Friday, August 21st.
This morning, the magnificent geyser had completely disappeared. The wind had grown stronger, and we were rapidly moving away from Henry’s Island. Even the thunderous roar of the giant column of water had faded into silence.
The weather was about to change—suddenly and violently.
The air was filling with moisture. Constant evaporation from the salty sea had loaded the atmosphere with electricity. The clouds were slowly sinking toward the water, growing darker and darker, until they looked almost olive-black.
The sunlight could barely penetrate the thick curtain of clouds.
It felt as if the stage of this strange underground world were being prepared for another terrible drama.
But this time, the enemy was not some prehistoric monster.
It was nature itself.
I could feel the coming storm in my whole body, just as people on the surface can sense that a great downpour is about to begin.
To the south, huge oval clouds were piling upon one another. Their appearance was dark and threatening, like the sky before the worst kind of storm.
The air felt unbearably heavy, yet the sea was strangely calm.
Far away, the clouds looked like enormous balls of cotton stacked one on top of another. Gradually they swelled, broke apart, and multiplied.
They became too heavy to rise above the horizon.
The upper winds tore them apart and pushed them into darker and darker shapes until they formed one enormous layer covering the sky.
Every now and then, a lighter cloud, still catching the light from above, bounced across the gray surface before disappearing into the darkness.
There was no doubt about it.
The entire atmosphere was charged with electricity.
I could feel it running through me.
My hair literally stood on end, as if I were connected to a giant electrical battery.
If Hans or my uncle had touched me, I felt certain they would have received a powerful shock.
At about ten o’clock, the signs of the storm became unmistakable.
The wind suddenly weakened, almost as though it were stopping to gather strength for a final attack.
Above us, the enormous dark mass of clouds looked like a gigantic bag, holding back the full power of the storm.
I tried to convince myself that nothing serious was about to happen.
But I could not stop myself from saying:
“I think we’re going to have terrible weather.”
The Professor did not answer.
He was already in a terrible mood. The endless ocean stretched before him, with no sign of land anywhere.
He merely shrugged when he heard me.
“We’re going to have a tremendous storm,” I said again, pointing toward the horizon. “Look at those clouds. They’re sinking lower and lower, as if they mean to crush the sea.”
A strange silence fell over everything.
The wind stopped completely.
Nature seemed to hold its breath.
Even the sail hung from the mast in heavy, lifeless folds. I noticed a faint glow around the mast, another sign of the enormous electrical charge in the air.
The raft sat motionless on the dark sea.
The surface was perfectly smooth, almost like glass.
Since we were not moving anyway, I thought it was foolish to keep the sail raised. If the storm suddenly hit us, the sail could easily become the cause of our destruction.
“Let’s lower the sail,” I said. “It’s simply common sense.”
“No!” my uncle shouted angrily. “Absolutely not!”
He pointed toward the endless horizon.
“Let the wind take us wherever it wants. Let the storm tear us apart if it must. I only want to see some sign of land—a coast, some cliffs, anything! Even if the rocks smash this raft into pieces. Keep the sail up!”
He had barely finished speaking when the southern horizon changed completely.
The clouds that had been gathering for so long suddenly released their water.
The air rushed violently into the space they had left behind.
The storm exploded upon us.
The wind came from every direction.
It roared.
It howled.
It screamed with a terrible, almost joyful violence, like demons finally released from captivity.
The darkness grew so deep that it seemed to become something solid.
The raft was thrown up and down by the waves, racing wildly across the sea.
My uncle was hurled headfirst onto the deck.
I struggled toward him.
He was gripping the end of a cable with all his strength, yet he seemed almost delighted by the spectacle of the unleashed elements.
Hans, meanwhile, did not move a muscle.
The wind whipped his long hair across his motionless face. Every strand seemed to glow with tiny sparks of electricity.
He looked like a man from some ancient prehistoric age—a survivor from the time of the Megatherium.
Yet the mast somehow held against the storm.
The sail suddenly filled and stretched tight, swelling like a giant soap bubble about to burst.
The raft shot forward at a speed impossible to measure.
But the water beneath us was moving even faster. Long streaks of foam shot away on both sides of the raft, showing just how violently the sea was rushing past.
“The sail!” I shouted.
I tried to pull it down.
“Leave it!” my uncle yelled angrily.
“Nej,” Hans said quietly, shaking his head.
There was nothing more I could do.
Ahead of us, the rain came down like an enormous waterfall.
We were racing straight toward it.
But before the wall of water reached us, the gigantic curtain of clouds suddenly split open.
The sea began to boil and foam.
Then the electricity in the clouds exploded into action.
Lightning flashed everywhere.
I had never seen anything like it.
Great bolts crossed one another in every direction. Thunder followed with such violence that the whole underground world seemed to shake.
The clouds themselves appeared to glow from within.
Even the hailstones striking our metal boots and weapons seemed to shine.
The waves rose around us like enormous monsters made of fire. Beneath their crests, an intense light seemed to burn, while their tops were crowned with brilliant flames.
My eyes were blinded by the flashes.
My ears were overwhelmed by the thunder.
I had to cling desperately to the mast, which bent beneath the storm like a thin reed.
Never had any sailor witnessed such a storm.
From this point on, my notes become confused and incomplete.
