I could hardly describe the look on Professor Hardwigg’s face when he realized what had happened.
First came disbelief. Then shock. Then anger.
I had never seen anyone look so completely crushed, only to explode into such furious outrage a moment later.
All the exhausting days at sea, all the dangers we had survived, had apparently been for nothing.
We had to start all over again.
We had thought we were moving forward during our long voyage, but in reality, we had been going backward. Every hour we had spent on the raft had been completely wasted.
But my uncle’s energy soon returned.
“So fate is going to play these cruel tricks on me?” he growled through clenched teeth. “The very elements seem determined to humiliate me. Air, fire, and water have joined forces against me.”
He raised his fist angrily.
“Fine! Let them see what a determined man can do. I will not give up. I will not retreat another inch. We shall see who wins this battle—man or nature!”
Standing on a rock, furious and defiant, Professor Hardwigg looked like a warrior challenging the gods themselves.
I decided I had to stop him before his determination turned into madness.
“Uncle, listen to me,” I said firmly. “There has to be a limit to what we can attempt. Fighting the impossible is pointless.”
He stared straight ahead.
“We are completely unprepared for another sea voyage. How can we possibly cross five hundred leagues on that miserable raft? We have a bedsheet for a sail, a piece of wood for a mast, and nothing strong enough to control the raft in a storm.”
I pointed toward the sea.
“We cannot even steer properly. If another storm comes, we will simply be tossed around like toys. Going out onto this dangerous Central Sea again would be madness.”
I continued talking for nearly ten minutes.
Then I stopped and waited for his answer.
There was only one problem.
My uncle had not heard a single word.
“To the raft!” he shouted.
That was the entire result of my carefully prepared argument.
I tried again.
I begged him.
I pleaded with him.
Eventually I lost my temper.
But I was fighting a will even stronger than my own.
I felt like the waves crashing against the enormous rocks below us. They had been attacking those rocks for thousands of years, yet the granite remained unmoved.
Meanwhile, Hans had quietly been repairing the raft.
He had not said a word during our argument.
Yet somehow, he seemed to understand exactly what my uncle intended to do.
Using pieces of rope, he had managed to make the raft seaworthy again.
While I was still arguing, he had already raised a new mast and attached another sail. The fresh sail was now fluttering in the steady breeze.
My uncle said a few words to Hans.
Without hesitation, Hans began loading our belongings onto the raft.
The air had cleared. The northeast wind was steady and gentle, and it looked as though it might remain that way for some time.
What could I do?
How could I possibly resist the iron will of two men?
Even if I had hoped that Hans would support me, that was impossible.
The Icelander seemed to have completely surrendered his own wishes to my uncle. He was the very picture of loyalty and self-sacrifice.
There was no hope of changing his mind.
So I simply gave up.
I was about to climb onto the raft with a miserable expression when my uncle put a hand on my shoulder.
“There’s no hurry, Harry,” he said. “We won’t leave until tomorrow.”
I looked at him, expecting the worst.
He smiled.
“Under the circumstances, we must take every possible precaution. Fate has thrown us onto this shore, so I refuse to leave before we have examined it properly.”
Only then did I understand what he meant.
Although the storm had carried us back to the northern shore, we had not landed anywhere near our original starting point.
We estimated that Port Gretchen must now lie far to the west.
So there was every reason to explore this unfamiliar coastline.
“Then let’s go on a voyage of discovery!” I said.
Leaving Hans to finish repairing the raft, my uncle and I set off.
The distance between the high-water mark and the foot of the cliffs was surprisingly great. It took us about half an hour to walk across it.
As we moved along, our boots crushed countless shells beneath our feet.
They came in every possible shape and size and had once been the homes of creatures from long-forgotten ages.
Some of them were enormous.
I stopped to examine several shells that were more than fifteen feet across.
They had once belonged to gigantic glyptodons from the Pliocene age. Compared with these monsters, modern turtles were tiny.
The ground was also covered with countless stone fragments. They looked like flint, polished and rounded by waves, and were arranged in layer after layer.
It became obvious to me that the sea must once have covered this entire region.
The rocks now lying far above the water still carried unmistakable scars left by ancient waves.
As I thought about it, I began to wonder whether this could explain the existence of the strange ocean so far beneath the earth’s surface.
Perhaps the enormous body of water was slowly draining into the deeper parts of the earth.
At the same time, I believed the sea might be supplied by water filtering down from the ocean above through tiny cracks in the earth.
Those cracks, however, must now be almost completely blocked.
Otherwise, this enormous underground reservoir would have filled up long ago.
Perhaps the underground water was also being heated by the fires deep inside the earth, causing some of it to turn into vapor.
That might explain the heavy clouds hanging above us.
It could also explain why there was so much electricity in the air and why violent storms were so common on this underground sea.
The theory seemed perfectly reasonable to me.
Nature might produce wonders beyond our imagination, but there was always some physical explanation behind them.
Everything obeyed the laws of nature.
The ground beneath our feet now seemed to be a huge layer of sedimentary rock, formed when ancient waters gradually sank away.
My uncle was delighted.
He examined every crack in the rocks with intense attention.
Whenever he discovered an opening, he immediately wanted to know how deep it went.
For nearly a mile, we followed the winding shoreline.
Then the landscape suddenly changed.
The ground looked as if some enormous force had violently thrown it upward from below.
Hollows and ridges appeared everywhere, evidence of massive movements deep within the earth long ago.
We struggled across the broken terrain.
Granite, flint, quartz, and layers of sediment were scattered everywhere.
Then suddenly, we reached an enormous open plain.
But it was not really a plain.
It was a plain of bones.
I stopped dead.
Before us stretched what looked like a gigantic cemetery.
Generation after generation of ancient creatures seemed to have left their remains here.
Huge mounds of fossils rose from the ground at intervals.
They continued toward the distant horizon and gradually disappeared into a thick brown mist.
The area must have covered nearly three square miles.
It was as though the entire history of animal life had been gathered together in one place.
Almost every creature that had ever lived on the ancient earth seemed to have left some trace here.
Yet our curiosity was too strong to let us turn back.
We walked forward.
Our boots crushed prehistoric fossils beneath us with a dry, crackling sound.
In the museums of great cities, scientists fought to obtain tiny pieces of fossils like these.
Here, they covered the ground by the thousands.
Even a thousand men like the famous naturalist Cuvier could never have reconstructed all the skeletons represented by this incredible collection.
I was completely overwhelmed.
My uncle stood silently for several minutes.
He raised both arms toward the enormous granite ceiling above us.
His mouth hung open.
His eyes shone wildly behind his spectacles, which fortunately had survived our journey.
His head moved from side to side and up and down.
He looked as if he could hardly believe what he was seeing.
And no wonder.
Before him lay an endless collection of prehistoric creatures, an astonishing treasure house of ancient life.
It was like taking a passionate book lover and suddenly placing him inside the legendary Library of Alexandria, restored to all its former glory by some impossible miracle.
That was my uncle’s state of mind.
For several minutes, he simply stood there, stunned by the size and importance of his discovery.
Then his excitement became uncontrollable.
He rushed across the field of ancient bones.
Suddenly he bent down and picked up a bare skull.
His hands trembled as he held it up.
“Harry,” he said in a shaking voice. “Harry, my boy. This is a human skull!”
“A human skull, Uncle?” I exclaimed.
I was just as shocked as he was.
“Yes, nephew!”
He stared at the skull in wonder.
“Ah, Milne-Edwards! Ah, de Quatrefages! Why aren’t you here to see this? Why am I the one who has discovered it—Professor Hardwigg!”