Nevertheless, as it was then more than four hours since they had left us, and we could not see them anywhere, we hastened to climb up to the summit in order to find them, make them reproaches and embrace them.
It was necessary for us to walk for an hour and a half to get from the foot to the top of the mountains, and during that interval, nothing appeared. At the moment when we reached the platform of the crown bordering the pole, just as we were rejoicing in finding ourselves on flat, wide immense ground, illuminated by a light as pure as that of day, we all experienced a sensation that would never leave our memories. Each of us felt his respiration freer, his body fitter, his movements lighter; it seemed to us that we were floating, without weighing upon the earth.
We traversed in that fashion, without being aware of it, half of the platform on with we were seeking our comrades. We were then only a short distance from the other edge, from which the floods of light sprang in torrents, which we had taken from afar for a column of meager extent, but which actually formed an immeasurable mass.
Tristan thought, as I did, that the pole might perhaps be a nucleus of light and heat, like the sun. Williams and Martinet, fearing to throw themselves into the fire, wanted us all to stop...
A violent shock that drew us rapidly told us that we could not, and that we were being attracted toward the pole by an invincible force, from the moment that we had set foot on the top of the mountain.
A mortal terror suddenly took possession of us, and took away the power of speech. Our hair stood on end with fright when we saw that we were on the edge of a bottomless precipice, from which daylight shone with its full glare; but none of us had time to consider anything; the entire little troop was carried away by a whirlwind into the waves of the atmosphere, and if we conserved any consciousness, it was only to feel ourselves plunging into the globe, without being able to take account of what we were experiencing.
XII. Magnetic vapors of the Pole.
Fall to the center of the Earth. Magnetic rocks.
The central planet of the terrestrial globe.
We descended into the gulf with the rapidity of a long fall. From the moment that an insurmountable force dragged us into the interior of the Earth, each of us thought that he had been precipitated into a tenebrous and bottomless abyss. It was, therefore, with an indefinable surprise that we found ourselves in a vague light, in an immense extent...
Our imagination, disturbed by fear, did not permit us to see the route that we had traveled. After having been tossed by the whirlwind for a long time, or attracted, without knowing how, toward the center of the Earth, a violent—extremely violent—shock suddenly arrested us.
We each had a carbine under our arm, attached to our body by a strong strap; the end that was forward struck against metal rock forcefully, and threw all four of us on the flank, a short distance from one another. Each of us uttered a cry, more or less anguished, and thought ourselves broken by falling from such a height on to a solid body. But our weapons had touched the rock before us, deadening the impact of our fall. Thus, instead of being driven against the solid body on which we found ourselves, in the direction of our flight, which would have crushed us, we were thrown back by the repercussion of our carbines, and that fall of two or three feet only bruised us slightly.
Our imagination told us that we ought to be dead; we were utterly astonished to find that we were still alive. Williams opened his mouth first to ask whether we were in Hell.
“I don’t know where we are,” the Manseau replied, “but it’s daylight and I can’t see the sun...”
As I was experiencing hardly any pain, I tried to get up in order to look around the place where we had stopped, but I felt myself attached to the ground, so to speak, and it was impossible for me to move anything but my arms and my head.
My companions found themselves in the same situation.
“Either I’m dreaming,” exclaimed Tristan, “or I’m nailed down here. Either way, I can’t see, any more than Martinet can, either the moon or the sun...”
“I don’t know where Providence has brought us,” I added, “but let’s try to lift ourselves up on our legs, if possible, and see what means we have to conserve the days that misfortune has left us.”
At the same time, I turned toward Tristan, and I saw him, ten paces away from me, trying in vain to lift anything other than his head and his hands. His carbine was beside him; I looked for mine, which I glimpsed a few feet above my head. The ground that bore us had a brown and slightly shiny hue, like those old bronze monuments that time amuses itself by blackening.
While I was considering these things, and passing all the accounts of voyagers through my memory in search of a situation similar to ours, I heard footfalls beneath me. We might be in a land populated by ferocious beasts or cannibals, and we were so forcefully attached to the place where we had fallen that it was impossible for us to oppose the slightest resistance.
My fearful companions raised their heads without being able to see anything, and without ceasing to hear the footsteps that were coming toward us. Trembling like them, I pulled out a large knife that I always carried in my waistcoat pocket; it escaped from my hand and fixed itself on the ground beside me, from which I could not detach it, in spite of all the efforts imaginable.
At that moment, however, I heard two loud shouts uttered. I looked in the direction of the sound, and I perceived our two companions, Clairancy and Edward, climbing the rock and coming toward us.
“Benediction!” cried the Manseau. “We’ve found one another!”
“Thank Heaven,” said Edward, “we’re finally out of anxiety.”
“Well, my friends,” I asked, “in what country are we seeing one another again?”
“I have no idea,” Clairancy replied. “We’ll seek to inform ourselves later; in the meantime, it’s necessary to get you up. Have you been here a long time?”
