“My brain is strained beyond endurance—what, what do you mean?” I cried.
“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 for ever escaping from the interior of the earth to the light of day.”
It is quite impossible that I can put on paper a 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 upward by eruptive matter; under the raft there was a mass of boiling water, and under this was a heaving 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, should we reappear through one of the other seven fire tunnels of the island? Taking in my mental vision a radius of five hundred leagues to the westward, I could 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 toward which we were making with such fearful velocity.
I often think now of my folly: as if I should ever have expected to escape!
Toward morning, the ascending motion became greater and greater. If the degree of heat increased instead of decreasing, as we approached the surface of the earth, it was simply because the causes were local and wholly due to volcanic influence. Our very style of locomotion left in my mind no doubt upon the subject. An enormous force, a force of some hundred of combined atmospheres produced by vapors accumulated and long compressed in the interior of the earth, was hoisting us upward with irresistible power.