“Harry, my boy, is that you?”
A short delay between question and answer.
“Yes—yes.”
“Where are you?”
“Lost!”
“And your lamp?”
“Out.”
“But the guiding stream?”
“Is lost!”
“Keep your courage, Harry. We will do our best.”
“One moment, my uncle,” I cried; “I have no longer strength to answer your questions. But—for heaven’s sake—do you—continue—to speak—to me!”
Absolute silence, I felt, would be annihilation.
“Keep up your courage,” said my uncle. “As you are so weak, do not speak. We have been searching for you in all directions, both by going upward and downward in the gallery. My dear boy, I had begun to give over all hope—and you can never know what bitter tears of sorrow and regret I have shed. At last, supposing you to be still on the road beside the Hansbach, we again descended, firing off guns as signals. Now, however, that we have found you, and that our voices reach each other, it may be a long time before we actually meet. We are conversing by means of some extraordinary acoustic arrangement of the labyrinth. But do not despair, my dear boy. It is something gained even to hear each other.”
While he was speaking, my brain was at work reflecting. A certain undefined hope, vague and shapeless as yet, made my heart beat wildly. In the first place, it was absolutely necessary for me to know one thing. I once more, therefore, leaned my head against the wall which I almost touched with my lips, and again spoke.
“Uncle.”
“My boy,” was his ready answer.
“It is of the utmost consequence that we should know how far we are asunder.”
“That is not difficult.”
“You have your chronometer at hand?” I asked.
“Certainly.”
“Well, take it into your hand. Pronounce my name, noting exactly the second at which you speak. I will reply as soon as I hear your words—and you will then note exactly the moment at which my reply reaches you.”
“Very good; and the mean time between my question and your answer will be the time occupied by my voice in reaching you.”
“That is exactly what I mean, Uncle,” was my eager reply.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Well, make ready, I am about to pronounce your name,” said the Professor.
I applied my ear close to the sides of the cavernous gallery, and as soon as the word “Harry” reached my ear, I turned around and, placing my lips to the wall, repeated the sound.
“Forty seconds,” said my uncle. “There has elapsed forty seconds between the two words. The sound, therefore, takes twenty seconds to ascend. Now, allowing a thousand and twenty feet for every second—we have twenty thousand four hundred feet—a league and a half and one-eighth.”
These words fell on my soul like a kind of death knell.
“A league and a half,” I muttered in a low and despairing voice.
“It shall be got over, my boy,” cried my uncle in a cheery tone; “depend on us.”
“But do you know whether to ascend or descend?” I asked faintly enough.
“We have to descend, and I will tell you why. You have reached a vast open space, a kind of bare crossroad, from which galleries diverge in every direction. That in which you are now lying must necessarily bring you to this point, for it appears that all these mighty fissures, these fractures of the globe’s interior, radiate from the vast cavern which we at this moment occupy. Rouse yourself, then, have courage and continue your route. Walk if you can, if not drag yourself along—slide, if nothing else is possible. The slope, must be rather rapid—and you will find strong arms to receive you at the end of your journey. Make a start, like a good fellow.”
These words served to rouse some kind of courage in my sinking frame.
“Farewell for the present, good uncle, I am about to take my departure. As soon as I start, our voices will cease to commingle. Farewell, then, until we meet again.”
“Adieu, Harry—until we say Welcome.” Such were the last words which reached my anxious ears before I commenced my weary and almost hopeless journey.
This wonderful and surprising conversation which took place through the vast mass of the earth’s labyrinth, these words exchanged, the speakers being about five miles apart—ended with hopeful and pleasant expressions. I breathed one more prayer to Heaven, I sent up words of thanksgiving—believing in my inmost heart that He had led me to the only place where the voices of my friends could reach my ears.