This is where my journal of our raft voyage ends. Luckily, the journal survived the wreck. From this point on, I return to telling the story as I did before I began keeping daily notes.
I have no idea what happened at the exact moment of the wreck.
One moment, I was on the raft. The next, I was thrown violently into the boiling waves.
I would certainly have been killed if Hans had not grabbed my arm.
“Hold on!” he shouted.
His powerful hand pulled me away from the terrible drop beneath us.
The brave Icelander then carried me far beyond the reach of the waves and laid me down on a stretch of scorching sand.
When I came around, my uncle was beside me.
Hans, however, did not rest.
Without saying a word, he went back toward the rocks where the furious waves were still crashing against the wreckage. He was determined to recover anything that might have survived.
That was Hans all over. He was always calm, practical, and thoughtful.
I could not speak. I was overwhelmed by everything that had happened. My body was bruised and exhausted, and it took several hours before I felt like myself again.
Then a tremendous rainstorm broke over us.
The rain soaked us completely, but its violence was actually a good sign. The storm was beginning to pass.
We found some shelter beneath a group of overhanging rocks.
Hans prepared some food for us, but I was too exhausted to eat.
After three terrible days and nights of constant struggle, we finally fell into a deep, restless sleep.
My dreams were full of frightening images, but exhaustion eventually overcame everything, and I slept.
The next morning, everything had changed.
The weather was magnificent.
The air was calm. The sea was calm. It was almost impossible to believe that a violent storm had raged only hours before.
My uncle was the first thing I heard when I woke.
“Well, my boy!” he cried cheerfully. “Did you sleep well?”
His happiness was almost irritating.
Anyone might have thought we were back at our old house on Königstrasse, that I had just come downstairs for breakfast, and that my marriage to Gretchen was going to take place that very day.
My uncle seemed completely unconcerned about what we had just endured.
But I could not forget what had happened.
The storm had driven us eastward. We had traveled beneath Germany itself, beneath Hamburg, the city where I had once been so happy, and beneath the very street where everything I loved was waiting for me.
In fact, I was only about forty leagues away from Gretchen.
But forty leagues of solid, unbreakable granite stood between us.
Those miserable thoughts filled my mind before I finally answered my uncle.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked. “Can’t you even tell me whether you slept well?”
“I slept very well,” I replied. “But every bone in my body hurts.”
“That is nothing to worry about. It is simply the result of everything we have been through these last few days.”
“You seem remarkably cheerful this morning.”
“Cheerful? My dear boy, I am delighted! I have never been happier. We have finally reached the port we were hoping for.”
“The end of our expedition?”
“No, not the end. But we have reached the far side of the sea that I had begun to fear might stretch all the way around the world. Now we can continue our journey on foot and make another attempt to reach the center of the earth.”
I hesitated.
“My dear uncle, may I ask you one question?”
“Of course, Harry. Ask a dozen if you like.”
“One will be enough. How are we going to get back?”
“How are we going to get back? What kind of question is that? We haven’t reached the end of our journey yet.”
“I know. But I want to know how you plan to make the return journey.”
“In the simplest way possible,” he said calmly. “Once we reach the exact center of the earth, we will either discover another passage leading to the surface, or we will simply turn around and return the way we came. I have every reason to believe that the passage ahead of us will not suddenly close behind us.”
“Then the first thing we need to do is repair the raft.”
“Of course. We must take care of that first.”
“And then there is the question of food. Do we have enough provisions to carry out all these extraordinary plans?”
“I have already considered that. The answer is yes. Hans is an exceptionally capable man, and I believe he managed to save most of our cargo. Come and see for yourself.”
He led me out of the rocky shelter.
I had almost begun to hope that the wreck had destroyed everything. If that had happened, perhaps our expedition would finally have been forced to end.
But I was wrong.
When I reached the shore, I found Hans standing calmly among a large collection of supplies that he had arranged in perfect order.
My uncle clasped his hands together in silent gratitude.
He was too moved to speak.
I had never seen such devotion in any man, nor could I imagine anyone surpassing Hans. While we slept, he had been working without rest. He had risked his life to save the most valuable parts of our cargo.
Naturally, we had suffered some serious losses.
Our weapons were completely gone.
Fortunately, we had already learned how to survive without them.
The gunpowder, however, had survived. That was almost unbelievable, considering how close it had come to blowing all of us to pieces during the storm.
My uncle immediately tried to make the best of things.
“Well,” he said, “since we have no guns, we simply have to give up hunting.”
“Yes, sir. We can live without the guns. But what about our instruments?”
“Here is the manometer. It is the most important one of all, and I am perfectly happy to have it instead of the others. With this instrument, I can calculate our depth as we travel. More importantly, it will tell me when we have reached the center of the earth.”
He laughed.
“Without this little device, we might easily make a mistake and come out on the other side of the earth!”
He laughed again, almost hysterically.
“But the compass!” I cried. “What can we possibly do without that?”
“Here it is!”
He held it up triumphantly.
“Safe and sound! And here are the chronometer and the thermometers. Hans is an invaluable man!”
There was no arguing with that.
All our important nautical instruments had survived.
Then I discovered even more useful equipment scattered along the shore: ladders, ropes, pickaxes, crowbars, and shovels.
