The next morning, I woke up to a wonderful surprise. I felt completely recovered.
After everything I had been through, a bath sounded irresistible. As soon as I got up, I went straight to the shore and plunged into the waters of this underground Mediterranean.
The water was cool, clean, and incredibly refreshing.
I returned to our camp with a huge appetite.
Hans was an excellent cook. With plenty of firewood and water at his disposal, he somehow managed to make our limited food a little more interesting each day.
That morning, he prepared something that almost felt like a proper English breakfast, followed by coffee.
I had never tasted coffee that was so welcome or refreshing.
My uncle was considerate enough to let me enjoy my meal without disturbing me. But the moment I finished, I could see that he had been waiting impatiently.
“Come with me,” he said. “The tide is at its highest, and I want to study it.”
“The tide?” I stood up in surprise. “Did you just say the tide, Uncle?”
“Of course.”
“You mean the sun and moon can affect the water down here?”
“Why shouldn’t they? Every object in the universe is affected by gravity. Why should this enormous underground sea be an exception?”
He continued,
“And there is something even more convincing. Despite the enormous pressure of the atmosphere down here, you can see that this sea rises and falls as regularly as the Atlantic.”
As we spoke, we reached the sandy shore.
Waves were rolling onto the beach with a steady, monotonous sound. The water was clearly rising.
“The tide is really coming in!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, my boy,” my uncle replied happily, rubbing his hands together like a delighted scientist. “Look at those lines of foam. The water has already risen at least ten or twelve feet.”
“That is amazing.”
“Not at all. It is perfectly natural.”
“It may seem natural to you, Uncle, but almost everything here seems miraculous to me.”
I looked out over the strange underground sea.
“Who could have imagined that an actual ocean might exist beneath the earth? It has tides, changing winds, and even storms! If someone had told me this before our journey, I would have laughed at the idea.”
My uncle smiled at me patiently.
“But why not, Harry? Is there any physical law that makes such a thing impossible?”
“Well, if we abandon the old theory that the center of the earth is an enormous furnace, then I suppose I have no reason to call any of this impossible.”
“Then you admit that Sir Humphry Davy’s theory makes sense?”
“I do. And once I accept that, I can no longer see any reason to doubt that there might be seas, strange lands, or even entire countries inside the earth.”
“Exactly. Though, of course, these underground countries are probably uninhabited.”
“That is certainly possible. But why couldn’t this sea contain some unknown kind of fish?”
“We haven’t found any so far,” the Professor replied. “And I think the chances of finding any are rather small.”
His answer only made me more curious.
“Well, I want to settle the question myself. I’m going fishing.”
“With a fishing line and hook?”
“Exactly.”
“Then by all means, give it a try,” my uncle said, clearly pleased by my enthusiasm. “Since we are here, we might as well discover every secret this extraordinary place has to offer.”
I suddenly remembered something I had completely forgotten to ask.
“By the way, where exactly are we now? Surely your instruments have already told you.”
The Professor nodded.
“From one point of view, we are about three hundred and fifty leagues from Iceland.”
“So far?”
“I have calculated it several times. I am certain I haven’t made an error of even five hundred yards.”
“And are we still traveling southeast?”
“Yes. The compass shows a western declination of nineteen degrees and forty-two minutes, exactly as it does on the surface.”
He paused.
“But I have discovered something very interesting about the magnetic inclination.”
“What is it?”
“On the surface, in the northern hemisphere, the magnetic needle dips downward toward the earth. Down here, however, it is beginning to point upward.”
“That means the main center of magnetic attraction must lie somewhere between the earth’s surface and our present position!”
“Exactly!” my uncle cried, delighted. “And if we continue toward the polar regions, perhaps somewhere around the seventy-third parallel, where Sir James Ross located the magnetic pole, the needle may point straight upward.”
He was almost beside himself with excitement.
“From this, we can infer that the great magnetic center is not extremely deep beneath us.”
I stared at him in surprise.
“So we have discovered something that will astonish scientists on the surface. No one ever suspected this.”
“Science is great, powerful, and ultimately capable of correcting itself,” my uncle declared. “It has made many mistakes, but those mistakes have often led us toward the truth.”
After a while, I changed the subject.
“Do you know how deep we are?”
“We are now exactly thirty-five leagues below the surface.”
“More than a hundred miles?”
“Yes.”
I studied the map carefully.
