Journey to the Centre of the Earth

by Jules Verne

  Every quarter of an hour we had to pause to take a rest and relieve our leg muscles.

  We would sit down on some projecting rock with our legs dangling, chatting while we ate and drinking from the stream. Needless to say, in this fault the Hansbach had become a cascade and lost some of its volume as a result: but it still provided more than enough water to satisfy our thirst. Besides, when the slope became gentler it would be sure to resume its peaceful course. At the moment it reminded me of my worthy uncle, with his fits of impatience and anger, while on gentler slopes it was more like our calm Icelandic guide.

  On 11 and 12 July we followed the spirals of this fault, penetrating another five miles deeper into the earth’s crust, or about thirteen miles below sea-level. But on the thirteenth, about midday, the fault took a much gentler slope, of about forty-five degrees, in a south-easterly direction. The path then became easy and absolutely monotonous. This was inevitable, for the journey could scarcely be enlivened by changes in the landscape.

  On Wednesday the fifteenth we were eighteen miles underground and about 125 miles from Sneffels. Although we were a little tired, our health was perfectly satisfactory and the medicine-chest was still untouched.

  My uncle took hourly readings of the compass, the chronometer, the manometer, and thermometer – those which he has published in the scientific report on his journey. It was therefore a simple matter for him to establish his whereabouts. When he told me that we had travelled 125 miles horizontally, I could not help giving an exclamation of surprise.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing, I was just thinking.’

  ‘Thinking what, my boy?’

  ‘That if your calculations are correct, we are no longer under Iceland.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘We can easily make sure.’

  I took some measurements with my compass on the map.

  ‘I was right,’ I said. ‘We have passed Cape Portland, and these 125 miles to the south-east have brought us under the sea.’

  ‘Under the sea,’ repeated my uncle, rubbing his hands with delight.

  ‘So the ocean is over our heads!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Why, of course, Axel. What could be more natural? Aren’t there coal-mines at Newcastle which extend a long way under the sea?’

  The Professor might consider this situation to be perfectly natural, but I felt a little uneasy at the thought of that mass of water over my head. Yet it really made very little difference whether it was the plains and mountains of Iceland that we had over us or the waves of the Atlantic, provided that the granite underpinning held good. In any case, I rapidly became accustomed to the idea, for the gallery, now running straight, now winding about, as capricious in its slopes as in its detours, but constantly heading south-east and always going deeper, soon took us to very great depths indeed.

  Four days later, on Saturday, 18 July, we arrived in the evening at a sort of huge grotto; my uncle gave Hans his weekly wages of three rix-dollars, and it was decided that the next day should be a day of rest.

  25

  A Day of Rest

  I consequently awoke on Sunday morning without the usual preoccupation with an early start. And although we were in the deepest of abysses, this was still extremely pleasant. Besides, we had grown accustomed to this troglodyte existence of ours. I hardly gave a thought now to sun, stars, and moon, trees, houses, and towns, all those terrestrial superfluities which men who live on the surface of the earth have come to regard as necessities. Living as fossils, we did not give a jot for these useless wonders.

  The grotto formed a huge hall, over whose granite floor flowed our faithful stream. At this distance from its source, its water had only the temperature of its surroundings and could be drunk straight away.

  After breakfast the Professor decided to spend a few hours putting his daily notes in order.

  ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I am going to work out our exact position. On our return I want to be able to draw a map of our journey, a sort of vertical section of the globe, which will show the course of our expedition.’

  ‘That will be very interesting, Uncle, but are your observations sufficiently precise to enable you to do this?’

  ‘Yes. I have kept a careful account of every angle and incline. I am sure I have made no mistakes. First let us see where we are. Take the compass and tell me the direction it indicates.’

  I examined the instrument carefully and replied:

  ‘East by south.’

  ‘Good!’ said the Professor, noting this down and making some rapid calculations. ‘I estimate that we have come 213 miles from our starting-point.’

  ‘So we are travelling under the Atlantic?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And at this very moment a storm may be raging above us, and ships may be being tossed about by the waves?’

  ‘That may well be the case.’

  ‘And whales may be lashing the roof of our prison with their tails?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Axel, they won’t succeed in shaking it. But let’s go back to our calculations. We are 213 miles south-east of Sneffels, and from my notes I estimate that we are at a depth of 48 miles.’

  ‘But that is the limit which scientists set to the thickness of the earth’s crust!’

  ‘I don’t deny it.’

  ‘And here, according to the law of increasing temperature, there ought to be a heat of 1,500° Centigrade.’

  ‘Ought to be, my boy.’

  ‘And all this granite ought to be melting.’

  ‘Well, you can see for yourself that it isn’t, and that the facts, as so often happens, disprove the theory.’

  ‘I am obliged to agree, but I can’t help feeling surprised.’

  ‘What does the thermometer say?’

  ‘27.6°.’

  ‘Therefore the scientists are wrong by 1,472.4°. Therefore the theory of a proportional increase in temperature is wrong. Therefore Humphry Davy was right. Therefore I was right in believing him. What have you got to say to that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  In fact there were a lot of things I could have said. I did not accept Davy’s theory in any respect, and I still clung to the theory of central heat, even though I could not feel the effects of that heat. I preferred to think, in fact, that this chimney of an extinct volcano, covered with a refractory coating of lava, did not allow the heat to pass through its walls.

