Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Jules Verne

Author:Jules Verne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barnes&Noble

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.

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