第97章 The Volcanic Shaft(2)

Terrible detonations,like Heaven's artillery,began to multiply themselves with fearful intensity.I could only compare them with the noise made by hundreds of heavily laden chariots being madly driven over a stone pavement.It was a continuous roll of heavy thunder.

And then the mad compass,shaken by the wild electric phenomena,confirmed me in my rapidly formed opinion.The mineral crust was about to burst,the heavy granite masses were about to rejoin,the fissure was about to close,the void was about to be filled up,and we poor atoms to be crushed in its awful embrace!

"Uncle,Uncle!"I cried,"we are wholly,irretrievably lost!""What,then,my young friend,is your new cause of terror and alarm?"he said in his calmest manner."What fear you now?""What do I fear now!"I cried in fierce and angry tones."Do you not see that the walls of the shaft are in motion?Do you not see that the solid granite masses are cracking?Do you not feel the terrible,torrid heat?Do you not observe the awful boiling water on which we float?Do you not remark this mad needle?Every sign and portent of an awful earthquake!"My uncle coolly shook his head.

"An earthquake,"he replied in the most calm and provoking tone.

"Yes."

"My nephew,I tell you that you are utterly mistaken,"he continued.

"Do you not,can you not,recognize all the well-known symtons-""Of an earthquake?By no means.I am expecting something far more important.""My brain is strained beyond endurance-what,what do you mean?"Icried.

"An eruption,Harry."

"An eruption,"I gasped."We are,then,in the volcanic shaft of a crater in full action and vigor.""I have every reason to think so,"said the Professor in a smiling tone,"and I beg to tell you that it is the most fortunate thing that could happen to us."The most fortunate thing!Had my uncle really and truly gone mad?

What did he mean by these awful words-what did he mean by this terrible calm,this solemn smile?

"What!"cried I,in the height of my exasperation,"we are on the way to an eruption,are we?Fatality has cast us into a well of burning and boiling lava,of rocks on fire,of boiling water,in a word,filled with every kind of eruptive matter?We are about to be expelled,thrown up,vomited,spit out of the interior of the earth,in common with huge blocks of granite,with showers of cinders and scoriae,in a wild whirlwind of flame,and you say-the most fortunate thing which could happen to us.""Yes,replied the Professor,looking at me calmly from under his spectacles,"it is the only chance which remains to us of ever escaping from the interior of the earth to the light of day."It is quite impossible that I can put on paper the thousand strange,wild thoughts which followed this extraordinary announcement.

But my uncle was right,quite right,and never had he appeared to me so audacious and so convinced as when he looked me calmly in the face and spoke of the chances of an eruption-of our being cast upon Mother Earth once more through the gaping crater of a volcano!

Nevertheless,while we were speaking we were still ascending;we passed the whole night going up,or to speak more scientifically,in an ascensional motion.The fearful noise redoubled;I was ready to suffocate.I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching,and yet,so strange is imagination,all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other.In such circumstances you do not choose your own thoughts.They overcome you.

It was quite evident that we were being cast upwards by eruptive matter;under the raft there was a mass of boiling water,and under this was a heavier mass of lava,and an aggregate of rocks which,on reaching the summit of the water,would be dispersed in every direction.

That we were inside the chimney of a volcano there could no longer be the shadow of a doubt.Nothing more terrible could be conceived!

But on this occasion,instead of Sneffels,an old and extinct volcano,we were inside a mountain of fire in full activity.Several times I found myself asking,what mountain was it,and on what part of the world we should be shot out.As if it were of any consequence!

In the northern regions,there could be no reasonable doubt about that.Before it went decidedly mad,the compass had never made the slightest mistake.From the cape of Saknussemm,we had been swept away to the northward many hundreds of leagues.Now the question was,were we once more under Iceland-should we be belched forth on to the earth through the crater of Mount Hecla,or should we reappear through one of the other seven fire funnels of the island?Taking in my mental vision a radius of five hundred leagues to the westward,Icould see under this parallel only the little-known volcanoes of the northwest coast of America.

To the east one only existed somewhere about the eightieth degree of latitude,the Esk,upon the island of Jan Mayen,not far from the frozen regions of Spitsbergen.

It was not craters that were wanting,and many of them were big enough to vomit a whole army;all I wished to know was the particular one towards which we were making with such fearful velocity.

I often think now of my folly:as if I should ever have expected to escape!