A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
By Jules Verne
CHAPTER 32
THE BATTLE OF THE ELEMENTS
Friday, August 21st. This morning the magnificent geyser had wholly
disappeared. The wind had freshened up, and we were fast leaving the
neighborhood of Henry's Island. Even the roaring sound of the mighty
column was lost to the ear.
The weather, if, under the circumstances, we may use such an expression,
is about to change very suddenly. The atmosphere is being gradually
loaded with vapors, which carry with them the electricity formed by the
constant evaporation of the saline waters; the clouds are slowly but
sensibly falling towards the sea, and are assuming a dark-olive texture;
the electric rays can scarcely pierce through the opaque curtain which
has fallen like a drop scene before this wondrous theater, on the stage
of which another and terrible drama is soon to be enacted. This time it
is no fight of animals; it is the fearful battle of the elements.
I feel that I am very peculiarly influenced, as all creatures are on
land when a deluge is about to take place.
The cumuli, a perfectly oval kind of cloud, piled upon the south,
presented a most awful and sinister appearance, with the pitiless aspect
often seen before a storm. The air is extremely heavy; the sea is
comparatively calm.
In the distance, the clouds have assumed the appearance of enormous
balls of cotton, or rather pods, piled one above the other in
picturesque confusion. By degrees, they appear to swell out, break, and
gain in number what they lose in grandeur; their heaviness is so great
that they are unable to lift themselves from the horizon; but under the
influence of the upper currents of air, they are gradually broken up,
become much darker, and then present the appearance of one single layer
of a formidable character; now and then a lighter cloud, still lit up
from above, rebounds upon this grey carpet, and is lost in the opaque
mass.
There can be no doubt that the entire atmosphere is saturated with
electric fluid; I am myself wholly impregnated; my hairs literally stand
on end as if under the influence of a galvanic battery. If one of my
companions ventured to touch me, I think he would receive rather a
violent and unpleasant shock.
About ten o'clock in the morning, the symptoms of the storm became more
thorough and decisive; the wind appeared to soften down as if to take
breath for a renewed attack; the vast funereal pall above us looked like
a huge bag--like the cave of AEolus, in which the storm was collecting
its forces for the attack.
I tried all I could not to believe in the menacing signs of the sky, and
yet I could not avoid saying, as it were involuntarily:
"I believe we are going to have bad weather."
The Professor made me no answer. He was in a horrible, in a detestable
humor--to see the ocean stretching interminably before his eyes. On
hearing my words he simply shrugged his shoulders.
"We shall have a tremendous storm," I said again, pointing to the
horizon. "These clouds are falling lower and lower upon the sea, as if
to crush it."
A great silence prevailed. The wind wholly ceased. Nature assumed a dead
calm, and ceased to breathe. Upon the mast, where I noticed a sort of
slight ignis fatuus, the sail hangs in loose heavy folds. The raft is
motionless in the midst of a dark heavy sea--without undulation, without
motion. It is as still as glass. But as we are making no progress, what
is the use of keeping up the sail, which may be the cause of our
perdition if the tempest should suddenly strike us without warning.
"Let us lower the sail," I said, "it is only an act of common prudence."
"No--no," cried my uncle, in an exasperated tone, "a hundred times, no.
Let the wind strike us and do its worst, let the storm sweep us away
where it will--only let me see the glimmer of some coast--of some rocky
cliffs, even if they dash our raft into a thousand pieces. No! keep up
the sail--no matter what happens."
These words were scarcely uttered when the southern horizon underwent a
sudden and violent change. The long accumulated vapors were resolved
into water, and the air required to fill up the void produced became a
wild and raging tempest.
It came from the most distant corners of the mighty cavern. It raged
from every point of the compass. It roared; it yelled; it shrieked with
glee as of demons let loose. The darkness increased and became indeed
darkness visible.
The raft rose and fell with the storm, and bounded over the waves. My
uncle was cast headlong upon the deck. I with great difficulty dragged
myself towards him. He was holding on with might and main to the end of
a cable, and appeared to gaze with pleasure and delight at the spectacle
of the unchained elements.
Hans never moved a muscle. His long hair driven hither and thither by
the tempest and scattered wildly over his motionless face, gave him a
most extraordinary appearance--for every single hair was illuminated by
little sparkling sprigs.
His countenance presents the extraordinary appearance of an antediluvian
man, a true contemporary of the Megatherium.
Still the mast holds good against the storm. The sail spreads out and
fills like a soap bubble about to burst. The raft rushes on at a pace
impossible to estimate, but still less swiftly than the body of water
displaced beneath it, the rapidity of which may be seen by the lines
which fly right and left in the wake.
"The sail, the sail!" I cried, making a trumpet of my hands, and then
endeavoring to lower it.
"Let it alone!" said my uncle, more exasperated than ever.
"Nej," said Hans, gently shaking his head.
Nevertheless, the rain formed a roaring cataract before this horizon of
which we were in search, and to which we were rushing like madmen.
But before this wilderness of waters reached us, the mighty veil of
cloud was torn in twain; the sea began to foam wildly; and the
electricity, produced by some vast and extraordinary chemical action in
the upper layer of cloud, is brought into play. To the fearful claps of
thunder are added dazzling flashes of lightning, such as I had never
seen. The flashes crossed one another, hurled from every side; while the
thunder came pealing like an echo. The mass of vapor becomes
incandescent; the hailstones which strike the metal of our boots and our
weapons are actually luminous; the waves as they rise appear to be
fire-eating monsters, beneath which seethes an intense fire, their
crests surmounted by combs of flame.