  But without stopping to prepare new arguments, I confined myself to taking the situation as it was.

  ‘Uncle,’ I said, ‘admitting that your calculations are correct, will you allow me to draw a vigorous conclusion from them?’

  ‘Conclude away, my boy.’

  ‘At the latitude of Iceland, where we are now, the radius of the earth is about 4,749 miles, isn’t it?’

  ‘4,750.’

  ‘Let’s say 4,800 in round figures. And out of 4,800 miles we have done forty-eight?’

  ‘As you say.’

  ‘And this at a cost of 213 miles diagonally?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘In about twenty days?’

  ‘In twenty days.’

  ‘Well, forty-eight miles are one hundredth of the earth’s radius. If we keep on like that, it will take us two thousand days, or nearly five and a half years, to reach the centre!’

  The Professor made no reply.

  ‘Not counting the fact that if we go two hundred miles horizontally for every forty vertically, we shall come out at some point on the earth’s circumference long before we reach the centre.’

  ‘To blazes with your calculations!’ retorted my uncle angrily. ‘To blazes with your hypotheses! What are they based on? How do you know that this corridor doesn’t go straight to our destination? Besides, there’s a precedent for what I’m doing. Another man has done it, and where he has succeeded I shall succeed too.’

  ‘I hope so, but after all, I’m entitled …’

  ‘You’re entitled to hold your to
ngue, Axel, instead of talking nonsense like that.’

  I saw that my uncle was about to be metamorphosed into the fearsome Professor, and I made no reply.

  ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘look at the manometer. What does it say?’

  ‘It indicates a considerable pressure.’

  ‘Good. You can see that by descending gradually, and accustoming ourselves little by little to the density of this atmosphere, we have avoided any sort of inconvenience.’

  ‘Except for slight ear-ache.’

  ‘That’s nothing, and you can get rid of it by breathing quickly, to equalize the pressure inside your lungs with that outside.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I replied, determined to say nothing more which might annoy my uncle. ‘It’s even a positive pleasure to live in this dense atmosphere. Have you noticed how clearly you can hear everything down here?’

  ‘I have. A deaf man would soon come to hear perfectly in these conditions.’

  ‘But won’t this density increase?’

  ‘Yes, in accordance with a rather uncertain law. It is true that the weight of matter will diminish as fast as we descend. You know that it is at the surface of the globe that weight is most perceptible, and that at the centre of the earth objects weigh nothing at all.’

  ‘I know that; but tell me, won’t this air we are breathing end up by acquiring the same density as water?’

  ‘Probably, under a pressure of 710 atmospheres.’

  ‘And lower down?’

  ‘Lower down the density will increase even further.’

  ‘Then how shall we continue our descent?’

  ‘We shall have to fill our pockets with stones.’

  ‘You have an answer for everything, Uncle.’

  I did not dare to go any further into the region of theory, for I would have come across another insurmountable difficulty which would have infuriated the Professor.

  All the same it was obvious that the air, under a pressure which might reach that of thousands of atmospheres, would end up by solidifying, and then, even if our bodies had survived as long as that, we should have to stop, in spite of all the reasoning in the world.

  But I did not put forward this argument. My uncle would have met it with his inevitable Saknussemm, a precedent which carried no weight with me, for even admitting that the learned Icelander’s journey had really taken place, there remained one very simple question to be asked: since neither the barometer nor the manometer had been invented by the sixteenth century, how had Saknussemm been able to tell when he had reached the centre of the earth?

  But I kept this objection to myself, and waited for events to take their course.

  The rest of the day was spent in calculations and conversation. I was always in agreement with Professor Lidenbrock, and I envied the stolid indifference of Hans, who, without bothering his head about cause and effect, went blindly wherever Fate led him.

  26

  Alone

  It must be admitted that so far things had gone fairly well, and I had little cause to complain. If our difficulties became no worse, there was no reason why we should not attain our object. And what glory would be ours then! I had quite seriously begun reasoning like the Professor, possibly on account of the strange environment in which I found myself.

  For a few days steeper slopes, some even alarmingly close to the perpendicular, took us deep into the inner mass. Some days we advanced between four and five miles nearer to the centre. These were dangerous descents, in which Hans’s skill and wonderful self-possession were invaluable to us. That calm Icelander helped us with almost incredible devotion and simplicity, and thanks to him we got out of a good many difficult situations which would have been too much for just the two of us.

  On the other hand his silence became more profound with every day that passed, and I do believe that it even began infecting us. External objects have a decided effect on the brain. Anyone shut up between four walls ends up by losing the power to associate words and ideas. How many prisoners in solitary confinement have become dull-witted, if not actually insane, for want of exercise for their thinking faculties!

  During the fortnight following our last conversation, no incident worth recording took place. I can recall only one serious event which occurred about this time, but then I have good reason to remember it and indeed could never forget even the smallest detail.

