Saturday, August 15th.
The sea remained exactly the same. Its surface stretched endlessly in every direction, dull and gray beneath the constant glare from above. There was still no sign of land. The farther we traveled, the farther away the horizon seemed to move.
My head was still heavy and confused after the extraordinary dream I had experienced. I could not get it out of my mind.
My uncle, who had apparently dreamed nothing, was in one of his old bad moods. He spent most of his time studying the horizon in every direction. Every few minutes, he raised his telescope to his eyes. Whenever he found nothing to tell us where we were, he lowered it, struck a thoughtful pose, and paced nervously across the raft.
I realized that the Professor was slowly returning to his old impatient self. I could not help recording this unpleasant fact in my journal.
It had taken all the danger and suffering I had gone through to bring out even a little tenderness in him. Now that I was completely recovered, his natural temperament had returned.
But what was there to make him so impatient?
Were we not traveling under the best possible conditions? Wasn’t our raft moving at an astonishing speed?
At last, after clearing my throat a couple of times, I decided to ask him.
“You seem worried, Uncle. You’ve put down your telescope and started pacing for about the hundredth time.”
“No, I’m not worried,” he replied sharply. “Not at all.”
“Perhaps impatient would be a better word.”
“That would be fair enough.”
“But we’re moving faster than most rafts ever could.”
“What does that matter?” he snapped. “I’m not annoyed by our speed. I’m annoyed because this sea is far larger than I expected.”
Then I remembered what my uncle had said before we left home. He had estimated that this underground sea was no more than thirty leagues across.
We had already traveled more than three times that distance without finding the opposite shore.
Now I understood his frustration.
“We aren’t getting anywhere!” the Professor suddenly exclaimed. “We’re making no progress toward our great discoveries. All this time is being wasted. I didn’t leave home to go on a pleasure trip. Sailing across this pond on a raft is becoming unbearable.”
A pleasure trip!
And he called this enormous underground ocean a pond!
“But if we’ve followed the route marked out by the great Saknussemm,” I argued, “then surely we can’t be very far off course.”
“That is the question, as the great and immortal Shakespeare would say. Are we really following the route indicated by that remarkable man? Did Saknussemm ever reach this enormous body of water? And if he did, did he cross it? I’m beginning to suspect that the little stream we followed has led us in the wrong direction.”
“Even so, we can hardly regret coming this far. Seeing this magnificent sea alone has been worth the entire journey. It is an extraordinary sight.”
“I don’t care about sights or magnificent scenery. I came down here for a purpose, and I intend to accomplish it. Don’t talk to me about admiring scenery or any other sentimental nonsense.”
After that, I decided it was safer to keep quiet.
I let the Professor pace around and bite his lips in frustration without saying another word.
At six in the evening, our practical guide, Hans, asked for his weekly wages. My uncle gave him his three rix-dollars, and Hans calmly put the money into his pocket.
He was perfectly satisfied.
Sunday, August 16th.
Nothing new happened today.
The weather remained unchanged. The wind was beginning to strengthen slightly, and there were signs that a storm might be approaching.
When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was how intensely bright everything was.
Every day I worried that this strange electrical light might gradually weaken and finally disappear, leaving us in complete darkness.
But nothing like that happened.
The shadow of our raft, its mast, and its sails could still be seen clearly on the surface of the water.
This extraordinary sea seemed almost limitless. It must have been at least as wide as the Mediterranean, perhaps even as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.
Why should it not be?
My uncle had already tried sounding the depths several times.
He tied one of our heaviest crowbars to the end of a long cord and let it sink two hundred fathoms into the water. Pulling the strange sounding line back up was extremely difficult.
When the crowbar finally came aboard, Hans pointed out some strange marks on the iron.
The metal looked as if something incredibly powerful had crushed it between two hard surfaces.
I looked at Hans questioningly.
“Tander,” he said.
I had no idea what he meant.
I glanced toward my uncle, but he was lost in gloomy thoughts, and I did not want to disturb him.
So I turned back to Hans.
Very calmly, he opened and closed his mouth several times, making a biting motion.
Then I understood.
“Teeth!” I cried.
I examined the iron bar more carefully.
There was no doubt about it.
Those were teeth marks.
But what kind of creature could bite an iron bar hard enough to leave such deep impressions?
Had we encountered some unknown monster living in this enormous underground sea?
