XXXVI

XXXVI

HERE ENDS WHAT I have called my “ship log,” happily saved from the wreckage. I resume my narrative as before.

What happened when the raft was dashed on the reefs of the shore I cannot tell. I felt myself being hurled into the waves, and if I escaped from death, if my body was not torn on the sharp rocks, it was because Hans’ powerful arm pulled me back from the abyss.

The courageous Icelander carried me out of reach of the waves to a burning sand where I found myself side by side with my uncle.

Then he returned to the rocks, against which the furious waves were beating, to save a few pieces from the shipwreck. I was unable to speak; I was shattered by emotion and fatigue; it took me a long hour to recover.

Meanwhile, a deluge of rain was still falling, but with the increased intensity that precedes the end of a thunderstorm. A few overhanging rocks afforded us shelter from the torrents falling from the sky. Hans prepared some food that I could not touch, and each of us, exhausted by three sleepless nights, fell into a painful sleep.

The next day the weather was splendid. The sky and the ocean had calmed down in perfect synchrony. Any trace of the tempest had disappeared. The professor’s joyful words greeted my awakening. His good cheer was terrible.

“Well, my boy,” he exclaimed, “have you slept well?”

Would not one have thought that we were still in the house on the Königstrasse, that I was coming down peacefully for breakfast, that I was to be married to poor Graüben the very same day?

Alas! if the tempest had only driven the raft to the east, we would have passed under Germany, under my beloved city of Hamburg, under the very street where all that I loved in the world dwelled. Then just under forty leagues would have separated us! But they were forty vertical leagues of granite wall, and in reality we were a thousand leagues apart!

All these painful reflections rapidly crossed my mind before I answered my uncle’s question.

“Well, now,” he repeated, “won’t you tell me whether you slept well?”

“Very well,” I said. “I still feel shattered, but it’ll soon turn to nothing.”

“Absolutely nothing, a bit of fatigue, that’s all.”

“But you seem very cheerful this morning, Uncle.”

“Delighted, my boy, delighted! We’ve arrived!”

“At the goal of our expedition?”

“No, but at the end of that unending ocean. Now we’ll travel by land again, and really go down into the bowels of the globe.”

“Uncle, allow me to ask you a question.”

“Of course, Axel.”

“How do we return?”

“Return? Ah! You think about returning before we’ve arrived.”

“No, I only want to know how we’ll do it.”

“In the simplest way in the world. Once we’ve reached the center of the globe, we’ll either find a new route to go back to the surface, or we’ll just return the way we came like ordinary folks. I’d like to think that it won’t be closed off behind us.”

“But then we’ll have to repair the raft.”

“Of course.”

“As for food supplies, do we have enough left to accomplish all these great things?”

“Yes, certainly. Hans is a skillful fellow, and I’m sure that he’s saved a large part of our cargo. Let’s go and make sure, at any rate.”

We left this grotto which was open to every wind. I cherished a hope that was a fear as well; it seemed impossible to me that the terrible wreckage of the raft would not have destroyed everything on board. I was wrong. When I arrived on the shore, I found Hans in the midst of a multitude of items, all arranged in order. My uncle shook hands with him in an expression of deep gratitude. This man, with a superhuman devotion that perhaps had no equal, had worked while we were sleeping and had saved the most precious items at the risk of his life.

It’s not that we had not suffered appreciable losses; our firearms, for instance; but we could do without them. Our stock of powder had remained intact after having almost blown us up during the tempest.

“Well,” exclaimed the professor, “since we have no guns we won’t have to bother hunting.”

“All right; but the instruments?”

“Here’s the manometer, the most useful of them all, for which I’d have exchanged all the others! With this I can calculate the depth so as to know when we’ve reached the center. Without it we risk going beyond it and re-emerging at the antipodes!”

This cheerfulness was ferocious.

“But the compass?” I asked.