  By 7 August our successive descents had brought us to a depth of seventy-five miles; in other words we had seventy-five miles of rock, ocean, continents, and towns over our heads. We must then have been about five hundred miles from Iceland.

  That day the tunnel was going down a very gentle slope. I was walking in front; my uncle had one of the Ruhmkorff lamps and I had the other, which I was using to examine the beds of granite.

  Suddenly, turning round, I found that I was alone.

  ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I’ve been walking too fast, or else Hans and my uncle have stopped somewhere. I must go back and join them. Luckily it isn’t a steep slope.’

  I turned back and walked for a quarter of an hour. I gazed around, but saw nobody. I called out, but got no reply; my voice was lost among the cavernous echoes.

  I began to feel uneasy, and a shiver ran down my spine.

  ‘Keep calm,’ I said aloud to myself. ‘I am sure to find my companions again. There’s only one path, after all. Seeing that I was in front, I must go back.’

  For half an hour I climbed the slope. I listened to hear if anyone was calling me, for in that dense atmosphere a voice could carry a long way. But an extraordinary silence reigned in the long gallery.

  I stopped. I could not bring myself to believe that I was alone. I might have gone a little astray, but I could not be lost. And people who go astray always find their way again.

  ‘Come,’ I said to myself; ‘since there’s only one path, and since they are following it, I am bound to find them again. All I have to do is to keep on climbing. Unless, of course, not seeing me, and forgetting that I was in front, they have turned back too. But even then I shall catch up with them if I hurry. That’s obvious.’

  I repeated these last words like a man who is only half-convinced. Besides, putting even these simple ideas together took me quite a long time.

  Then a doubt seized me. Had I really been in front of the others? Yes, that was certain. Hans had been following me, ahead of my uncle. I could even remember him stopping for a little while to adjust the bundle on his shoulders. It must have been at that very moment that I had gone ahead.

  ‘Besides,’ I thought, ‘I have a guarantee against losing my way, an unbreakable thread to guide me through this labyrinth, and that is my faithful stream. I have only to follow its course backwards, and I am sure to find my companions.’

  This conclusion revived my spirits, and I decided to set off again without a moment’s delay. I blessed my uncle’s foresight in preventing Hans from stopping up the hole he had made in the granite wall. This beneficent spring, after having quenched our thirst on the way, was now going to be my guide through the winding galleries inside the earth’s crust.

  Before continuing my climb, I thought a wash would do me good and I bent down to plunge my head in the Hansbach.

  To my horror and amazement I found that I was standing on rough, dry granite. The stream was no longer flowing at my feet!

  27

  Lost and Panic-Stricken

  To describe my despair at that moment would be impossible, for there is no word for it in any human language. I was buried alive, with the prospect of dying from the tortures of hunger and thirst.

  Mechanically I passed my burning hands over the granite floor. How hard and dry the rock seemed to me!

  But how had I come to leave the course of the stream? For there was no denying that it was no longer there. Now I understood the reason for that strange silence when I had listened for the last time to hear if I could make out any sound from my companions. At the moment when I had set foot on the wrong path, I had obvio
usly failed to notice the absence of the stream. Clearly there had been a fork in the gallery just then, and I had taken one route while the Hansbach, obeying the caprices of another slope, had led my companions off into unknown depths.

  How was I to return? There was no trace of any footsteps, for my feet left no mark on the granite floor. I racked my brains for a solution to this apparently insoluble problem. My position could be summed up in a single word: lost!

  Yes, lost at a depth which struck me as immeasurable. Those seventy-five miles of rock seemed to weigh on my shoulders with a terrifying pressure. I felt crushed.

  I tried to turn my thoughts to things on the surface of the earth, but I was hard put to it to succeed. Hamburg, the house in the Königstrasse, my poor Gräuben, all that world underneath which I had lost my bearings passed rapidly before my terrified memory. I saw again in a vivid hallucination all the incidents of our journey, the sea-crossing, Iceland, Mr Fridriksson, and Sneffels. I told myself that if, in the position in which I found myself, I still retained even the shadow of a hope, that would be a sign of madness, and that the best thing I could do was to despair.

  After all, what human power could possibly open up those huge arches of rock curving over my head and take me back to the surface? Who could put my feet on the right path and reunite me with my companions?

  ‘Oh, Uncle!’ I exclaimed in a despairing voice.

  This was the only word of reproach which came to my lips, for I knew how much the poor man must be suffering while he in his turn was looking for me.

  When I saw that I was beyond all human aid, and incapable of doing anything for myself, I thought of appealing to heaven for help. Memories of my childhood, and especially of my mother, whom I had known only in my earliest years, came back to me, and I knelt in fervent prayer, unworthy though I was of being heard by the God to whom I was appealing so late.

  This recourse to Providence calmed me slightly, and I was able to concentrate all my mental faculties on my situation.

  My flask was full and I had food for three days; but I could not remain alone longer than that. Should I go up or down? Up, of course, as far as I could go. Like that I was bound to reach the point where I had left the stream, at that baleful fork in the road. Then, with the stream at my feet, I might still be able to regain the summit of Sneffels.