Could there be a creature larger and more dangerous than a shark, something even more enormous than a whale?
I could not take my eyes off the half-crushed iron.
Was my terrible dream about to become reality?
I spent the entire day thinking about it.
Only after sleeping for many hours did my imagination finally begin to calm down.
As we had done on previous Sundays, we treated the day as one of rest and quiet reflection.
Monday, August 17th.
I tried to remember everything I knew about the enormous reptiles that had lived during the ancient secondary period, long before mankind appeared.
In those distant ages, reptiles ruled the earth and the seas.
The Jurassic world had been filled with gigantic creatures. Nature had given them powerful bodies and extraordinary strength.
The reptiles we know today—lizards, crocodiles, and alligators—are nothing compared with those ancient giants.
If people in ancient times were giants, then the animals of those ages were giants too.
As I thought about them, I felt a chill run through me.
No human being had ever seen those creatures alive.
They had walked and swum across the earth millions of years before mankind existed. Only their fossilized bones had survived, allowing scientists to reconstruct their bodies and imagine their enormous size.
I remembered once seeing the skeleton of one of these ancient reptiles in the great museum at Hamburg.
It was thirty feet long from its nose to the tip of its tail.
Could I, a man living in the modern world, really be about to stand face-to-face with one of its living descendants?
I could hardly believe it.
And yet there were those unmistakable teeth marks on our iron bar.
Could there really be any doubt that the bite had come from something like a gigantic crocodile?
I stared at the underground sea in terror.
At any moment, I expected one of those monsters to rise from the dark depths.
My uncle seemed to share some of my suspicions, though perhaps not my fear.
After examining the damaged crowbar carefully, he quickly turned his eyes toward the vast and mysterious ocean.
Why had he suddenly become so interested in the water?
I wondered if his sounding had disturbed some terrible creature beneath us.
Perhaps we were about to pay dearly for our curiosity.
I decided we had better be prepared.
I checked our weapons and made sure they were ready to use.
My uncle watched me and nodded approvingly.
He had understood the danger too.
The surface of the sea was beginning to rise and fall strangely.
Something was moving beneath us.
The danger was coming.
Closer and closer.
We had to remain alert.
Tuesday, August 18th.
Evening finally came, and with it the irresistible desire to sleep.
There was no true night in this strange place, any more than there is a real night during summer in the Arctic regions.
Hans remained at the rudder without moving.
I had no idea when he ever found time to sleep.
Whenever he managed to rest for a few moments, I took advantage of his watchfulness and closed my own eyes.
But only two hours later, a terrible shock suddenly woke me.
The whole raft seemed to hit a hidden rock.
Then, by some mysterious force, it was lifted completely out of the water and thrown nearly forty yards away.
My uncle sprang to his feet.
“What’s happening? Have we been wrecked?”
Hans raised one hand and pointed ahead.
About two hundred yards away, a huge black mass was rising and falling in the water.
I stared at it in horror.
My worst fears had come true.
“It’s a gigantic monster!” I cried, clasping my hands.
“Yes!” shouted the Professor excitedly. “And over there is an enormous sea lizard!”
“And farther away—look! A gigantic crocodile! Look at those terrible jaws and those monstrous teeth!”
The creature suddenly disappeared beneath the water.
“A whale!” my uncle shouted. “A whale! I can see its enormous fins! Look! It’s blowing!”
Two enormous columns of water shot high into the air and crashed back into the sea.
The sound echoed through the gigantic cavern.
We stood frozen.
We were surrounded by terrifying marine monsters, each one more frightening in reality than anything I had imagined in my dream.
They were enormous beyond belief.
Even the smallest of them could have crushed our raft—and everyone on it—with a single bite.
Hans grabbed the rudder, which had been torn from his hands, and turned it sharply in an attempt to escape.
But we had nowhere to go.
To one side was a turtle nearly forty feet wide.
On the other side was a gigantic serpent just as long, with a huge and horrifying head rising from the water.
Wherever we looked, there was no escape.
The monsters rushed around us with astonishing speed.
They twisted and turned around the raft, forming huge circles that seemed to close in on us.
I grabbed my rifle in desperation.
But what could a rifle bullet possibly do against bodies covered in thick armor-like scales?
We sat frozen with terror.
The monsters came closer and closer.
Our fate seemed certain.
On one side was the gigantic crocodile.
On the other was the enormous sea serpent.
