
"A fish!" cried my uncle.
"It's a sturgeon!" I cried, "certainly a small sturgeon."
The Professor looked at the fish carefully, noting every feature, and he didn't agree with my opinion.
The fish had a flat head, round body, and the lower parts covered with bony scales.
Its mouth had no teeth at all.
The pectoral fins, which were very developed, grew directly from the body, which properly had no tail.
The animal certainly belonged to the group in which naturalists place the sturgeon, but it differed from that fish in many essential points.
My uncle, after all, wasn't wrong, After a long careful examination, he said,
This fish, dear boy, belongs to a family extinct for ages, of which no trace has been found on earth except fossil remains in the Devonian strata.
"You don't mean to say," I cried, "that we have caught a live specimen of a fish belonging to the primitive stock that existed before the flood?"
"We have," said the Professor, who all this time was continuing his observations.
"And you may see by careful study that these fossil fish have no identity with living species."
"To hold in one's hand, therefore, a living specimen of the order, is enough to make a naturalist happy for life."
"But," cried I, "to what family does it belong?"
"To the order of Ganoides, an order of fish having angled scales, covered with bright enamel, forming one of the family of the Cephalaspides, of the genus, "
"Well, sir," I said, as I saw my uncle hesitate to finish.
"To the genus Pterychtis".
Yes, I'm certain of it, Still, though I'm sure of my guess, this fish shows to us a remarkable feature.
This feature has never been known to exist in any other fish except those native to underground waters, wells, lakes, caverns, and similar hidden pools.
"And what may that be?"
"It's blind."
"Blind!" I cried, very surprised.
"Not only blind," continued the Professor, "but absolutely without eyes."
I now looked at our find for myself.
It was strange, to be sure, but it was really a fact.
This, however, might be a single case, I suggested.
The hook was baited again and once more thrown into the water.
This underground ocean must have been fairly full of fish, for in two hours we caught a large number of Pterychtis.
We also caught other fish belonging to another supposed extinct family, the Dipterides, though my uncle couldn't place it exactly.
All, without exception, however, were blind, this unexpected catch let us renew our food supply in a very satisfactory way.
We were now sure that this subterranean sea held only fish known to us as fossil specimens.
Fish and reptiles were more complete the farther back their origins dated.
We began to hope that we'd find some of those saurians which science has rebuilt from bits of bone or cartilage.
I took up the telescope and carefully looked over the horizon.
I searched the whole sea, it was empty and entirely deserted.
No doubt we were still too near the coast.
After looking at the ocean, I looked up, toward the strange and mysterious sky.
Why shouldn't one of the birds rebuilt by the immortal Cuvier flap his huge wings in the heavy layers of underground air?
It would, of course, find enough food in the fish of the sea.
I looked for some time at the empty sky.
It was as silent and as empty as the shores we had lately left.
Nevertheless, though I could neither see nor find anything, my imagination carried me into wild ideas.
I was in a kind of waking dream.
I thought I saw on the surface of the water those enormous ancient turtles as big as floating islands.
On those dull and gloomy shores passed a ghostly line of the mammals of early days.
Among them were the great Liptotherium, found in the cave-like hollow of the Brazilian hills, and the Mesicotherium, a native of the icy regions of Siberia.
Farther on, the pachyderm Lophrodon, that giant tapir, hid behind rocks, ready to fight for its food with the Anoplotherium.
The Anoplotherium was a strange animal partaking of the nature of the rhinoceros, the horse, the hippopotamus and the camel.
There was the giant Mastodon, twisting and turning his horrible trunk, with which he crushed the rocks of the shore to powder.
The Megatherium, his back raised like a cat in anger and his enormous claws stretched out, dug into the earth for food.
He woke the loud echoes of the whole place with his terrible roar.
Higher up still, the first monkey ever seen on the face of the globe climbed, playing up the granite hills.
Still farther away flew the Pterodactyl, with the winged hand, gliding or rather sailing through the dense and pressed air like a great bat.
Above all, near the leaden granite sky, were immense birds, more powerful than the cassowary and the ostrich.
They spread their mighty wings and beat against the huge stone roof of the inland sea.
I thought, such was the work of my imagination, that I saw this whole tribe of ancient creatures.
I carried myself back to far ages, long before man existed, when the earth was too imperfect for him to live on.
My dream was of countless ages before the existence of man.
The mammals first disappeared, then the mighty birds, then the reptiles of the secondary period.
Then the fish, the crustacea, the mollusks, and finally the vertebrates.
The simple animals of the period of transition in their turn sank into nothing.
The whole picture of the world's life before the historic period seemed reborn, mine the only human heart beating in that uninhabited world.
There were no more seasons, there were no more climates.
The natural heat of the world rose unceasingly, and cancelled that of the great bright Sun.
Vegetation grew in an exaggerated way, I passed like a shadow among brushwood as tall as the giant trees of California.
And I trod under foot the damp and humid soil, full of strong and varied vegetation.
I leaned against the huge column like trunks of giant trees, to which those of Canada were like ferns.
Whole ages passed, hundreds upon hundreds of years were compressed into a single day.
Next, shown before me like a picture, came the great and strange series of changes of the earth.
Plants disappeared, the granite rocks lost all trace of solidity.
The liquid state was suddenly put in place of the former state.
This was caused by intense heat acting on the organic matter of the earth.
The waters flowed over the whole surface of the globe.
They boiled, they were vaporized, or turned into steam.
A kind of cloud of steam wrapped the whole earth.
The globe itself became at last nothing but one huge sphere of gas.
It was hard to describe in colour, between white heat and red, as large and as bright as the sun.
In the very centre of this enormous mass, fourteen hundred thousand times as large as our globe, I was swept round in space.
I was brought into close meeting with the planets.
My body became vapor and mixed atomically with the enormous clouds, which rushed like a mighty comet into boundless space.
What an extraordinary dream, Where would it finally take me?
My feverish hand began to write down the strange details, details more like the thoughts of a madman than anything calm and real.
I had during this time of hallucination forgotten everything, the Professor, the guide, and the raft on which we were floating.
My mind was in a state of near forgetfulness.
"What's the matter, Harry?" said my uncle suddenly.
My eyes, which were wide open like those of a sleepwalker, were fixed on him.
But I didn't see him, nor could I clearly make out anything around me.
"Take care, my boy," again cried my uncle, "you'll fall into the sea."
As he said these words, I felt myself seized on the other side by the firm hand of our loyal guide.
Had it not been for Hans's quick mind, I must certainly have fallen into the waves and been drowned.
"Have you gone mad?" cried my uncle, shaking me on the other side.
"What what's the matter?" I said at last, coming to myself.
"Are you ill, Henry?" continued the Professor in an anxious tone.
"No no, but I have had an extraordinary dream. It, however, has gone. All now seems well," I added, looking around me with strangely puzzled eyes.
"All right," said my uncle.
"A beautiful breeze, a splendid sea."
"We're going along at a fast rate, and if I'm not wrong we'll soon see land."
"I won't be sorry to change the narrow limits of our raft for the mysterious strand of the subterranean ocean."
As my uncle spoke these words, I rose and carefully looked at the horizon.
But the water's line was merged with the lowering clouds above, which in the distance seemed to touch the water's edge.