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Friday, August 21. — On the morrow the magnificent geyser has
disappeared. The wind has risen, and has rapidly carried us away from Axel
Island. The roarings become lost in the distance.
The weather — if we may use that term — will change before
long. The atmosphere is charged with vapours, pervaded with the electricity
generated by the evaporation of saline waters. The clouds are sinking lower,
and assume an olive hue. The electric light can scarcely penetrate through the
dense curtain which has dropped over the theatre on which the battle of the
elements is about to be waged.
I feel peculiar sensations, like many creatures on earth at the approach
of violent atmospheric changes. The heavily voluted cumulus clouds lower
gloomily and threateningly; they wear that implacable look which I have
sometimes noticed at the outbreak of a great storm. The air is heavy; the sea
is calm.
In the distance the clouds resemble great bales of cotton, piled up in
picturesque disorder. By degrees they dilate, and gain in huge size what they
lose in number. Such is their ponderous weight that they cannot rise from the
horizon; but, obeying an impulse from higher currents, their dense consistency
slowly yields. The gloom upon them deepens; and they soon present to our view a
ponderous mass of almost level surface. From time to time a fleecy tuft of
mist, with yet some gleaming light left upon it, drops down upon the dense
floor of grey, and loses itself in the opaque and impenetrable mass.
The atmosphere is evidently charged and surcharged with electricity. My
whole body is saturated; my hair bristles just as when you stand upon an
insulated stool under the action of an electrical machine. It seems to me as if
my companions, the moment they touched me, would receive a severe shock like
that from an electric eel.
At ten in the morning the symptoms of storm become aggravated. The wind
never lulls but to acquire increased strength; the vast bank of heavy clouds is
a huge reservoir of fearful windy gusts and rushing storms.
I am loth to believe these atmospheric menaces, and yet I cannot help
muttering:
“Here’s some very bad weather coming on.”
The Professor made no answer. His temper is awful, to judge from the
working of his features, as he sees this vast length of ocean unrolling before
him to an indefinite extent. He can only spare time to shrug his shoulders
viciously.
“There’s a heavy storm coming on,” I cried, pointing
towards the horizon. “Those clouds seem as if they were going to crush
the sea.”
A deep silence falls on all around. The lately roaring winds are hushed
into a dead calm; nature seems to breathe no more, and to be sinking into the
stillness of death. On the mast already I see the light play of a lambent St.
Elmo’s fire; the outstretched sail catches not a breath of wind, and
hangs like a sheet of lead. The rudder stands motionless in a sluggish,
waveless sea. But if we have now ceased to advance why do we yet leave that
sail loose, which at the first shock of the tempest may capsize us in a moment?
“Let us reef the sail and cut the mast down!” I cried.
“That will be safest.”
“No, no! Never!” shouted my impetuous uncle. “Never!
Let the wind catch us if it will! What I want is to get the least glimpse of
rock or shore, even if our raft should be smashed into shivers!”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a sudden change took place
in the southern sky. The piled-up vapours condense into water; and the air, put
into violent action to supply the vacuum left by the condensation of the mists,
rouses itself into a whirlwind. It rushes on from the farthest recesses of the
vast cavern. The darkness deepens; scarcely can I jot down a few hurried notes.
The helm makes a bound. My uncle falls full length; I creep close to him. He
has laid a firm hold upon a rope, and appears to watch with grim satisfaction
this awful display of elemental strife.
Hans stirs not. His long hair blown by the pelting storm, and laid flat
across his immovable countenance, makes him a strange figure; for the end of
each lock of loose flowing hair is tipped with little luminous radiations. This
frightful mask of electric sparks suggests to me, even in this dizzy
excitement, a comparison with preadamite man, the contemporary of the
ichthyosaurus and the megatherium. [1]
[1] Rather of the mammoth and the mastodon. (Trans.)
The mast yet holds firm. The sail stretches tight like a bubble ready to
burst. The raft flies at a rate that I cannot reckon, but not so fast as the
foaming clouds of spray which it dashes from side to side in its headlong
speed.
“The sail! the sail!” I cry, motioning to lower it.
“No!” replies my uncle.
“Nej!“ repeats Hans, leisurely shaking his head.
But now the rain forms a rushing cataract in front of that horizon
toward which we are running with such maddening speed. But before it has
reached us the rain cloud parts asunder, the sea boils, and the electric fires
are brought into violent action by a mighty chemical power that descends from
the higher regions. The most vivid flashes of lightning are mingled with the
violent crash of continuous thunder. Ceaseless fiery arrows dart in and out
amongst the flying thunder-clouds; the vaporous mass soon glows with
incandescent heat; hailstones rattle fiercely down, and as they dash upon our
iron tools they too emit gleams and flashes of lurid light. The heaving waves
resemble fiery volcanic hills, each belching forth its own interior flames, and
every crest is plumed with dancing fire. My eyes fail under the dazzling light,
my ears are stunned with the incessant crash of thunder. I must be bound to the
mast, which bows like a reed before the mighty strength of the storm.
