The next day, August 27th, became one of the most unforgettable days of our journey beneath the earth.
Even now, whenever I think of that day, I still feel a terrible fear. My heart begins to race at the memory of what happened.
From that moment on, our intelligence, our plans, and our human abilities could no longer control our fate.
We were about to become nothing more than helpless victims of the earth’s powerful forces.
At six o’clock in the morning, we were all awake and prepared.
The terrifying moment had arrived.
We were going to use gunpowder to break through the earth’s crust and open a path into the unknown world below.
No one knew what would happen after we destroyed that barrier.
I asked my uncle to let me be the one who lit the fuse.
I considered it a great honor.
After finishing the task, I would return to my companions on the raft, which was still fully loaded.
Then we would quickly sail away from the explosion site, because we knew the force of the blast would not be limited to the inside of the earth.
The slow-burning fuse would take about ten minutes to reach the chamber where the large amount of powder was stored.
That gave me enough time to run back to the raft and move us to a safe distance.
I prepared myself for the mission.
I tried to appear calm, but I could not hide my nervousness.
After a good meal, my uncle and Hans climbed onto the raft.
I stayed alone on the lonely shore.
I carried a lantern so I could light the fuse of the terrible machine we had prepared.
“Go, my boy,” my uncle said.
“May Heaven protect you. But come back as quickly as possible. I will be waiting anxiously.”
“Don’t worry,” I answered.
“I won’t waste a second.”
Then I walked toward the dark tunnel entrance.
My heart was pounding.
I opened my lantern and grabbed the end of the fuse.
The Professor stood nearby, holding his watch and watching the time carefully.
“Are you ready?” he shouted.
“Ready.”
“Then light it!”
I quickly touched the flame to the fuse.
It immediately crackled and sparkled, making a hissing sound like an angry snake.
Then I ran back toward the shore as fast as I could.
“Get on the raft!” my uncle shouted.
“Hans, push us away!”
With a powerful push of his pole, Hans sent the raft racing across the water.
We moved about twenty fathoms away from the shore.
The next moments were filled with fear and expectation.
My uncle never took his eyes away from the watch.
“Five minutes left,” he whispered.
“Four minutes.”
“Three minutes.”
My heart was beating wildly.
I could almost hear it inside my chest.
“Two minutes.”
“One minute.”
“Now!”
“Fall apart, mountains of stone! Let the power of man break you!”
Then everything changed.
I do not think I actually heard the explosion.
The sound was probably too powerful for my ears to understand.
But I saw the rocks move.
It was as if a giant curtain had been pulled away.
Before us appeared a huge, endless hole with no visible bottom.
The underground sea suddenly became violent.
The water rose like a mountain, and the raft was lifted almost straight upward on top of the waves.
We were all thrown down.
In an instant, the light disappeared and complete darkness surrounded us.
Then I felt the raft itself losing support.
It seemed as if we were falling into a gigantic underground well.
I tried to speak to my uncle, but no words could be heard.
The only sound was the terrible roar of the waves.
We held onto each other silently.
Even in that darkness and chaos, I understood what had happened.
Behind the destroyed rock was a massive underground opening.
The explosion had shaken the earth and broken apart the weakened layers of rock.
The newly opened passage had swallowed the underground sea, turning it into a powerful flood that carried us away.
One thought filled my mind:
We were completely doomed.
For one hour, perhaps two, we remained trapped in that terrifying journey.
We sat pressed tightly together, our arms and knees touching.
We held each other’s hands so we would not be thrown from the raft.
Every time the raft crashed against the rocky walls, we suffered violent shocks.
Fortunately, those impacts slowly became less frequent.
The passage seemed to be getting wider.
There was no doubt now that we had found the route once taken by Saknussemm.
But unlike him, who had traveled safely downward, we had foolishly brought an entire underground sea with us.
My thoughts became confused.
I could barely think clearly.