I could recover only a few scattered observations, written almost mechanically.
But even these brief notes show how completely terror and exhaustion had taken control of me.
Sunday, August 23rd.
Where are we?
What part of this strange world are we passing through?
We are still being carried forward at an unbelievable speed.
The night was horrifying beyond description.
The storm has not weakened at all.
We are surrounded by a continuous roar that cannot even be given a name.
The thunder crashes like endless artillery.
Our ears are actually bleeding.
We cannot speak to one another.
Even if we shout directly into each other’s ears, we cannot hear a thing.
Lightning never stops.
Not even for a second.
I can see enormous zigzagging bolts striking the vaulted roof of this gigantic cavern.
What if that roof were to collapse on us?
Other bolts shoot in every direction, sometimes forming huge balls of fire that explode above us like bombs over a besieged city.
The noise cannot become any louder.
It has already gone beyond anything the human ear can properly understand.
Even if every powder magazine in the world exploded at the same moment, it could hardly produce a more terrible sound.
The storm clouds constantly give off light.
Electricity seems to be pouring endlessly through the atmosphere.
Something strange is happening to the air itself.
Columns of water rise from the sea like waterspouts, then collapse back into the waves in clouds of foam.
Where are we going?
My uncle is lying flat on the raft.
He says nothing.
He no longer seems to care about the passage of time.
The heat keeps rising.
I look at the thermometer.
To my astonishment, it reads—
The exact number has been rubbed away from my manuscript.
Monday, August 24th.
This terrible storm still refuses to end.
Why should it ever end?
Perhaps this strange, heavy atmosphere will remain this way forever.
We are exhausted almost beyond endurance.
Hans is still as calm as ever.
The raft continues steadily toward the southeast.
We have now traveled about two hundred leagues from the island we discovered.
Around noon, the storm became more violent than ever.
We had to tie down every piece of equipment on the raft, or the waves and wind would carry everything away.
We tied ourselves down too.
Each of us secured the others with ropes.
The waves repeatedly swept across us.
Several times, we were completely underwater.
For three days and three nights, we had been unable to speak.
We opened our mouths.
We moved our lips.
But no sound reached the others.
Even when we pressed our mouths directly against one another’s ears, we heard nothing.
The wind simply carried our voices away.
At last, after several attempts, my uncle managed to bring his head close to mine.
He seemed to say something.
My exhausted mind could barely understand him.
But somehow, more through instinct than hearing, I knew what he had said.
“We are lost.”
I pulled out my notebook.
I had never been without it, even in the worst moments.
With great difficulty, I wrote:
“Take in the sail.”
My uncle read the words.
He gave a deep sigh and nodded.
His head had barely fallen back when something appeared at the very edge of the raft.
A ball of fire.
Our poor raft seemed doomed.
The mast and sail were suddenly ripped away and thrown high into the air like a kite.
We froze in terror.
The ball of fire was about the size of a ten-inch shell. Half of it was white, while the other half had a strange blue glow.
It spun incredibly fast and drifted downwind.
It moved everywhere.
First here.
Then there.
It climbed over one of the raft’s sides.
Then it jumped onto our food supplies.
Finally, it floated down and landed directly on our barrel of gunpowder.
We were in an absolutely horrifying situation.
An explosion seemed unavoidable.
But, by some miracle, it did not happen.
The glowing ball moved away.
It approached Hans.
He stared at it without the slightest sign of fear.
Then it moved toward my uncle.
He dropped to his knees to avoid it.
Then it came toward me.
I stood there pale and shaking in its blinding light and intense heat.
The strange ball spun around my feet.
I tried desperately to pull them away.
But I could not.
The air filled with the smell of nitrous gas.
It burned my throat and seemed to fill my lungs.
I felt as though I were suffocating.
Why couldn’t I move my feet?
Were they somehow fixed to the raft?
No.
Then I understood.
The electric ball had magnetized every piece of iron on board.
The instruments, tools, weapons, and other metal objects were all being pulled together with terrible force.
Even the nails in my heavy boots had become attached to the iron plate beneath the wooden deck.
I could not move my foot.
It was like the old story of the mountain of adamant.
With one enormous effort, I finally tore my foot free.
I escaped just as the glowing ball completed another turn around me.
If I had failed, it might have dragged me along with it.
Then—
What a blinding, overwhelming light!
The ball of fire suddenly exploded.
We were surrounded by waterfalls of living flame.
Brilliant light flooded the entire cavern.
Then everything vanished.
Darkness returned.
I barely had time to see my uncle lying apparently unconscious on the deck.
Hans was still at the helm.
His body seemed to be throwing off sparks, as though the electricity had passed directly through him.
Where were we going?
I asked myself the question again and again.
And the only answer was the echo of my own thoughts.
Where?
Tuesday, August 25th.
I have just regained consciousness after a long faint.
The terrible storm is still raging.
The lightning has become even more intense, pouring across the sky like countless fiery serpents released from captivity.
Are we still at sea?
Yes.
And we are still being carried forward at an unbelievable speed.
We must have passed beneath England.
Then beneath the English Channel.
Then beneath France.
Perhaps we have already traveled beneath the whole of Europe.
Suddenly, another terrible roar reaches us from the distance.
This time there is no doubt.
The sea is crashing against rocks somewhere nearby.
Then—