“A good hour!” cried Williams. “And we’ve tried to move our feet and paws, but we can’t—neither one nor the other; we’re stuck here; it seems that we’ve been glued.”
“We stayed longer than you in that sad posture,” Edward put in, “And we’ve only just got ourselves out of it. Get rid of all the iron you have about your persons, and you’ll soon be on your feet, as you see us.”
That advice was a flash of enlightenment; each of us quickly removed from his belt his ax, his pistols, his knife and everything metallic he was carrying. An instant later, everyone got up on his feet, freeing himself with the sweetest transports of joy—but when we tried to take a step to draw closer together, our feet were still stuck to the ground and all four of us remained immobile.
“Take off your shoes,” said Clairancy, laughing at our bizarre attitudes.
Our shoes were, in fact, garnished with large nails. We had no sooner left them behind than each of us could walk freely, and examine at his ease the country into which he had been thrown. The entire little troop, delighted to be reassembled after so many scares, drew together immediately, and fraternal embraces preceded all the questions that we had to ask one another.
After each of us had given free rein to explosions of joy and affection, our two friends told us that they had been carried away by the whirlwind of the polar mountain a good two hours before us, and we recognized, in recounting our adventures mutually, that we had all experienced the same shocks and the same sensations—except that Edward and Clairancy had fallen on another part of the rock, at thrice the range of a musket shot beneath us. They owed their salvation, similarly, to the diversion that the ends of their rifles had operated in their fall; but we did not know anything about the shore to which destiny had brought us.
“When I felt myself lifted from the iron mountain,” Edward told us, “I thought at first that I was being dragged by an unknown force either into a volcano, a gulf or some abyss; a cold sweat chilled my heart, and I confess that I bade my adieux mentally to life. An instant later, perceiving before my eyes an ocean of light, I thought that
the vapors, whose virtue we do not know, might perhaps be carrying me to the other side of the polar crater. Eventually, that extravagant idea vanished in its turn, when I felt myself plunging into the Earth. I had lost sight of Clairancy; I only found myself, after falling, on a metal rock, where we have left our weapons after having stayed there for nearly three hours. Now, we’re underground, that much is certain; none of us can doubt it. How is it, then, that we can see the sky, a pure sky, a serene daylight, without seeing the sun?”
“It might be done,” Martinet replied, “by means of a dream that’s abusing us all, or we might be in another world, an unknown world...”
We were, in fact on a metal rock, on which it was impossible to perceive the slightest sign of vegetation. The sky was above our heads, pure and cloudless, but in descending into the entrails of the Earth we would have expected to see nothing above our heads anywhere but rock. We were, however, enjoying all the brightness of a fine day, without discovering the cause of an illumination that seemed equal everywhere. The weather was as mild as a spring day in France, when the sky is promising a good year...
“Listen to me,” Clairancy said to us, finally. “The ideas I’m going to communicate to you might perhaps get us out of the embarrassment; you’re free to make your objections.
“A savant physicist contended, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, that the Earth that has just lost us couldn’t be compact, since, being three thousand leagues in diameter, at least two thousand nine hundred of them would be useless. In consequence, he supposed in the interior of the terrestrial globe a metallic nucleus that regulated its movements.13
“The reality of that theory, which was rejected then as a paradox, is proven by our adventure. This is what I presume: the Earth, of which humans inhabit the circumference, is only fifty or a hundred leagues thick in all its areas. Its interior is hollow, and gives it at the center the form of a globe. In the middle of that globe is a nucleus, or another, smaller planet, and that nucleus is magnetic; we’re convinced of that by the necessity to which we’ve just been reduced, of abandoning all the iron we were carrying on us. You can assure yourself further by the vain efforts you can make to pick up your weapons from the place where you left them.
“Now, the vapors that are produced in abundance by the magnetic rocks on to which we’ve fallen emerge directly through the opening at the pole, where the author of nature has placed a chain of iron mountains that form a crown. It’s presumable that the South Pole is surrounded in the same way. Thus, the great masses of iron that surround the two poles attract the magnetic vapors of the central planet equally in both directions, and a perfect equilibrium is maintained.
“What embarrasses us the most it to see the sky when we have the Earth above our heads everywhere. But it might be that the terrestrial globe, opaque and somber on its outer surface, is luminous on its inner surface, or, rather, that the air that surrounds us hides the veritable hue of the demi-globe that is above us. As for the light that we receive here, I think it’s communicated to us by those same magnetic vapors, which, traversing the two poles, rise up to an infinite height, reflect the rays of sunlight, make the aurorae and are perhaps also the axis of the Earth.
“It’s also those magnetic vapors to which we must attribute the constant direction toward the pole of the magnetic needle. But let’s get away from these metal rocks; we’ll soon know more...”
