The whole next day the tunnel opened its endless arcades before us. We moved on almost without a word. Hans’ silence spread to us.
The road was not ascending now, at least not perceptibly. Sometimes, it even seemed to slope downward. But this tendency, which was at any rate very slight, did not reassure the professor; for there was no change in the nature of the strata, and the Transition period became more and more manifest.
The electric light made the schist, the limestone, and old red sandstone of the walls glitter splendidly. One might have thought that we were passing through an open trench in Devonshire, the region whose name has been given to this kind of soil.
as
Magnificent marble specimens covered the walls, some of a grayish agate with veins fancifully outlined in white, others in a crimson color, or yellow dotted with spots of red; farther on, samples of dark cherry-red marbles in which limestone showed up in bright hues.
The greater part of this marble bore impressions of primitive organisms. Creation had made obvious progress since the previous day. Instead of rudimentary trilobites, I noticed remains of a more perfect order of beings, amongst others ganoid fishes
at
and some of those saurians in which paleontologists have discovered the earliest reptile forms. The Devonian seas were inhabited by animals of these species, and deposited them by thousands in the newly formed rocks.
It was obvious that we were ascending the scale of animal life in which man holds the highest place. But Professor Lidenbrock seemed not to care.
He was waiting for one of two events: either that a vertical well would be opening under his feet and allow him to resume his descent , or that an obstacle would prevent him from continuing on this route. But evening came, and this hope was not fulfilled.
On Friday, after a night during which I began to feel the pangs of thirst, our little troop again plunged into the winding passages of the tunnel.
After ten hours’ walking I noticed that the reflection of our lamps on the walls diminished strangely. The marble, the schist, the limestone, and the sandstone were giving way to a dark and lusterless lining. At one moment where the tunnel became very narrow, I leaned against the left wall.
When I pulled my hand back, it was black. I looked more closely. We were in a coal formation.
“A coal mine!” I exclaimed.
“A mine without miners,” my uncle replied.
“Ah! Who knows?” I asked.
“I know,” the professor pronounced decidedly, “I’m certain that this tunnel piercing through layers of coal was never created by the hand of man. But whether it’s the work of nature or not doesn’t matter. Dinnertime has come; let’s have dinner.”
Hans prepared some food. I scarcely ate, and I swallowed the few drops of water rationed out to me. One half-full flask was all we had left to quench the thirst of three men.
After their meal my two companions laid down on their blankets, and found in sleep a remedy for their exhaustion. But I could not sleep, and I counted the hours until morning.
On Saturday, at six, we started afresh. In twenty minutes we reached a vast open space; I then knew that the hand of man could not have hollowed out this coal mine; the vaults would have been shored up, and really they seemed to be held up only by a miracle of equilibrium.
This cavern was about a hundred feet wide and a hundred and fifty high. The ground had been pushed aside by a subterranean motion. The massive rock, impacted by a powerful thrust, had been displaced, leaving this large empty space that inhabitants of the earth entered for the first time.
The whole history of the Carboniferous period
au
was written on these dark walls, and a geologist might with ease trace all its diverse phases. The beds of coal were separated by strata of sandstone or compact clays, and appeared crushed by the strata above.
At the age of the world which preceded the Secondary period, the earth was covered with immense vegetable forms, produced by the double influence of tropical heat and constant moisture; a vaporous atmosphere enveloped the earth, depriving it again of the direct rays of the sun.
Hence the conclusion that the high temperature was due to some other source than the heat of the sun. Perhaps the day star was not ready to play its brilliant role. There were no ‘climates’ as yet, and a torrid heat, equal from pole to equator, spread over the whole surface of the globe. Where did it come from? Was it from the interior of the earth?
Notwithstanding Professor Lidenbrock’s theories, a violent heat did at that time smolder in the bowels of the spheroid. Its effect was felt up to the last layers of the terrestrial crust; the plants, deprived of the beneficent influence of the sun, produced neither flowers nor scent, but their roots drew vigorous life from the burning soil of the first days.
There were only a few trees, only herbaceous plants, enormous meadows, ferns, lycopods, sigillarias, asterophyllites,
av
rare families whose species numbered in the thousands then.
Coal owes its existence to this period of profuse vegetation. The still flexible crust of the earth followed the movements of the liquid masses it covered. Hence numerous fissures and depressions. The plants, pushed under water, gradually accumulated in considerable quantities.
Then the reactions of natural chemistry intervened; at the bottom of the oceans, the vegetable accumulations first became peat; then, due to the influence of gases and the heat of fermentation, they underwent a process of complete mineralization.
In this way those immense coalfields were formed, which excessive exploitation will nonetheless exhaust in less than three centuries, unless industrialized countries prevent it.
These reflections came to my mind while I was contemplating the mineral wealth stored up in this portion of the globe. Undoubtedly, I thought, these will never be discovered; the exploitation of such deep mines would require too large a sacrifice, and what would be the use as long as coal is spread far and wide close to the surface? Therefore, such as I see these intact layers, such they will be when this world comes to an end.
But still we marched on, and I alone forgot the length of the way by losing myself in the midst of geological contemplations. The temperature remained what it had been during our passage through the lava and schist. Only my sense of smell was affected by an odor of hydrocarbon. I immediately recognized in this tunnel the presence of a considerable quantity of the dangerous gas called firedamp by miners, whose explosion has often caused dreadful catastrophes.
Luckily, our light came from Ruhmkorff’s ingenious device. If by misfortune we had carelessly explored this tunnel with torches, a terrible explosion would have put an end to traveling by eliminating the travelers.
This excursion through the coal formation lasted until night. My uncle could scarcely restrain his impatience at the horizontal road. The darkness, always twenty steps ahead of us, prevented us from estimating the length of the tunnel; and I was beginning to think it must be endless, when suddenly at six o’clock a wall very unexpectedly arose before us. Right or left, top or bottom, there was no passage; we were at the end of a blind alley.
“Well, all the better!” exclaimed my uncle, “I know what the facts are. We’re not on Saknussemm’s route, and all we have to do is go back. Let’s take a night’s rest, and in three days we’ll get back to the point where the two tunnels branch off.”
“Yes,” I said, “if we have any strength left!”
“And why not?”
“Because tomorrow we’ll have no water left at all.”
“Or courage either?” asked my uncle, looking at me severely.
I dared make no answer.
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.”