Voyage au centre de la terre. English Page 37

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  THE GREAT GEYSER

  _Wednesday, August 19_.--Fortunately the wind blows violently, andhas enabled us to flee from the scene of the late terrible struggle.Hans keeps at his post at the helm. My uncle, whom the absorbingincidents of the combat had drawn away from his contemplations, beganagain to look impatiently around him.

  The voyage resumes its uniform tenor, which I don't care to breakwith a repetition of such events as yesterday's.

  Thursday, Aug. 20.--Wind N.N.E., unsteady and fitful. Temperaturehigh. Rate three and a half leagues an hour.

  About noon a distant noise is heard. I note the fact without beingable to explain it. It is a continuous roar.

  "In the distance," says the Professor, "there is a rock or islet,against which the sea is breaking."

  Hans climbs up the mast, but sees no breakers. The ocean' is smoothand unbroken to its farthest limit.

  Three hours pass away. The roarings seem to proceed from a verydistant waterfall.

  I remark upon this to my uncle, who replies doubtfully: "Yes, I amconvinced that I am right." Are we, then, speeding forward to somecataract which will cast us down an abyss? This method of getting onmay please the Professor, because it is vertical; but for my part Iprefer the more ordinary modes of horizontal progression.

  At any rate, some leagues to the windward there must be some noisyphenomenon, for now the roarings are heard with increasing loudness.Do they proceed from the sky or the ocean?

  I look up to the atmospheric vapours, and try to fathom their depths.The sky is calm and motionless. The clouds have reached the utmostlimit of the lofty vault, and there lie still bathed in the brightglare of the electric light. It is not there that we must seek forthe cause of this phenomenon. Then I examine the horizon, which isunbroken and clear of all mist. There is no change in its aspect. Butif this noise arises from a fall, a cataract, if all this ocean flowsaway headlong into a lower basin yet, if that deafening roar isproduced by a mass of falling water, the current must needsaccelerate, and its increasing speed will give me the measure of theperil that threatens us. I consult the current: there is none. Ithrow an empty bottle into the sea: it lies still.

  About four Hans rises, lays hold of the mast, climbs to its top.Thence his eye sweeps a large area of sea, and it is fixed upon apoint. His countenance exhibits no surprise, but his eye is immovablysteady.

  "He sees something," says my uncle.

  "I believe he does."

  Hans comes down, then stretches his arm to the south, saying:

  "_Dere nere!_"

  "Down there?" repeated my uncle.

  Then, seizing his glass, he gazes attentively for a minute, whichseems to me an age.

  "Yes, yes!" he cried. "I see a vast inverted cone rising from thesurface."

  "Is it another sea beast?"

  "Perhaps it is."

  "Then let us steer farther westward, for we know something of thedanger of coming across monsters of that sort."

  "Let us go straight on," replied my uncle.

  I appealed to Hans. He maintained his course inflexibly.

  Yet, if at our present distance from the animal, a distance of twelveleagues at the least, the column of water driven through its blowersmay be distinctly seen, it must needs be of vast size. The commonestprudence would counsel immediate flight; but we did not come so farto be prudent.

  Imprudently, therefore, we pursue our way. The nearer we approach,the higher mounts the jet of water. What monster can possibly fillitself with such a quantity of water, and spurt it up so continuously?

  At eight in the evening we are not two leagues distant from it. Itsbody--dusky, enormous, hillocky--lies spread upon the sea like anislet. Is it illusion or fear? Its length seems to me a couple ofthousand yards. What can be this cetacean, which neither Cuvier norBlumenbach knew anything about? It lies motionless, as if asleep; thesea seems unable to move it in the least; it is the waves thatundulate upon its sides. The column of water thrown up to a height offive hundred feet falls in rain with a deafening uproar. And here arewe scudding like lunatics before the wind, to get near to a monsterthat a hundred whales a day would not satisfy!

  Terror seizes upon me. I refuse to go further. I will cut thehalliards if necessary! I am in open mutiny against the Professor,who vouchsafes no answer.

  Suddenly Hans rises, and pointing with his finger at the menacingobject, he says:

  "_Holm._"

  "An island!" cries my uncle.

  "That's not an island!" I cried sceptically.

  "It's nothing else," shouted the Professor, with a loud laugh.

  "But that column of water?"

  "_Geyser,_" said Hans.

  "No doubt it is a geyser, like those in Iceland."

  At first I protest against being so widely mistaken as to have takenan island for a marine monster. But the evidence is against me, and Ihave to confess my error. It is nothing worse than a naturalphenomenon.

  As we approach nearer the dimensions of the liquid column becomemagnificent. The islet resembles, with a most deceiving likeness, anenormous cetacean, whose head dominates the waves at a height oftwenty yards. The geyser, a word meaning 'fury,' rises majesticallyfrom its extremity. Deep and heavy explosions are heard from time totime, when the enormous jet, possessed with more furious violence,shakes its plumy crest, and springs with a bound till it reaches thelowest stratum of the clouds. It stands alone. No steam vents, no hotsprings surround it, and all the volcanic power of the region isconcentrated here. Sparks of electric fire mingle with the dazzlingsheaf of lighted fluid, every drop of which refracts the prismaticcolours.

  "Let us land," said the Professor.

  "But we must carefully avoid this waterspout, which would sink ourraft in a moment."

  Hans, steering with his usual skill, brought us to the otherextremity of the islet.

  I leaped up on the rock; my uncle lightly followed, while our hunterremained at his post, like a man too wise ever to be astonished.

  We walked upon granite mingled with siliceous tufa. The soil shiversand shakes under our feet, like the sides of an overheated boilerfilled with steam struggling to get loose. We come in sight of asmall central basin, out of which the geyser springs. I plunge aregister thermometer into the boiling water. It marks an intense heatof 325 deg., which is far above the boiling point; therefore this waterissues from an ardent furnace, which is not at all in harmony withProfessor Liedenbrock's theories. I cannot help making the remark.

  "Well," he replied, "how does that make against my doctrine?"

  "Oh, nothing at all," I said, seeing that I was going in oppositionto immovable obstinacy.

  Still I am constrained to confess that hitherto we have beenwonderfully favoured, and that for some reason unknown to myself wehave accomplished our journey under singularly favourable conditionsof temperature. But it seems manifest to me that some day we shallreach a region where the central heat attains its highest limits, andgoes beyond a point that can be registered by our thermometers.

  "That is what we shall see." So says the Professor, who, having namedthis volcanic islet after his nephew, gives the signal to embarkagain.

  For some minutes I am still contemplating the geyser. I notice thatit throws up its column of water with variable force: sometimessending it to a great height, then again to a lower, which Iattribute to the variable pressure of the steam accumulated in itsreservoir.

  At last we leave the island, rounding away past the low rocks on itssouthern shore. Hans has taken advantage of the halt to refit hisrudder.

  But before going any farther I make a few observations, to calculatethe distance we have gone over, and note them in my journal. We havecrossed two hundred and seventy leagues of sea since leaving PortGraeuben; and we are six hundred and twenty leagues from Iceland,under England. [1]

  [1] This distance carries the travellers as far as under the Pyreneesif the league measures three miles. (Trans.)