We started down the second gallery. As usual, Hans went ahead of us.
We had gone less than a hundred yards when the Professor stopped to examine the walls carefully.
“This is the primitive rock formation,” he said. “We’re on the right path. Our only hope is to keep going.”
Long ago, when the young Earth began to cool, its surface contracted as the planet shrank. This caused enormous cracks and breaks in the Earth’s crust. The passage we were following was one of those ancient cracks. Millions of years ago, molten granite had flowed through it.
The tunnel twisted and turned so many times that it was almost impossible to find our way through the ancient rock.
As we descended, we could clearly see layer after layer of the Earth’s oldest rocks. According to geology, these primitive layers form the foundation of the Earth’s mineral crust. They rest upon the great mass of granite deep below the surface.
No scientist had ever been given such a remarkable chance to study the Earth from the inside.
Normally, scientists had to rely on tools and samples brought up from underground. But we were actually standing inside the Earth. We could see these formations with our own eyes and touch them with our own hands.
I must remind you that I am writing about all this after our journey was over.
The rocks around us were streaked with beautiful green colors. Thin veins of copper and manganese ran through them, along with traces of platinum and gold.
I could not stop staring at those treasures buried deep inside the Earth.
They were enormous and seemingly endless, yet no human being would ever be able to make use of them.
Those riches had been buried when the Earth was still young, at depths so terrible that no pickax or crowbar would ever bring them back to the surface.
The light from our Ruhmkorff lamp was reflected by thousands of crystals in the rock. The walls seemed to explode with flashes of light in every direction.
I felt as if we were traveling through a gigantic hollow diamond, with brilliant rays shining everywhere.
But around six o’clock, the magnificent display of light began to fade.
Soon it almost disappeared completely.
The walls of the tunnel took on a dark, crystalline appearance. White mica became more common, mixed with feldspar and quartz.
Together, these minerals formed the true hard rock beneath the Earth’s surface—the rock strong enough to support the enormous layers of earth above it without collapsing.
We were now completely surrounded by granite.
It felt as though we had been locked inside a gigantic stone prison.
By eight o’clock, we still had not found any water.
I was suffering terribly.
My uncle had now taken the lead. Nothing could persuade him to stop.
I had only one thought in my mind.
Water.
I listened as carefully as I could, hoping to hear the sound of a spring somewhere ahead.
But there was nothing.
Not even the faintest sound of falling water reached my ears.
At last, my legs simply refused to carry me any farther.
I fought against the pain as long as I could because I did not want to force my uncle to stop.
I knew that stopping now would be a terrible blow to him.
Then, without warning, a deadly weakness swept over me.
My vision began to disappear.
My knees trembled beneath me.
I gave one desperate cry and collapsed.
“Help! Help! I’m dying!”
My uncle turned around and slowly walked back toward me.
He stood there with his arms folded.
Then he spoke only one sentence in a hollow voice.
“It’s all over.”
The last thing I saw was his face, twisted with pain and sorrow.
Then everything went black.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw my companions lying nearby.
They were completely still, wrapped in their large traveling blankets.
I could not tell whether they were asleep or dead.
As for me, sleep was impossible.
The fainting spell had passed, but I was completely awake. I was suffering too much to sleep.
Worse still, I believed I was dying.
My uncle’s last words kept repeating inside my head.
“It’s all over.”
Perhaps he was right.
In the terrible condition I was in, it seemed impossible that I would ever see daylight again.
Above us were miles and miles of solid earth.
As I thought about it, I imagined the entire weight of the Earth’s crust pressing down on my shoulders.
I felt crushed.
Destroyed.
I tried again and again to move, but all I could do was struggle helplessly against the granite beneath me.
Hour after hour passed.
A deep and terrifying silence surrounded us.
It was the silence of a tomb.
Nothing could be heard through those enormous granite walls.
The thought of being buried so deep beneath the Earth was almost impossible to comprehend.
Then, despite my weakness and the strange, lifeless calm that had taken hold of me, something caught my attention.
It was a faint but unusual sound.
I listened carefully.
At the same time, I noticed that the tunnel was becoming darker.
Through the fading light, I thought I saw Hans walking away with his lamp in his hand.
Why was he leaving?
Was Hans abandoning us?
My uncle was lying nearby, apparently fast asleep—or perhaps dead.
I tried to call out and wake him.
But my voice was too weak.
It barely escaped my dry, feverish lips.
There was no echo in that terrible place.
My throat felt like fire, and my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth.
The darkness grew deeper and deeper.
Soon even the faint sound of Hans’s footsteps disappeared into the distance.
Despair filled my heart.
At that moment, death seemed almost welcome.
I only wished it would come quickly.
“Hans is leaving us,” I cried.
“Hans! Hans! If you’re a man, come back!”
But these words existed only in my thoughts.
I was too weak to speak them aloud.
After the first moments of terror passed, however, I felt ashamed of myself.
How could I suspect Hans?
He had behaved perfectly ever since we began our journey.
Nothing in his character or actions gave me any reason to believe he would abandon us.
Then another thought occurred to me, and it immediately made me feel calmer.
Hans could not be running away.
He wasn’t going back toward the surface.
He was going deeper into the Earth.
If he had wanted to betray us, he would have gone upward, not downward.
That thought gave me a little hope.
Calm, patient, and dependable Hans would never have left his sleep without a serious reason.
Perhaps he had gone to explore.
Or perhaps, during the deep silence of the night, he had finally heard the sound we had been waiting for so desperately.
The sound of running water.