Voyage au centre de la terre. English Read online

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  A BATTLE OF MONSTERS

  _Saturday, August 15_.--The sea unbroken all round. No land insight. The horizon seems extremely distant.

  My head is still stupefied with the vivid reality of my dream.

  My uncle has had no dreams, but he is out of temper. He examines thehorizon all round with his glass, and folds his arms with the air ofan injured man.

  I remark that Professor Liedenbrock has a tendency to relapse into animpatient mood, and I make a note of it in my log. All my danger andsufferings were needed to strike a spark of human feeling out ofhim; but now that I am well his nature has resumed its sway. And yet,what cause was there for anger? Is not the voyage prospering asfavourably as possible under the circumstances? Is not the raftspinning along with marvellous speed?

  "-You seem anxious, my uncle," I said, seeing him continually withhis glass to his eye.

  "Anxious! No, not at all."

  "Impatient, then?"

  "One might be, with less reason than now."

  "Yet we are going very fast."

  "What does that signify? I am not complaining that the rate is slow,but that the sea is so wide."

  I then remembered that the Professor, before starting, had estimatedthe length of this underground sea at thirty leagues. Now we had madethree times the distance, yet still the southern coast was not insight.

  "We are not descending as we ought to be," the Professor declares."We are losing time, and the fact is, I have not come all this way totake a little sail upon a pond on a raft."

  He called this sea a pond, and our long voyage, taking a little sail!

  "But," I remarked, "since we have followed the road that Saknussemmhas shown us--"

  "That is just the question. Have we followed that road? DidSaknussemm meet this sheet of water? Did he cross it? Has not thestream that we followed led us altogether astray?"

  "At any rate we cannot feel sorry to have come so far. This prospectis magnificent, and--"

  "But I don't care for prospects. I came with an object, and I mean toattain it. Therefore don't talk to me about views and prospects."

  I take this as my answer, and I leave the Professor to bite his lipswith impatience. At six in the evening Hans asks for his wages, andhis three rix dollars are counted out to him.

  _Sunday, August 16. _--Nothing new. Weather unchanged. The windfreshens. On awaking, my first thought was to observe the intensityof the light. I was possessed with an apprehension lest the electriclight should grow dim, or fail altogether. But there seemed no reasonto fear. The shadow of the raft was clearly outlined upon the surfaceof the waves.

  Truly this sea is of infinite width. It must be as wide as theMediterranean or the Atlantic--and why not?

  My uncle took soundings several times. He tied the heaviest of ourpickaxes to a long rope which he let down two hundred fathoms. Nobottom yet; and we had some difficulty in hauling up our plummet.

  But when the pick was shipped again, Hans pointed out on its surfacedeep prints as if it had been violently compressed between two hardbodies.

  I looked at the hunter.

  "_Taender,_" said he.

  I could not understand him, and turned to my uncle who was entirelyabsorbed in his calculations. I had rather not disturb him while heis quiet. I return to the Icelander. He by a snapping motion of hisjaws conveys his ideas to me.

  "Teeth!" I cried, considering the iron bar with more attention.

  Yes, indeed, those are the marks of teeth imprinted upon the metal!The jaws which they arm must be possessed of amazing strength. Isthere some monster beneath us belonging to the extinct races, morevoracious than the shark, more fearful in vastness than the whale? Icould not take my eyes off this indented iron bar. Surely will mylast night's dream be realised?

  These thoughts agitated me all day, and my imagination scarcelycalmed down after several hours' sleep.

  _Monday, August 17.--_ I am trying to recall the peculiar instinctsof the monsters of the pre-adamite world, who, coming next insuccession after the molluscs, the crustaceans and le fishes,preceded the animals of mammalian race upon the earth. The world thenbelonged to reptiles. Those monsters held the mastery in the seas ofthe secondary period. They possessed a perfect organisation, giganticproportions, prodigious strength. The saurians of our day, thealligators and the crocodiles, are but feeble reproductions of theirforefathers of primitive ages.

  I shudder as I recall these monsters to my remembrance. No human eyehas ever beheld them living. They burdened this earth a thousand agesbefore man appeared, but their fossil remains, found in theargillaceous limestone called by the English the lias, have enabledtheir colossal structure to be perfectly built up again andanatomically ascertained.

  I saw at the Hamburg museum the skeleton of one of these creaturesthirty feet in length. Am I then fated--I, a denizen of earth--tobe placed face to face with these representatives of long extinctfamilies? No; surely it cannot be! Yet the deep marks of conicalteeth upon the iron pick are certainly those of the crocodile.

  My eyes are fearfully bent upon the sea. I dread to see one of thesemonsters darting forth from its submarine caverns. I supposeProfessor Liedenbrock was of my opinion too, and even shared myfears, for after having examined the pick, his eyes traversed theocean from side to side. What a very bad notion that was of his, Ithought to myself, to take soundings just here! He has disturbed somemonstrous beast in its remote den, and if we are not attacked on ourvoyage--

  I look at our guns and see that they are all right. My uncle noticesit, and looks on approvingly.