“Then we must be somewhere beneath the Scottish Highlands. The Grampian Mountains are directly above us.”
“Precisely,” the Professor said with a laugh.
He looked up toward the enormous rocky roof above our heads.
“Doesn’t it sound frightening to imagine the weight of all those mountains pressing down on us? But don’t worry. This enormous underground roof is solid and stable. The great Architect of the universe built it from stronger material than anything humans could construct.”
He gestured toward the vast cavern.
“Think about it, Harry. What are the greatest bridges ever built? What are the grandest cathedral roofs? They are nothing compared with this enormous dome above us, beneath which an entire ocean can rise and fall, remain calm, or be whipped into storms!”
“I admire it as much as you do, Uncle, and I have no fear that our granite sky will collapse on us.”
I hesitated.
“But now that we’ve discussed all this science, what are you planning to do next? Surely you’re thinking about returning to the surface.”
I asked the question cautiously, already expecting the answer.
“Return?” my uncle cried in alarm. “Harry, surely you aren’t seriously thinking of something so foolish and cowardly!”
“No. My plan is to continue forward. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky so far, and I believe our luck will continue.”
“But how are we supposed to cross that enormous stretch of water?”
“I certainly don’t intend to jump into it headfirst or swim across it like Leander crossing the Hellespont.”
He pointed toward the distant shore.
“An ocean is simply a great lake surrounded by land. Therefore, this underground sea must also have land around it.”
“Of course.”
“And when we reach the opposite shore, we should find a way to continue our journey.”
“Perhaps. But how large do you think this sea is?”
“I would guess forty or fifty leagues across, perhaps a little more or less.”
“Even if your estimate is correct, what are we going to do about it?”
“We don’t have time for more arguments. We sail tomorrow.”
I stared at him.
“Sail?”
I looked around the shore. There was no boat anywhere.
“We’re going to cross an unknown underground ocean, and where exactly is the ship that will carry us?”
“It isn’t exactly what you would call a ship. For now, we’ll have to be satisfied with a strong raft.”
“A raft?” I stared at him in disbelief. “Down here? Building a raft should be just as impossible as building a ship! I can’t imagine where we could possibly find—”
“My dear Harry,” my uncle interrupted impatiently, “if you would listen instead of talking so much, you might actually hear the answer.”
“Hear what?”
“The sound of a hammer.”
I listened.
There it was.
Someone was hammering nearby.
“Hans is building our raft,” my uncle explained. “He has already been working for several hours.”
“Hans is building a raft?”
“Yes.”
“But where did he find enough trees?”
“He found all the wood he needed. Come and see.”
Still unable to believe what I was hearing, I followed my uncle like a man walking through a dream.
About fifteen minutes later, we reached the other side of the rocky headland that formed our natural harbor.
There was Hans.
And beside him lay a half-built raft.
I stopped in astonishment.
The raft was being made from huge beams of a strange kind of wood. All around Hans lay branches, roots, joints, and other pieces of timber. There was enough material lying there to build an entire fleet.
I turned to my uncle.
“Where did all this wood come from? And what kind of wood is it?”
“There is pine, fir, and even palms from northern regions. The sea has mineralized them over a very long period.”
“You mean this wood has been buried down here?”
“Exactly.”
“Can that really be possible?”
“Of course. What you’re looking at is fossilized wood.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“But if it’s fossilized, shouldn’t it be as hard and heavy as iron? Wouldn’t it sink?”
“Sometimes it does. Some fossilized wood has become almost pure anthracite. But other pieces, like these, have only gone through part of the fossilization process.”
He picked up two pieces of wood.
“But there is no better proof than an experiment.”
He threw them into the sea.
The pieces disappeared beneath the surface.
A moment later, they rose again.
They floated peacefully on the water, moving gently with the waves and the tide.
My uncle smiled triumphantly.
“Well? Are you convinced?”
“I am convinced that everything I see down here is unbelievable.”
My journey beneath the earth had completely changed the way I thought.
Every day, another impossible thing became real.
At this point, I wouldn’t even have been surprised to see a fleet of strange native canoes sailing across that silent sea.
By the following evening, Hans had finished the raft.
It was about ten feet long and five feet wide.
The beams were tightly bound together with strong ropes, making the whole structure surprisingly solid.
With all three of us pushing together, we launched our strange little vessel into the water.
It floated calmly on the surface of the vast underground sea.
The Professor had given it a fitting name.
The Central Sea.