XXI

XXI

THE NEXT DAY WE started very early. We had to hurry. We were a five days’ walk away from the crossroads.

I will not insist on the suffering we endured during our return. My uncle bore them with the rage of a man who does not feel his strongest; Hans with the resignation of his passive nature; I, I confess, with complaints and expressions of despair. I had no spirit to oppose this misfortune.

As I had foreseen, we ran completely out of water by the end of the first day’s march. Our liquid food was now nothing but gin, but this infernal fluid burned my throat, and I could not even endure the sight of it. I found the temperature stifling. Exhaustion paralyzed me. More than once I almost fell and lay motionless. Then we stopped; and my uncle and the Icelander comforted me as best they could. But I saw already that the former was struggling painfully against excessive fatigue and the tortures of thirst.

At last, on Tuesday, July 7, we arrived half dead at the junction of the two tunnels by dragging ourselves on our knees, on our hands. There I dropped down like an inert mass, stretched out on the lava soil. It was ten in the morning.

Hans and my uncle, clinging to the wall, tried to nibble a few bits of biscuit. Long moans escaped from my swollen lips.

After some time my uncle approached me and raised me up in his arms.

“Poor boy!” he said, in a genuine tone of compassion.

I was touched by these words, not being used to tenderness in the fierce professor. I seized his trembling hands with mine. He let me hold them and looked at me. His eyes were moist.

Then I saw him take the flask that was hanging at his side. To my amazement, he placed it at my lips.

“Drink!” he said.

Had I heard him right? Was my uncle beside himself? I stared at him stupidly, as if I could not understand him.

“Drink!” he said again.

And raising his flask he emptied every drop between my lips.

Oh! infinite pleasure! A sip of water came to moisten my burning mouth, just one, but it was enough to call back my ebbing life.

I thanked my uncle with clasped hands.

“Yes,” he said, “a draught of water! The last one! Do you hear me? The last one! I had carefully kept it at the bottom of my flask. Twenty times, a hundred times, I’ve had to resist a frightening desire to drink it! But no, Axel, I kept it for you.”

“Uncle!” I murmured, while big tears came to my eyes.

“Yes, poor child, I knew that as soon as you arrived at this crossroads you would drop half dead, and I kept my last drops of water to reanimate you.”

“Thank you, thank you!” I exclaimed.

Although my thirst was only partially quenched, I had nonetheless regained some strength. My throat muscles, until then contracted, relaxed again, and the inflammation of my lips abated somewhat. I was able to speak.

“Let’s see,” I said, “now we have only one choice. We’re out of water; we must go back.”

As I said this, my uncle avoided looking at me; he lowered his head; his eyes avoided mine.

“We must return!” I exclaimed, “and go back on the way to the Snaefells. May God give us strength to climb up the crater again!”

“Return!” said my uncle, as if he was answering himself rather than me.

“Yes, return, without losing a minute.”

A long silence followed.

“So then, Axel,” replied the professor in a strange voice, “these few drops of water have given you no courage and energy?”

“Courage?”

“I see you just as discouraged as you were before, and still expressing only despair!”

What kind man was I dealing with, and what plans was his daring mind hatching yet?

“What! you don’t want to ... ?”

“Give up this expedition just when all the signs are that it can succeed! Never!”

“Then must we resign ourselves to dying?”

“No, Axel, no! Go back. I don’t want your death! Let Hans accompany you. Leave me to myself!”

“Leave you here!”

“Leave me, I tell you! I’ve started this journey; I’ll continue to the end, or I won’t return. Go, Axel, go!”

My uncle spoke in extreme overexcitement. His voice, tender for a moment, had once again become hard, threatening. He struggled against the impossible with a sinister energy! I did not want to leave at the bottom of this chasm, yet on the other hand the instinct of self-preservation prompted me to flee.

The guide watched this scene with his usual indifference. Yet he understood what was going on between his two companions. The gestures themselves were sufficient to indicate the different paths on which each of us was trying to lead the other; but Hans seemed to take little interest in the question on which his life depended, ready to start if the signal for departure were given, or to stay according to his master’s least wish.

How I wished at that moment that I could make him understand me! My words, my moans, my tone would have overcome that cold nature. These dangers which our guide did not seem to anticipate, I would have made him understand and confront them. Together we might perhaps have convinced the obstinate professor. If necessary, we would have forced him to climb back up to the heights of the Snaefells!

I approached Hans. I put my hand on his. He did not move. I showed him the route to the crater. He remained immobile. My panting face revealed all my suffering. The Icelander gently shook his head, and calmly pointing to my uncle, he said:

“Master.”

“Master!” I shouted; “you madman! no, he isn’t the master of your life! We must flee, we must take him along with us! Do you hear me? Do you understand me?”

I had seized Hans by the arm. I wanted to force him to get up. I struggled with him. My uncle intervened.

“Calm down, Axel,” he said. “You’ll achieve nothing with that impassive servant. So listen to what I want to propose to you.”

I crossed my arms and looked my uncle straight in the face.

“The lack of water,” he said, “is the only obstacle for the realization of my plans. In this eastern tunnel, made up of lava, schist, and coal, we have not found a single particle of moisture. It’s possible that we’ll be more fortunate if we follow the western tunnel.”

I shook my head with an air of profound skepticism.

“Hear me out,” the professor continued with a firm voice. “While you were lying here motionlessly, I went to explore the structure of that tunnel. It goes directly into the bowels of the globe, and in a few hours it’ll take us to the granite formation. There we should find abundant springs. The nature of the rock implies this, and instinct agrees with logic to support my conviction. Now, this is what I propose to you. When Columbus asked his ships’ crew for three more days to discover new land, his crew, frightened and sick as they were, recognized the legitimacy of his claim, and he discovered the new world. I am the Columbus of this nether world, and I only ask for one more day. If after that day I haven’t found the water that we’re missing, I swear to you we’ll return to the surface of the earth.”

In spite of my irritation I was moved by these words and by the violence my uncle was doing to himself by speaking in this manner.

“Well then!” I exclaimed, “let’s do what you wish, and may God reward your superhuman energy. You now have only a few hours left to tempt fortune. Let’s go!”