My eyes are dazzled, blinded by the intensity of light, my ears are
deafened by the awful roar of the elements. I am compelled to hold onto
the mast, which bends like a reed beneath the violence of the storm, to
which none ever before seen by mariners bore any resemblance.
* * * * *
Here my traveling notes become very incomplete, loose and vague. I have
only been able to make out one or two fugitive observations, jotted down
in a mere mechanical way. But even their brevity, even their obscurity,
show the emotions which overcame me.
* * * * *
Sunday, August 23rd. Where have we got to? In what region are we
wandering? We are still carried forward with inconceivable rapidity.
The night has been fearful, something not to be described. The storm
shows no signs of cessation. We exist in the midst of an uproar which
has no name. The detonations as of artillery are incessant. Our ears
literally bleed. We are unable to exchange a word, or hear each other
speak.
The lightning never ceases to flash for a single instant. I can see the
zigzags after a rapid dart strike the arched roof of this mightiest of
mighty vaults. If it were to give way and fall upon us! Other lightnings
plunge their forked streaks in every direction, and take the form of
globes of fire, which explode like bombshells over a beleaguered city.
The general crash and roar do not apparently increase; it has already
gone far beyond what human ear can appreciate. If all the powder
magazines in the world were to explode together, it would be impossible
for us to hear worse noise.
There is a constant emission of light from the storm clouds; the
electric matter is incessantly released; evidently the gaseous
principles of the air are out of order; innumerable columns of water
rush up like waterspouts, and fall back upon the surface of the ocean in
foam.
Whither are we going? My uncle still lies at full length upon the raft,
without speaking--without taking any note of time.
The heat increases. I look at the thermometer, to my surprise it
indicates--The exact figure is here rubbed out in my manuscript.
Monday, August 24th. This terrible storm will never end. Why should not
this state of the atmosphere, so dense and murky, once modified, again
remain definitive?
We are utterly broken and harassed by fatigue. Hans remains just as
usual. The raft runs to the southeast invariably. We have now already
run two hundred leagues from the newly discovered island.
About twelve o'clock the storm became worse than ever. We are obliged
now to fasten every bit of cargo tightly on the deck of the raft, or
everything would be swept away. We make ourselves fast, too, each man
lashing the other. The waves drive over us, so that several times we are
actually under water.
We had been under the painful necessity of abstaining from speech for
three days and three nights. We opened our mouths, we moved our lips,
but no sound came. Even when we placed our mouths to each other's ears
it was the same.
The wind carried the voice away.
My uncle once contrived to get his head close to mine after several
almost vain endeavors. He appeared to my nearly exhausted senses to
articulate some word. I had a notion, more from intuition than anything
else, that he said to me, "We are lost."
I took out my notebook, from which under the most desperate
circumstances I never parted, and wrote a few words as legibly as I
could:
"Take in sail."
With a deep sigh he nodded his head and acquiesced.
His head had scarcely time to fall back in the position from which he
had momentarily raised it than a disk or ball of fire appeared on the
very edge of the raft--our devoted, our doomed craft. The mast and sail
are carried away bodily, and I see them swept away to a prodigious
height like a kite.
We were frozen, actually shivered with terror. The ball of fire, half
white, half azure-colored, about the size of a ten-inch bombshell, moved
along, turning with prodigious rapidity to leeward of the storm. It ran
about here, there, and everywhere, it clambered up one of the bulwarks
of the raft, it leaped upon the sack of provisions, and then finally
descended lightly, fell like a football and landed on our powder barrel.
Horrible situation. An explosion of course was now inevitable.
By heaven's mercy, it was not so.
The dazzling disk moved on one side, it approached Hans, who looked at
it with singular fixity; then it approached my uncle, who cast himself
on his knees to avoid it; it came towards me, as I stood pale and
shuddering in the dazzling light and heat; it pirouetted round my feet,
which I endeavored to withdraw.
An odor of nitrous gas filled the whole air; it penetrated to the
throat, to the lungs. I felt ready to choke.
Why is it that I cannot withdraw my feet? Are they riveted to the
flooring of the raft?
No.
The fall of the electric globe has turned all the iron on board into
loadstones--the instruments, the tools, the arms are clanging together
with awful and horrible noise; the nails of my heavy boots adhere
closely to the plate of iron incrustated in the wood. I cannot withdraw
my foot.
It is the old story again of the mountain of adamant.
At last, by a violent and almost superhuman effort, I tear it away just
as the ball which is still executing its gyratory motions is about to
run round it and drag me with it--if--
Oh, what intense stupendous light! The globe of fire bursts--we are
enveloped in cascades of living fire, which flood the space around with
luminous matter.
Then all went out and darkness once more fell upon the deep! I had just
time to see my uncle once more cast apparently senseless on the flooring
of the raft, Hans at the helm, "spitting fire" under the influence of
the electricity which seemed to have gone through him.
Whither are we going, I ask? and echo answers, Whither?
.............
Tuesday, August 25th. I have just come out of a long fainting fit. The
awful and hideous storm still continues; the lightning has increased in
vividness, and pours out its fiery wrath like a brood of serpents let
loose in the atmosphere.
Are we still upon the sea? Yes, and being carried along with incredible
velocity.
We have passed under England, under the Channel, under France, probably
under the whole extent of Europe.
* * * * *
Another awful clamor in the distance. This time it is certain that the
sea is breaking upon the rocks at no great distance. Then--
..............
..............
