CHAPTER XXX
Terrific Saurian Combat
saturday, August 15. The sea still retains its uniform monotony. The same leaden hue, the same eternal glare from above. No indication of land being in sight. The horizon appears to retreat before us, more and more as we advance.
My head is still dull and heavy from the effects of my extraordinary dream, which I cannot as yet banish from my mind. The Professor, who has not dreamed, is, however, in one of his morose and unaccountable humors. Spends his time in scanning the horizon, at every point of the compass. His telescope is raised every moment to his eyes, and when he finds nothing to give any clew to our whereabouts, he assumes a Napoleonic attitude and walks anxiously.
I remarked that my uncle, the Professor, had a strong tendency to resume his old impatient character, and I could not but make a note of this disagreeable circumstance. I saw clearly that it had required all the influence of my danger and suffering, to extract from him one scintillation of humane feeling. Now that I was quite recovered, his original nature had conquered and obtained the upper hand.
"You seem uneasy, uncle," said I, when for about the hundredth time he put down his telescope and walked up and down, muttering to himself.
"No, I am not uneasy," he replied in a dry harsh tone, "by no means."
"Perhaps I should have said impatient," I replied, softening the force of my remark.
"Enough to make me so, I think."
"And yet we are advancing at a rate seldom attained by a raft," I remarked.
"What matters that?" cried my uncle. "I am not vexed at the rate we got at, but I am annoyed to find the sea so much vaster than I expected."
I then recollected that the Professor, before our departure, had estimated the length of this Subterranean Ocean, as at most about fifty leagues. Now we had traveled at least over thrice that distance without discovering any trace of the distant shore. I began to understand my uncle's anger.
"We are not going down," suddenly exclaimed the Professor. "We are not progressing with our great discoveries. All this is utter loss of time. After all, I did not come from home to undertake a party of pleasure. This voyage on a raft over a pond annoys and wearies me."
He called this adventurous journey a party of pleasure, and this great Inland Sea a pond! "But," argued I, "if we have followed the route indicated by the great Saknussem, we cannot be going far wrong."
"'That is the question,' as the great, the immortal Shakespeare has it. Are we following the route indicated by that wondrous sage? Did Saknussem ever fall in with this great sheet of water? If he did, did he cross it? I began to fear that the rivulet we adopted for a guide has led us wrong."
"In any case, we can never regret having come thus far. It is worth the whole journey to have enjoyed this magnificent spectacle—it is something to beve seen."
"I care nothing about seeing, nor about magnificent spectacles. I came down into the interior of the earth with an object, and that object I mean to attain. Don't talk to me about admiring scenery, or any other sentimental trash."
After this I thought it well to hold my tongue, and allow the Professor to bite his lips until the blood came, without further remark.
At six o'clock in the evening, our matter-of-fact guide, Hans, asked for his week's salary, and receiving his three rix-dollars, put them carefully in his pocket. He was perfectly contented and satisfied.
sunday, 16th August. Nothing new to record. The same weather as before. The wind has a slight tendency to freshen up, with signs of an approaching gale. When I awoke, my first observation was in regard to the intensity of the light. I keep on fearing, day after day, that the extraordinary electric phenomenon should become first obscured, and then go wholly out, leaving us in total darkness. Nothing of this kind occurs however. The shadow of the raft, its mast and sails, is clearly distinguished on the surface of the water.
This wondrous sea is, after all, immense in extent. It must be quite as wide as the Mediterranean—or perhaps even as the great Atlantic Ocean. Why, after all, should it not be so? My uncle has on more than one occasion, tried deep sea soundings. He tied one of our heaviest crowbars to the end of a cords, which he allowed to run out to the extent of two hundred fathoms. We had the greatest difficulty hoisting in our novel kind of lead.
When the crowbar was finally dragged on board, Hans called my attention to some singular marks upon its surface. The piece of iron looked as if it had been crushed between two very hard substances. I looked at our worthy guide with an inquiring glace. "Taender," said he.
Of course I was at a loss to understand. I turned round towards my uncle, absorbed in gloomy reflections. I had little wish to disturb him from his reverie. I accordingly turned once more toward our worth Icelander. Hans very quietly and significantly opened his mouth once or twice, as if in the act of biting, and in this way made me understand his meaning.
"Teeth!' cried I, with stupefaction, as I examined the bar of iron with more attention.
Yes. There can be no doubt about the matter. The indentations of the bar of iron are the marks of teeth! What jaws must the owner of such molars be possessed of! Have we, then, come upon a monster of unknown species, which still exists within the vast waste of waters—a monster more voracious than a shark, more terrible and bulky than the whale. I am unable to withdraw my eyes fro the bar of iron, actually half-crushed!
Is, then, my dream about to come true—a dread and terrible reality? All day my thoughts were bent upon these speculations, and my imagination scarcely regained a degree of calmness and power of reflection until after a sleep of many hours. This Sunday, as other Sundays, we observed as a day of rest and pious meditation.
monday, August 17th. I have been trying to realize from memory the particular instincts of those antediluvian animals of the secondary period, which succeeding to the mollusca, to the crustacea,