Only one major problem remained.
Food.
“But what are we going to eat?” I asked.
“Let us inspect the provisions,” my uncle replied seriously.
Our food boxes were lined up along the shore. Amazingly, they were in excellent condition.
The sea had left their contents almost completely untouched.
After counting the biscuits, salted meat, Schiedam, and dried fish, we calculated that we still had enough food for about four months, provided we used it carefully.
“Four months!” my uncle cried happily. “Then we have more than enough time to go forward and come back. And with whatever is left, I shall even give a magnificent dinner for my colleagues at the Johanneum!”
I could only sigh.
By now, I should have been accustomed to my uncle’s strange personality. Yet he continued to astonish me.
He was the greatest mystery I had ever known.
“Now,” he continued, “before we do anything else, we need fresh water. The rain has filled all the hollows in the granite. We have plenty of water, so there is no danger of dying of thirst. That is extremely important in our situation.”
“And the raft?”
“I shall have Hans repair it as well as he can. Although I have a strong feeling that we will not need it again.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I have an idea, my boy.”
“What idea?”
“Simply this: we will not return to the surface through the same opening we used to enter.”
I stared at him suspiciously.
I had already wondered more than once whether my uncle was losing his mind.
I had no idea then just how accurate his prediction would prove to be.
“And now,” he said, “we have taken care of all the important details. Let us have breakfast.”
After giving Hans his final instructions, I followed my uncle to a small rocky point overlooking the sea.
There, with dried meat, biscuits, and a wonderful cup of hot tea, we had one of the most satisfying meals I can remember.
Our exhaustion, the fresh air, and the peacefulness that had followed the terrible storm had given me a tremendous appetite.
For the first time in many days, I actually felt happy.
While we were eating, I asked my uncle how he thought our position compared with the world above us.
“I suppose it will be difficult to figure out exactly where we are,” I said.
“It would certainly be difficult to determine our exact position,” he replied. “During those three days of terrible storms, I had no way of measuring either our speed or our direction. But we can still make a reasonable estimate. I don’t think we will be very far wrong.”
“If I remember correctly, our last observation was made at the geyser island.”
“Harry’s Island, my boy! Harry’s Island.”
He smiled proudly.
“Don’t reject the honor of having your name given to an island discovered by us—the first human beings to set foot on it since the beginning of the world!”
“All right. Harry’s Island, then. From there, we had already traveled more than two hundred and seventy leagues across the sea. And we were roughly six hundred leagues from Iceland.”
“Excellent! I’m glad you remember the figures so well. Let us start there. Then we add the four days of storm. Our speed must have been enormous. I estimate that we traveled about eighty leagues every twenty-four hours.”
“That seems reasonable to me.”
“That gives us another three hundred and twenty leagues.”
“And the Central Sea must be at least six hundred leagues across,” my uncle continued. “Think of it, Harry! We have discovered an underground lake larger than the Mediterranean.”
“We don’t even know its full size,” I said. “It could stretch for hundreds of miles.”
“Very likely.”
I thought about the figures for several minutes.
“Then, if your calculations are correct, we should now be directly beneath the Mediterranean.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes. I am almost certain of it. Aren’t we about nine hundred leagues from Reykjavik?”
“That is exactly right. We’ve traveled an impressive distance, haven’t we?”
“Indeed. But how can we know whether we are beneath the Mediterranean, Turkey, or the Atlantic? We don’t know whether we have kept exactly to our original course.”
“I don’t think we were blown very far off course. The wind seemed to come from roughly the same direction throughout the storm. I believe this shore must be southeast of Port Gretchen.”
“I hope you’re right. But we can easily find out. We can use the compass to determine our direction from the point where we started.”
He stood up.
“Come along. We shall consult that invaluable little instrument.”
My uncle hurried toward the rocks where Hans had stored our equipment.
He seemed happier than I had seen him in years.
He rubbed his hands together and even moved with the energy of a young man.
Since I had known him, I had never seen him so cheerful and pleasant.
I followed him, eager to discover whether my own calculations about our position had been correct.
When we reached the rocks, my uncle picked up the compass and placed it flat in front of him.
He shook it gently to make the needle move freely.
The needle swung back and forth for a moment.
Then it gradually settled under the influence of the earth’s magnetic field.
My uncle leaned over it and stared.
Suddenly, he jumped.
His face changed completely.
He closed his eyes and rubbed them.
Then he looked again, more carefully than before.
Slowly, he turned toward me.
He looked completely stunned.
“What is it?” I asked, beginning to feel frightened.
He could not answer.
He simply pointed at the compass.
I bent over it.
A cry of astonishment escaped me.
The compass needle was pointing due north.
North!
It was pointing in exactly the direction we had expected to be south.
It was pointing toward the shore instead of toward the open sea.
I picked up the compass and shook it.
I examined it from every angle.
There was nothing wrong with it.
No damage. No defect.
I forced the needle into different positions, but every time I released it, it returned to exactly the same direction.
There was no way to escape the truth.
During the terrible storm, the wind must suddenly have shifted direction.
We had never noticed the change.
The raft had been driven back toward the shore we had left so many days before.
The shore we had believed we had left forever.
We had been traveling forward all this time, only to discover that the storm had secretly turned us around.