XXVIII

XXVIII

WHEN I RETURNED TO life my face was wet, but wet with tears. How long that state of unconsciousness had lasted I cannot say. I no longer had any means of telling time. Never had there been a solitude like mine, never had an abandonment been so complete!

After my fall I had lost a great deal of blood. I felt it flowing over me! Ah! how I regretted that I was not yet dead, “and that it remained to be done”! I did not want to think any longer. I drove away every idea, and overcome by pain, I rolled close to the opposite wall.

I was already beginning to lose consciousness again and plunging into supreme annihilation, when a loud noise struck my ear. It resembled the continuous rumble of thunder, and I heard the sound waves gradually fading in the distant recesses of the abyss.

Where did this noise come from? No doubt from some phenomenon that was occurring right inside the mass of the earth. A gas explosion, or the fall of some mighty foundation of the globe!

I continued to listen. I wanted to know if the noise would repeat itself. A quarter of an hour passed. Silence reigned in the tunnel. I could not even hear the beating of my heart anymore.

Suddenly my ear, resting haphazardly against the wall, seemed to catch vague, ungraspable, distant words. I trembled.

“This is a hallucination!” I thought.

But no. Listening more attentively, I really heard a murmur of voices. But my weakness did not allow me to understand what was being said. Yet it was language. That I was sure of.

For a moment I feared these words might be my own, brought back by an echo. Perhaps I had cried out without knowing it. I closed my lips firmly, and pressed my ear against the wall again.

“Yes, truly, someone is speaking! Someone is speaking!”

By moving several feet further along the wall, I could hear distinctly. I succeeded in catching uncertain, bizarre, unintelligible words. They came to me as if they had been pronounced at a low volume, murmured, so to speak. The word ‘forloräd’ was repeated several times, in a tone of pain.

What did it mean? Who was pronouncing it? My uncle or Hans, obviously. But if I heard them, they could hear me.

“Help!” I shouted with all my force. “Help!”

I listened, I watched in the shadows for an answer, a cry, a sigh. Nothing came. Several minutes passed. A whole world of ideas had opened up in my mind. I thought that my weakened voice could never reach my companions.

“For it is they,” I repeated. “What other men would be thirty leagues underground?”

I listened again. Moving my ear over the wall from one place to another, I found a mathematical point where the voices seemed to attain maximum volume. The word ‘forloräd’ again reached my ear; then that rolling of thunder which had roused me from my torpor.

“No,” I said, “no. These voices cannot be heard through solid rock. The wall is made of granite, and it would not allow even the loudest detonation to penetrate! This noise comes from the tunnel itself. There must be some very special acoustic effect here!”

I listened again, and this time, yes! this time! I distinctly heard my name flung across space!

It was my uncle who pronounced it! He was talking to the guide, and the word ‘forloräd’ was a Danish word!

Then I understood it all. To make myself heard, I precisely had to speak along this wall which would conduct the sound of my voice just as wire conducts electricity.

But there was no time to lose. If my companions moved only a few steps away, the acoustic phenomenon would cease. I therefore approached the wall, and I pronounced these words as clearly as possible:

“Uncle Lidenbrock!”

I waited with the most acute anxiety. Sound does not travel at great speed. Even increased density of air does not affect its velocity; it merely increases its intensity. Seconds, centuries passed, and at last these words reached my ears:

“Axel! Axel! is it you?”

“Yes! yes!” I replied.

“My child, where are you?”

“Lost, in the deepest darkness.”

“But your lamp?”

“Extinguished.”

“And the stream?”

“Disappeared.”

“Axel, my poor Axel, take courage!”

“Wait a little, I’m exhausted! I don’t have the strength to answer. But speak to me!”

“Courage,” resumed my uncle. “Don’t speak, listen to me. We’ve looked for you up and down the tunnel. Couldn’t find you. Ah! I wept much for you, my child! At last, assuming that you were still on the path of the Hansbach, we went back down and fired a few shots from our rifles. Now, if our voices are audible to each other, it’s purely an acoustic effect! Our hands cannot touch! But don’t despair, Axel! It’s already something that we can hear each other!”

During this time I had been thinking. A certain hope, still vague, was returning to my heart. Above all, there was one thing that it was important to me to find out. I placed my lips close to the wall and said:

“Uncle?”

“My boy?” came the reply after a few moments.

“We must first find out how far we are apart.”

“That’s easy.”

“You have your chronometer?”

“Yes.”

“Well, take it. Pronounce my name, noting exactly the second when you speak. I’ll repeat it as soon as it reaches me, and you’ll also note the exact moment when you get my answer.”

“Yes, and half the time between my call and your answer will indicate exactly the time my voice takes to reach you.”

“That’s it, Uncle.”

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Now, attention. I’m going to pronounce your name.”

I put my ear to the wall, and as soon as the name ‘Axel’ reached me, I immediately replied “Axel,” then waited.

“Forty seconds,” said my uncle. “Forty seconds have passed between the two words; so the sound takes twenty seconds. Now, at a rate of 1,020 feet per second, that adds up to 22,400 feet, or a league and a half, and one-eighth.”

“A league and a half!” I murmured.

“Eh! That can be overcome, Axel.”

“But must I go up or down?”

“Down—for this reason: We’ve arrived in a vast space where a large number of tunnels end. Yours must lead into it, for it seems as if all the clefts and crevices of the globe radiate out from this immense cavern where we are. So get up, and start walking. Walk on, drag yourself along, if necessary slide down the steep slopes, and you’ll find us with our arms open to receive you at the end of the path. Go ahead, my child, get going!”

These words cheered me up.

“Good-bye, Uncle!” I exclaimed. “I’m leaving. Our voices won’t be able to communicate anymore once I leave this place. So good-bye!”

.... “Good-bye, Axel, I’ll see you soon!”

These were the last words I heard.

This surprising conversation, carried on across the mass of the earth, with a distance of a league and a half between us, concluded with these words of hope. I prayed a prayer of gratitude to God, for he had guided me through these immense dark spaces to perhaps the only point where the voices of my companions could reach me.

This amazing acoustic effect is easily explained just in terms of the laws of physics. It came from the concave shape of the tunnel and the conducting power of the rock. There are many examples of this propagation of sounds which remain imperceptible in the intermediate spaces. I remember that this phenomenon has been observed in many places, among others on the inner gallery of the dome of St. Paul’s in London, and especially in the midst of those curious caverns in Sicily, those quarries near Syracuse, the most wonderful of which is known by the name of Ear of Dionysus.

These memories came back to my mind, and I realized clearly that since my uncle’s voice did reach me, there was no obstacle between us. Following the direction of the sound, I would logically reach him, if my strength did not fail me.

I therefore rose. I dragged myself rather than walked. The slope was steep. I let myself slide.

Soon the speed of my descent increased in a frightening way, and threatened to turn into a fall. I no longer had the strength to stop myself.

Suddenly the ground failed under my feet. I felt myself revolving in the air, striking against the craggy projections of a vertical tunnel, a real well; my head struck a sharp rock, and I lost consciousness.