Journey to the Center of the Earth (Illustrated Collectors Edition) (Active Table of Contents) (New Translation) (53 Illustrations) (SF Classic) by Verne Jules

Author:Verne, Jules [Verne, Jules]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: journey to the center of the earth, Classic, a journey to the center of the earth, Science Fiction Classic, jules verne, adventure, Classics, verne
Publisher: SF Classic
Published: 2011-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Well Said, Old Mole! Can You Work the Ground so Fast?

BY THE NEXT DAY WE HAD FORGOTTEN all our sufferings. At first, I was wondering why I was no longer thirsty, and I was about to ask for a reason. The answer came in the murmuring of the stream at my feet.

We ate breakfast, and drank of this excellent mineral water. I felt much stronger, and quite decided upon pushing on. Why should not so firmly convinced a man as my uncle, furnished with so industrious a guide as Hans, and accompanied by so determined a nephew as myself, go on to final success? Such were the magnificent plans which struggled for mastery within me. If it had been proposed to me to return to the summit of Snæfell, I would have indignantly declined.

Fortunately, all we had to do was descend.

“Let us start!” I cried, awakening by my shouts the echoes of the hollows of the earth.

On Thursday, at 8 AM, we started afresh. The granite tunnel winding from side to side, earned us past unexpected turns, and seemed almost to form a labyrinth; but, on the whole, its direction seemed to be south-easterly. My uncle never ceased to consult his compass, to keep account of the ground gone over.

The gallery dipped down a very little way from the horizontal, scarcely more than two inches in a fathom, and the stream ran gently murmuring at our feet. I compared it to a friendly genius guiding us underground, and caressed with my hand the soft water nymph, whose comforting voice accompanied our steps. With my reviving spirits these mythological notions seemed to come unbidden.

As for my uncle, he was beginning to storm against the horizontal road. He loved nothing better than a vertical path; but this way seemed indefinitely prolonged, and instead of sliding along the hypothenuse as we were now doing, he would willingly have dropped down the terrestrial radius. But there was no help for it, and as long as we were approaching the center, we felt that we must not complain.

From time to time, a steeper path appeared; our nymph then began to tumble before us with a hoarser murmur, and we went down with her to a greater depth.

On the whole, that day and the next we made considerable way horizontally, very little vertically.

On Friday evening, the 10th of July, according to our calculations, we were thirty leagues south-east of Rejkiavik, and at a depth of two leagues and a half.

At our feet there now opened a frightful abyss. My uncle, however, was not to be daunted, and he clapped his hands at the steepness of the descent.

“This will take us a long way,” he cried, “and without much difficulty; for the projections in the rock form quite a staircase.”

The ropes were fastened by Hans in a way that would guard against accident, and the descent commenced. I can hardly call it perilous, for I was beginning to be familiar with this kind of exercise.

This

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