In order not to leave the reader in doubt any longer, I shall say right away what we found out later: that Clairancy’s deductions were correct. The planet that occupies the center of the terrestrial globe has a diameter of eight hundred leagues. The soil that covers it is vegetal except at its two extremities, which are solidly magnetic over an extent of about sixty leagues. It is to be supposed that the rocks that form the two poles of the Earth traverse it throughout its extent. One can represent it with a ball a foot in diameter that is traversed by a rod fourteen inches long. The sky that covers it—and that sky is our globe—is, on its interior surface, luminous or transparent, since the light that penetrates through the polar openings is reflected there equally from all its parts.
XIII. The subterranean world. Little humans.
Sunlight. Phenomena.
Clairancy took the lead and led us to the summit of a nearby rock, from which we could see the surrounding countryside. Fortunately, we were only a short distance away from vegetal terrain. You can easily imagine our joy at the sight of that beautiful nature: fields covered in fresh grass, plains dotted with flowers, trees laden with fruit, streams, and forests: in brief, the most fertile country extended before us. Our eyes, fatigued by the uniform spectacle that the bleak soil of Spitzbergen presented everywhere, thought they were enjoying the sight of a paradise here.
We were exhausted by lassitude, however, and we had at a journey of at least three hours to make to get out of the magnetic rocks. That is why we first set out the provisions that the four latest arrivals had brought from the terrestrial globe on their shoulders, and got ready to finish them. Alas, everything was spoiled, fetid and disgusting.
“Either our fall was a very long one,” said Edward then, “or the air of this place is very active...”
“Either way,” Tristan put in, “we’re fasting today, as a matter of obligation. Let’s try to recover a little courage and descend to the plain.”
The entire little troop got up immediately and set forth. The hunger clawing at us did not permit us to pay any heed to fatigue, and we descended rapidly toward the cultivated land.
“Now then,” exclaimed Williams, as we went along, “We’re surely the first to have discovered this world. I’m taking possession of it in the name of England.”
“And I, said the Manseau, “in the name of France.”
“So be it,” said Williams. “If we’re appointed viceroys, we’ll share...”
That commencement of dialogue made us laugh. Clairancy interrupted at the moment when great political discussions were about to be engaged between the two viceroys.
“That’s men all over,” he said. “A stupid vanity persuades them that they’re the masters everywhere. Poor fools, who has given this world to you, for you to take possession of it?”
“Who gave the Indies to the Spanish?” replied Williams, proudly. “Who has given us so many lands, which we’ve taken?
“Injustice, violence, the rights of weapons…and if we are seriously to have pretentions over a discovered land, what is our number? What is our strength? We’re six disarmed half-tatterdemalions.”
“Then again,” I said in my turn, “do you think we can establish communication between this world and ours? Do you have an imagination obliging enough to figure that it will ever be possible for us to get out of here? Think about our lives, not ambition.”
“In that case,” said the Manseau, “without being too sad about what we’ve lost, we’ll bring European enlightenment here.”
“If they need it,” said Clairancy, “and if they want to receive it. In the meantime, it might be that we’re entering the land of a ferocious people.”
“Oh, as to that,” Edward added, “I think we can reassure ourselves. This world where we are is at the center of the sublunar globe that we’ve just quit; it must form a globe of small dimension, and in consequence, must be populated by small people.”
“That’s possible,” said the Manseau, “but we have no weapons, we’re small in number, and men three feet high can just as well be brigands as five-foot-four-inch giants.”
At that moment, as we no longer had more than a few hundred paces to descend in order to reach the ground, Edward drew our attention to several little men who were eating a meal under a tree below us.
“Great God!” cried Williams. “What a race of dwarfs! But we’ll be worshiped in this country when they know that we come from up above.”
“We’re not radiant enough to expect to be worshiped,” said Edward. “Let’s be content to be given a good welcome.”
“It
doesn’t matter; we’ll be supernatural beings here: angels, spirits, perhaps gods.”
“Or demons, if people have them everywhere.”
Williams was already announcing to us that they were going to come to meet us bowing down, with genuflections and food. Unfortunately for his prognostications, the little men had no sooner seen us than they ran away, uttering cries of fright.
While Martinet was reproaching Williams that his prophecies had brought bad luck to the little troop, the rest of us were thinking, not without anxiety, about the consequences of the fear that we had just inspired in the inhabitants.
“Let’s not trouble ourselves in advance,” said Clairancy. “The Providence that has preserved us thus far is still watching over us, and before long, I hope that we’ll be the friends of those people who are fleeing from us.”
The little troop then set foot on the vegetal terrain. Bushes presented themselves before us, laden with fruit that appeared to us to be ripe. Everyone started picking them, and we made a delicious meal of them.
Those fruits did not exceed the size of European walnuts, but there were scarcely any larger in the region. They were blood red, and tasted like our peaches, with a more nourishing juice and a more delicate perfume.
As we were finishing our meal, we saw a troop of the little men coming back, similar to those we had first seen. They had approached us quietly, through the bushes and the heath, and they were now about fifty paces from the tree where we were sitting. We stood up when we saw them, but as soon as they saw us upright they ran away again, at a precipitate pace, uttering shrill cries and looking behind them to see whether we were following them.
Voyage to the Center of the Earth Page 8
