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this horizontal sea, which could never have led to anything satisfactory. We
shall descend, descend, and everlastingly descend. Do you know, my dear boy,
that to reach the interior of the earth we have only five thousand miles to
travel!"
"Bah!" I cried, carried away by a burst of enthusiasm, "the distance is
scarcely worth speaking about. The thing is to make a start."
My wild, mad, and incoherent speeches continued until we rejoined our patient
and phlegmatic guide. All was, we found, prepared for an immediate departure.
There was not a single parcel but what was in its proper place. We all took up
our posts on the raft, and the sail being hoisted, Hans received his
directions, and guided the frail bark towards Cape
Saknussemm, as we had definitely named it.
The wind was very unfavorable to a craft that was unable to sail close to the
wind. It was constructed to go before the blast. We were continually reduced
to pushing ourselves forward by means of poles. On several occasions the rocks
ran far out into deep water and we were compelled to make a long round. At
last, after three long and weary hours of navigation, that is to say, about
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six o'clock in the evening, we found a place at which we could land.
I jumped on shore first. In my present state of excitement and enthusiasm, I
was always first.
My uncle and the Icelander followed. The voyage from the port to this point of
the sea had by no means calmed me. It had rather produced the opposite effect.
I even proposed to burn our vessel, that is, to destroy our raft, in order to
completely cut off our retreat. But my uncle sternly opposed this wild
project. I began to think him particularly lukewarm and unenthusiastic.
"At any rate, my dear uncle," I said, "let us start without delay."
"Yes, my boy, I am quite as eager to do so as you can be. But, in the first
place, let us examine this mysterious gallery, in order to find if we shall
need to prepare and mend our ladders."
My uncle now began to see to the efficiency of our Ruhmkorff coil, which would
doubtless soon be needed; the raft, securely fastened to a rock, was left
alone. Moreover, the opening into the new gallery was not twenty paces distant
from the spot. Our little troop, with myself at the head, advanced.
The orifice, which was almost circular, presented a diameter of about five
feet; the somber tunnel was cut in the living rock, and coated on the inside
by the different material which had once passed through it in a state of
fusion. The lower part was about level with the water, so that we were able to
penetrate to the interior without difficulty.
We followed an almost horizontal direction; when, at the end of about a dozen
paces, our further advance was checked by the interposition of an enormous
block of granite rock.
"Accursed stone!" I cried furiously, on perceiving that we were stopped by
what seemed an insurmountable obstacle.
In vain we looked to the right, in vain we looked to the left; in vain
examined it above and below. There existed no passage, no sign of any other
tunnel. I experienced the most bitter and painful disappointment. So enraged
was I that I would not admit the reality of any obstacle. I
stooped to my knees; I looked under the mass of stone. No hole, no interstice.
I then looked above. The same barrier of granite! Hans, with the lamp,
examined the sides of the tunnel in every direction.
But all in vain! It was necessary to renounce all hope of passing through.
I had seated myself upon the ground. My uncle walked angrily and hopelessly up
and down.
He was evidently desperate.
"But," I cried, after some moments' thought, "what about Arne Saknussemm?"
"You are right," replied my uncle, "he can never have been checked by a lump
of rock."
"No- ten thousand times no," I cried, with extreme vivacity. "This huge lump
of rock, in consequence of some singular concussion, or process, one of those
magnetic phenomena which have so often shaken the terrestrial crust, has in
some unexpected way closed up the passage. Many and many years have passed
away since the return of Saknussemm, and the fall of this huge block of
granite. Is it not quite evident that this gallery was formerly the outlet for
the pent-up lava in the interior of the earth, and that these eruptive matters
then circulated freely? Look at these recent fissures in the granite roof; it
is evidently formed of pieces of enormous stone, placed here as if by the hand
of a giant, who had worked to make a strong and substantial arch. One day,
after an unusually strong shock, the vast rock which stands in our way, and
which was doubtless the key of a kind of arch, fell through to a level with
the soil and has barred our further progress. We are right, then, in thinking
that this is an unexpected obstacle, with which Saknussemm did not meet; and
if we do not upset it in some way, we are unworthy of following in the
footsteps of the great discoverer; and incapable of finding our way to the
center of the earth!"
In this wild way I addressed my uncle. The zeal of the Professor, his earnest
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longing for success, had become part and parcel of my being. I wholly forgot
the past; I utterly despised the future. Nothing existed for me upon the
surface of this spheroid in the bosom of which I
was engulfed, no towns, no country, no Hamburg, no Koenigstrasse, not even my
poor
Gretchen, who by this time would believe me utterly lost in the interior of
the earth!
"Well," cried my uncle, roused to enthusiasm by my words, "Let us go to work
with pickaxes, with crowbars, with anything that comes to hand- but down with
these terrible walls."
"It is far too tough and too big to be destroyed by a pickax or crowbar," I
replied.
"What then?"
"As I said, it is useless to think of overcoming such a difficulty by means of
ordinary tools."
"What then?"
"What else but gunpowder, a subterranean mine? Let us blow up the obstacle
that stands in our way."
"Gunpowder!"
"Yes; all we have to do is to get rid of this paltry obstacle."
"To work, Hans, to work!" cried the Professor.
The Icelander went back to the raft, and soon returned with a huge crowbar,
with which he began to dig a hole in the rock, which was to serve as a mine.
It was by no means a slight task.
It was necessary for our purpose to make a cavity large enough to hold fifty
pounds of fulminating gun cotton, the expansive power of which is four times
as great as that of ordinary gunpowder.
I had now roused myself to an almost miraculous state of excitement. While
Hans was at work, I actively assisted my uncle to prepare a long wick, made
from damp gunpowder, the mass of which we finally enclosed in a bag of linen.
"We are bound to go through," I cried, enthusiastically.
"We are bound to go through," responded the Professor, tapping me on the back.
At midnight, our work as miners was completely finished; the charge of
fulminating cotton was thrust into the hollow, and the match, which we had
made of considerable length, was ready.
A spark was now sufficient to ignite this formidable engine, and to blow the
rock to atoms!
"We will now rest until tomorrow."
It was absolutely necessary to resign myself to my fate, and to consent to
wait for the explosion for six weary hours!
Chapter 39
The Explosion and Its Results
THE
next day, which was the twenty-seventh of August, was a date celebrated in our
wondrous subterranean journey. I never think of it even now, but I shudder
with horror. My heart beats wildly at the very memory of that awful day.
From this time forward, our reason, our judgment, our human ingenuity, have
nothing to do with the course of events. We are about to become the plaything [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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