(Here my notes become vague and indistinct. I have only been able to
find a few which I seem to have jotted down almost unconsciously. But their
very brevity and their obscurity reveal the intensity of the excitement which
dominated me, and describe the actual position even better than my memory could
do.)
Sunday, 23. — Where are we? Driven forward with a swiftness that
cannot be measured.
The night was fearful; no abatement of the storm. The din and uproar are
incessant; our ears are bleeding; to exchange a word is impossible.
The lightning flashes with intense brilliancy, and never seems to cease
for a moment. Zigzag streams of bluish white fire dash down upon the sea and
rebound, and then take an upward flight till they strike the granite vault that
overarches our heads. Suppose that solid roof should crumble down upon our
heads! Other flashes with incessant play cross their vivid fires, while others
again roll themselves into balls of living fire which explode like bombshells,
but the music of which scarcely-adds to the din of the battle strife that
almost deprives us of our senses of hearing and sight; the limit of intense
loudness has been passed within which the human ear can distinguish one sound
from another. If all the powder magazines in the world were to explode at once,
we should hear no more than we do now.
From the under surface of the clouds there are continual emissions of
lurid light; electric matter is in continual evolution from their component
molecules; the gaseous elements of the air need to be slaked with moisture; for
innumerable columns of water rush upwards into the air and fall back again in
white foam.
Whither are we flying? My uncle lies full length across the raft.
The heat increases. I refer to the thermometer; it indicates . . . (the
figure is obliterated).
Monday, August 24. — Will there be an end to it? Is the
atmospheric condition, having once reached this density, to become final?
We are prostrated and worn out with fatigue. But Hans is as usual. The
raft bears on still to the south-east. We have made two hundred leagues since
we left Axel Island.
At noon the violence of the storm redoubles. We are obliged to secure as
fast as possible every article that belongs to our cargo. Each of us is lashed
to some part of the raft. The waves rise above our heads.
For three days we have never been able to make each other hear a word. Our
mouths open, our lips move, but not a word can be heard. We cannot even make
ourselves heard by approaching our mouth close to the ear.
My uncle has drawn nearer to me. He has uttered a few words. They seem
to be ‘We are lost’; but I am not sure.
At last I write down the words: “Let us lower the sail.”
He nods his consent.
Scarcely has he lifted his head again before a ball of fire has bounded
over the waves and lighted on board our raft. Mast and sail flew up in an
instant together, and I saw them carried up to prodigious height, resembling in
appearance a pterodactyle, one of those strong birds of the infant world.
We lay there, our blood running cold with unspeakable terror. The
fireball, half of it white, half azure blue, and the size of a ten-inch shell,
moved slowly about the raft, but revolving on its own axis with astonishing
velocity, as if whipped round by the force of the whirlwind. Here it comes,
there it glides, now it is up the ragged stump of the mast, thence it lightly
leaps on the provision bag, descends with a light bound, and just skims the
powder magazine. Horrible! we shall be blown up; but no, the dazzling disk of
mysterious light nimbly leaps aside; it approaches Hans, who fixes his blue eye
upon it steadily; it threatens the head of my uncle, who falls upon his knees
with his head down to avoid it. And now my turn comes; pale and trembling under
the blinding splendour and the melting heat, it drops at my feet, spinning
silently round upon the deck; I try to move my foot away, but cannot.
A suffocating smell of nitrogen fills the air, it enters the throat, it
fills the lungs. We suffer stifling pains.
Why am I unable to move my foot? Is it riveted to the planks? Alas! the
fall upon our fated raft of this electric globe has magnetised every iron
article on board. The instruments, the tools, our guns, are clashing and
clanking violently in their collisions with each other; the nails of my boots
cling tenaciously to a plate of iron let into the timbers, and I cannot draw my
foot away from the spot. At last by a violent effort I release myself at the
instant when the ball in its gyrations was about to seize upon it, and carry me
off my feet ....
Ah! what a flood of intense and dazzling light! the globe has burst, and
we are deluged with tongues of fire!
Then all the light disappears. I could just see my uncle at full length
on the raft, and Hans still at his helm and spitting fire under the action of
the electricity which has saturated him.
But where are we going to? Where?
* * * *
Tuesday, August 25. — I recover from a long swoon. The storm
continues to roar and rage; the lightnings dash hither and thither, like broods
of fiery serpents filling all the air. Are we still under the sea? Yes, we are
borne at incalculable speed. We have been carried under England, under the
channel, under France, perhaps under the whole of Europe.
* * * *
A fresh noise is heard! Surely it is the sea breaking upon the rocks! But
then . . . .
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