I only felt myself being carried forward like a person falling down a waterfall.
Judging from the wind striking my face, we must have been moving at an incredible speed.
Lighting a torch was impossible.
The explosion had destroyed the last parts of our electric equipment, including the Ruhmkorff coil.
Then, to my surprise, a small light appeared beside me.
Hans’s calm face appeared in the glow.
The clever hunter had managed to light the lantern.
Although the strong wind nearly extinguished the flame, it gave us some relief from the terrible darkness.
The tunnel was enormous.
My earlier guess had been correct.
The weak lantern light could not even reach both walls at the same time.
The water carried us forward faster than the fastest rivers on the surface.
The entire stream looked like countless liquid arrows shooting forward with unbelievable force.
Sometimes the raft entered whirlpools and spun around while rushing forward.
I still cannot understand how it never overturned.
Whenever we approached the tunnel walls, I shone the lantern toward the rocks.
The rocks appeared for only a moment before disappearing behind us.
We were moving so quickly that distant rocks looked like lines surrounding us, like the wires of a giant cage.
I believe we were traveling at least one hundred miles an hour.
My uncle and I stared at each other with terrified eyes.
We held tightly onto the broken remains of the mast.
We turned our backs against the wind because the speed was almost impossible for any human being to endure.
The endless hours continued.
Nothing about our situation improved.
Then I suddenly discovered something that made our condition even worse.
When we finally regained some control, I checked our supplies.
To my horror, most of our equipment had disappeared.
I searched carefully to find what remained.
Only a few items survived:
The compass.
The chronometer.
A small piece of rope tied to the broken mast.
Everything else was gone.
No tools.
No weapons.
No food.
Not even enough supplies for one day.
This discovery seemed like the beginning of a certain and terrible death.
Sitting sadly on the raft, I held onto the broken mast and thought about all the stories I had read about people dying from hunger.
The memory of those suffering deaths filled me with fear.
Desperate, I searched everywhere.
I checked every crack in the raft.
I looked between every wooden board.
I searched every possible corner.
But I found nothing.
Our only food was a small piece of dried meat and some wet, half-rotten biscuits.
I looked around in terror.
I could not accept the truth.
But then I realized something even worse.
Even if we had enough food for months or years, what chance did we have of escaping this endless underground abyss?
The raging current was already carrying us toward an unknown fate.
Why should we fear dying from hunger when death could reach us much sooner in countless other ways?
Perhaps we would never even have time to starve.
Yet the human mind is strange.
Even when surrounded by immediate danger, I began thinking about the future.
A small hope appeared in my heart.
Perhaps we could survive the flood.
Perhaps one day we might see the sunlight of our beautiful Earth again.
How could that happen?
I had no idea.
Where would we come out?
It did not matter.
As long as we escaped.
A one-in-a-thousand chance was still a chance.
But starvation offered no hope at all.
It was only a slow and terrifying death.
I wanted to tell my uncle everything.
I wanted us to calculate exactly how long we had before death came.
But I forced myself to remain silent.
Like the Spartan boy who endured pain without speaking, I chose not to destroy my uncle’s calmness.
At that moment, the lantern grew weaker.
Then the flame disappeared completely.
The wick had burned away.
The darkness became absolute.
There was no longer any way to see anything around us.
I closed my eyes like a frightened child, trying not to feel the darkness.
After a long time, the current became even faster.
I felt it from the violent wind hitting my face.
The slope became steeper.
Then I realized we were no longer sliding downward.
We were falling.
Falling endlessly, like in a terrible dream.
I felt my uncle and Hans tightly gripping my arms.
Suddenly, after a moment too short to measure, something happened.
The raft stopped violently.
It had not hit a rock.
Something else had stopped our movement.
A huge column of water fell over us.
I could not breathe.
I was drowning.
But the flood lasted only a few seconds.
Soon I could breathe again.
My uncle and Hans were still holding me.
And the raft carried all three of us forward once more.