The other monsters had already disappeared beneath the waves.
I raised my rifle.
I was ready to fire, whatever the consequences.
But Hans quickly signaled for me to stop.
The two monsters passed within a hundred yards of the raft.
Then they suddenly charged at each other.
They were so consumed by fury that they did not even notice us.
The battle began.
We could see every movement of the two enormous creatures.
To my terrified imagination, however, the other monsters seemed ready to join the fight.
I thought I could see the whale, the lizard, and the giant turtle surrounding them.
I pointed them out to Hans.
He only shook his head.
“Two,” he said.
“Two? Surely you’re mistaken!”
My uncle calmly raised his telescope and continued studying the battle.
“Hans is right.”
“How can that be?”
“The first creature has the snout of a porpoise, the head of a lizard, and the teeth of a crocodile. That’s what fooled us. It is the most terrifying of all the ancient reptiles—the Ichthyosaurus, the great fish-lizard.”
“And the other one?”
“The second creature is a giant serpent-like animal with a body hidden beneath a hard shell. It is the enemy of the Ichthyosaurus—the Plesiosaurus, the ancient sea reptile.”
Hans had been right.
There were only two creatures disturbing the surface of the sea.
For the first time in human history, mortal eyes were looking upon living reptiles from the ancient oceans.
The Ichthyosaurus had enormous fiery-red eyes. Each one was as large as a man’s head, perhaps even larger.
Nature had equipped this extraordinary creature with incredibly powerful eyesight, allowing it to see through the deep waters where it normally hunted.
Some naturalists had called it the whale of the reptile world because it was just as large and fast-moving as the great whales of our own seas.
This creature was at least a hundred feet long.
I could judge its enormous size whenever it lifted its gigantic tail above the water.
Its jaws were huge and powerful, filled with an astonishing number of teeth.
According to the naturalists, it had no fewer than 182.
The other creature was the mighty Plesiosaurus.
It had a long, snake-like body, a short tail, and broad fins that looked like rows of oars on an ancient Roman warship.
Its body was covered by a hard shell.
Its long neck was as flexible as a swan’s and rose more than thirty feet above the water.
It looked like a living tower of flesh.
The two monsters attacked each other with unbelievable fury.
No human being had ever witnessed such a battle.
To us, it seemed less like reality than some nightmare brought to life.
They threw entire mountains of water into the air.
Spray crashed across our raft while the waves tossed us violently from side to side.
Again and again, we thought the raft would overturn and throw us into the sea.
Their terrible hisses seemed to shake the granite roof of the cavern itself.
The sounds filled us with terror.
The two monsters locked themselves in a deadly embrace.
Their bodies twisted together so violently that I could no longer tell where one creature ended and the other began.
But the battle could not continue forever.
And whichever creature won, we would be in terrible danger.
One hour passed.
Then two.
Then three.
Still there was no winner.
The monsters fought with the same terrible determination.
Sometimes they moved closer to the raft.
Sometimes they drifted farther away.
More than once, we thought they were finally leaving us.
But instead, they came closer again.
We crouched on the raft with our rifles ready.
We knew perfectly well that our bullets might do nothing against such monsters.
Still, we were determined not to die without fighting.
Suddenly, both creatures disappeared beneath the waves.
A huge whirlpool opened in the middle of the sea.
The water dragged violently toward it, and our raft was almost pulled down with it.
Several minutes passed.
Nothing appeared.
Had the battle ended beneath the surface?
Would the final act of this terrible struggle happen where we could not see it?
We had no idea.
Then, suddenly, not far from us, an enormous mass burst from the water.
It was the head of the Plesiosaurus.
The terrible creature was dying.
I could no longer see its enormous body.
Only its long, snake-like neck remained above the water.
It twisted and writhed in agony.
Then it struck the surface like a gigantic whip.
A moment later it twisted again, writhing like a worm that had been cut in half.
Water exploded in every direction.
A huge wave swept across our raft and nearly blinded us.
But the monster’s movements were gradually becoming weaker.
Its struggles slowed.
Its violent twisting almost stopped.
At last, the enormous serpent-like creature lay motionless on the surface of the now-calm sea.
It was dead.
But what had happened to the Ichthyosaurus?
Had it returned to its enormous underwater cavern to rest?
Or would it rise again and come after us?
We had no answer.
For the moment, at least, we had been given a little time to breathe.