  Already widely disturbed regions on the surface of the water indicatesome commotion below. The danger is approaching. We must be on thelook out.

  _Tuesday, August 18. _--Evening came, or rather the time came whensleep weighs down the weary eyelids, for there is no night here, andthe ceaseless light wearies the eyes with its persistency just as ifwe were sailing under an arctic sun. Hans was at the helm. During hiswatch I slept.

  Two hours afterwards a terrible shock awoke me. The raft was heavedup on a watery mountain and pitched down again, at a distance oftwenty fathoms.

  "What is the matter?" shouted my uncle. "Have we struck land?"

  Hans pointed with his finger at a dark mass six hundred yards away,rising and falling alternately with heavy plunges. I looked and cried:

  "It is an enormous porpoise."

  "Yes," replied my uncle, "and there is a sea lizard of vast size."

  "And farther on a monstrous crocodile. Look at its vast jaws and itsrows of teeth! It is diving down!"

  "There's a whale, a whale!" cried the Professor. "I can see its greatfins. See how he is throwing out air and water through his blowers."

  And in fact two liquid columns were rising to a considerable heightabove the sea. We stood amazed, thunderstruck, at the presence ofsuch a herd of marine monsters. They were of supernatural dimensions;the smallest of them would have crunched our raft, crew and all, atone snap of its huge jaws.

  Hans wants to tack to get away from this dangerous neighbourhood; buthe sees on the other hand enemies not less terrible; a tortoise fortyfeet long, and a serpent of thirty, lifting its fearful head andgleaming eyes above the flood.

  Flight was out of the question now. The reptiles rose; they wheeledaround our little raft with a rapidity greater than that of expresstrains. They described around us gradually narrowing circles. I tookup my rifle. But what could a ball do against the scaly armour withwhich these enormous beasts were clad?

  We stood dumb with fear. They approach us close: on one side thecrocodile, on the other the serpent. The remainder of the seamonsters have disappeared. I prepare to fire. Hans stops me by agesture. The two monsters pass within a hundred and fifty yards ofthe raft, and hurl themselves the one upon the other, with a furywhich prevents them from seeing us.

  At three hundred yards from us the battle was fought. We coulddistinctly observe the two monsters engaged in deadly conflict. Butit now seems to
me as if the other animals were taking part in thefray--the porpoise, the whale, the lizard, the tortoise. Everymoment I seem to see one or other of them. I point them to theIcelander. He shakes his head negatively.

  "_Tva,_" says he.

  "What two? Does he mean that there are only two animals?"

  "He is right," said my uncle, whose glass has never left his eye.

  "Surely you must be mistaken," I cried.

  "No: the first of those monsters has a porpoise's snout, a lizard'shead, a crocodile's teeth; and hence our mistake. It is theichthyosaurus (the fish lizard), the most terrible of the ancientmonsters of the deep."

  "And the other?"

  "The other is a plesiosaurus (almost lizard), a serpent, armouredwith the carapace and the paddles of a turtle; he is the dreadfulenemy of the other."

  Hans had spoken truly. Two monsters only were creating all thiscommotion; and before my eyes are two reptiles of the primitiveworld. I can distinguish the eye of the ichthyosaurus glowing like ared-hot coal, and as large as a man's head. Nature has endowed itwith an optical apparatus of extreme power, and capable of resistingthe pressure of the great volume of water in the depths it inhabits.It has been appropriately called the saurian whale, for it has boththe swiftness and the rapid movements of this monster of our own day.This one is not less than a hundred feet long, and I can judge of itssize when it sweeps over the waters the vertical coils of its tail.Its jaw is enormous, and according to naturalists it is armed with noless than one hundred and eighty-two teeth.

  The plesiosaurus, a serpent with a cylindrical body and a short tail,has four flappers or paddles to act like oars. Its body is entirelycovered with a thick armour of scales, and its neck, as flexible as aswan's, rises thirty feet above the waves.

  Those huge creatures attacked each other with the greatest animosity.They heaved around them liquid mountains, which rolled even to ourraft and rocked it perilously. Twenty times we were near capsizing.Hissings of prodigious force are heard. The two beasts are fastlocked together; I cannot distinguish the one from the other. Theprobable rage of the conqueror inspires us with intense fear.

  One hour, two hours, pass away. The struggle continues with unabatedferocity. The combatants alternately approach and recede from ourraft. We remain motionless, ready to fire. Suddenly the ichthyosaurusand the plesiosaurus disappear below, leaving a whirlpool eddying inthe water. Several minutes pass by while the fight goes on underwater.

  All at once an enormous head is darted up, the head of theplesiosaurus. The monster is wounded to death. I no longer see hisscaly armour. Only his long neck shoots up, drops again, coils anduncoils, droops, lashes the waters like a gigantic whip, and writheslike a worm that you tread on. The water is splashed for a long wayaround. The spray almost blinds us. But soon the reptile's agonydraws to an end; its movements become fainter, its contortions ceaseto be so violent, and the long serpentine form lies a lifeless log onthe labouring deep.

  As for the ichthyosaurus--has he returned to his submarine cavern?or will he reappear on the surface of the sea?