In the very center of this prodigious mass, fourteen hundred thousand times as large as our globe, I was whirled around in space, and brought into close conjunction with the planets. My body was subtilized, or rather became volatile, and commingled in a state of atomic vapor, with the prodigious clouds, which rushed forward like a mighty comet into infinite space!
What an extraordinary dream! Where would it finally take me? My feverish hand began to write down the marvelous details—details more like the imaginings of a lunatic than anything sober and real. I had during this period of hallucination forgotten everything—the Professor, the guide, and the raft on which we were floating. My mind was in a state of semioblivion.
“What is the matter, Harry?” said my uncle suddenly.
My eyes, which were wide opened like those of a somnambulist, were fixed upon him, but I did not see him, nor could I clearly make out anything around me.
“Take care, my boy,” again cried my uncle, “you will fall into the sea.”
As he uttered these words, I felt myself seized on the other side by the firm hand of our devoted guide. Had it not been for the presence of mind of Hans, I must infallibily have fallen into the waves and been drowned.
“Have you gone mad?” cried my uncle, shaking me on the other side.
“What—what is the matter?” I said at last, coming to myself.
“Are you ill, Henry?” continued the Professor in an anxious tone.
“No—no; but I have had an extraordinary dream. It, however, has passed away. All now seems well,” I added, looking around me with strangely puzzled eyes.
“All right,” said my uncle; “a beautiful breeze, a splendid sea. We are going along at a rapid rate, and if I am not out in my calculations we shall soon see land. I shall not be sorry to exchange the narrow limits of our raft for the mysterious strand of the subterranean ocean.”
As my uncle uttered these words, I rose and carefully scanned the horizon. But the line of water was still confounded with the lowering clouds that hung aloft, and in the distance appeared to touch the edge of the water.
XXX
Terrific Saurian Combat
Saturday, August 15th. The same leaden hue, the same eternal glare from above. No indication of land being in sight. The horizon appears to retreat before us, more and more as we advance.
My head, still dull and heavy from the effects of my extraordinary dream, which I cannot as yet banish from my mind.
The Professor, who has not dreamed, is, however, in one of his morose and unaccountable humors. Spends his time in scanning the horizon, at every point of the compass. His telescope is raised every moment to his eyes, and when he finds nothing to give any clue to our whereabouts, he assumes a Napoleonic attitude and walks anxiously.
I remarked that my uncle, the Professor, had a strong tendency to resume his old impatient character, and I could not but make a note of this disagreeable circumstance in my journal. I saw clearly that it had required all the influence of my danger and suffering, to extract from him one scintillation of humane feeling. Now that I was quite recovered, his original nature had conquered and obtained the upper hand.
And, after all, what had he to be angry and annoyed about, now more than at any other time? Was not the journey being accomplished under the most favorable circumstances? Was not the raft progressing with the most marvelous rapidity?
What, then, could be the matter? After one or two preliminary hems, I determined to inquire.
“You seem uneasy, Uncle,” said I, when for about the hundredth time he put down his telescope and walked up and down, muttering to himself.
“No, I am not uneasy,” he replied in a dry harsh tone, “by no means.”
“Perhaps I should have said impatient,” I replied, softening the force of my remark.
“Enough to make me so, I think.”
“And yet we are advancing at a rate seldom attained by a raft,” I remarked.
“What matters that?” cried my uncle. “I am not vexed at the rate we go at, but I am annoyed to find the sea so much vaster than I expected.”