“Here it is, on this rock, in perfect condition, as well as the thermometers and the chronometer. Ah! The hunter is an invaluable man!”

There was no denying it. As far as instruments, nothing was missing. As for tools and devices, I saw ladders, ropes, picks, pickaxes, etc. lying strewn about in the sand.

Still there was the question of food supplies to investigate.

“And the food?” I said.

The boxes that contained them were lined up on the gravel, perfectly preserved; for the most part the sea had spared them, and what with biscuits, salted meat, gin and dried fish, we still had a four-month food supply.

“Four months!” exclaimed the professor. “We have time to go and return, and with what’s left I’ll give a grand dinner for all my colleagues at the Johanneum!”

I should have been used to my uncle’s temperament for a long time, and yet he never ceased to amaze me.

“Now,” he said, “we’ll replenish our supply of fresh water with the rain that the storm has left in all these granite basins; that way we’ll have no reason to fear being overcome by thirst. As for the raft, I’ll recommend to Hans to do his best to repair it, although I don’t expect it’ll be of any further use to us!”

“How so?” I exclaimed.

“An idea of my own, my boy. I don’t think we’ll go out where we came in.”

I looked at the professor with a certain mistrust. I wondered whether he had not gone mad. And yet he would turn out to be right.

“Let’s go and have breakfast,” he resumed.

I followed him to an elevated promontory after he had given his instructions to the hunter. Dried meat, biscuits, and tea made us an excellent meal there, one of the best, I’ll admit, that I have ever had in my life. Hunger, fresh air, calm weather after the trouble, all contributed to give me an appetite.

During breakfast, I asked my uncle where we were now.

“That,” I said, “seems to me difficult to calculate.”

“Difficult to calculate exactly, yes,” he replied; “impossible, actually, since during these three days of tempest I’ve not been able to keep track of the speed or direction of the raft; but we can still make an approximate estimate.”

“In fact, we made the last observation on the island with the geyser ...”

“On Axel Island, my boy. Don’t reject the honor of having given your name to the first island ever discovered in the interior of the earth.”

“All right. On Axel Island, we had covered two hundred and seventy leagues of ocean, and we were six hundred leagues away from Iceland.”

“Good! Let’s start from that point, then, and count four days of storm, during which our speed could not have been less than eighty leagues per twenty-four hours.”

“That’s right. So that would be three hundred leagues in addition.”

“Yes, and so the Lidenbrock Sea would be about six hundred leagues from shore to shore! Do you realize, Axel, that it competes in size with the Mediterranean?”

“Yes, especially if we’ve not crossed all of it!”

“Which is quite possible!”

“And curiously,” I added, “if our calculations are accurate, we now have the Mediterranean right above our heads.”

“Really!”

“Really, since we are nine hundred leagues away from Reykjavik!”

“That’s a nice long way, my boy; but whether we’re under the Mediterranean rather than under Turkey or the Atlantic, depends on whether our direction hasn’t changed.”

“No, the wind seemed steady; so I think this shore should be south-east of Port Graüben.”

“Well, it’s easy to make sure of that by consulting the compass. Let’s go and see what it says!”

The professor went toward the rock where Hans had put the instruments. He was cheerful, lively, he rubbed his hands, he posed! A real young man! I followed him, rather curious to know if I was not mistaken in my estimate.

When we reached the rock, my uncle took the compass, placed it horizontally and observed the needle, which after a few oscillations stopped in a fixed position due to the magnetic attraction.

My uncle looked, and rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Finally he turned to me, thunderstruck.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

He motioned to me to look at the instrument. An exclamation of surprise burst from me. The tip of the needle indicated north where we assumed the south to be! It pointed to the shore instead of the open sea!

I shook the compass, I examined it; it was in perfect condition. No matter in what position we placed the needle, it obstinately returned to this unexpected direction.

Therefore, there could be no doubt: during the storm, the wind had changed without our noticing, and had taken our raft back to the shore that my uncle thought he had left behind.