weight of falling waters, which would cause the raft to founder in an instant. Hans, however, steered admirably, and brought us to the other extremity of the island.
I was the first to leap on the rock. My uncle followed, while the eider-duck hunter remained still, like a man above any childish sources of astonishment. We were now walking on granite, mixed with silicious sandstone; the soil shivered under our feet like the sides of boilers in which over-heated steam is forcibly confined. It was burning. We soon came in sight of the little central basin from which rose the geyser, I plunged a thermometer into the water which ran bubbling from the center, and it marked a heat of a hundred and sixty-three degrees! This water, therefore, came from some place where the heat was intense. This was singularly in contradiction with the theories of Professor Hardwigg, I could not help telling him my opinion on the subject.
"Well," said he sharply, "and what does this prove against my doctrine?"
"Nothing," replied I dryly, seeing that I was running my head against a foregone conclusion. I am compelled to confess that until now we have been most remarkably fortunate, and that this voyage is being accomplished in most favorable conditions of temperature; but it appears evident, in fact, certain, that we shall sooner or later arrive at one of those regions, where the central heat will reach its utmost limits, and will go far beyond all the possible gradations of thermometers. Visions of the Hades of the ancients, believed to be in the center of the earth, floated through my imagination.
However, we shall see what we shall see. That is the Professor's favorite phrase now. Having christened the volcanic island by the name of his nephew, the leader of the expedition turned away and gave the signal for embarkation. We went carefully round the projecting, and rather dangerous, rocks of the southern side. Hans had taken advantage of this brief halt to repair the raft—not before it was required.
Before we took our final departure from the island, however, I made some observations to calculate the distance we had gone over, and I put them down in my Journal. Since we left Port Gretchen, we had traveled two hundred and seventy leagues—more than eight hundred miles—on this great inland sea; we were, therefore, six hundred and twenty leagues from Iceland, and exactly under England.
CHAPTER XXXII
The Battle of the Elements
FRIDAY, August 21st. This morning the magnificent geyser had wholly disappeared. The wind had freshened up, and we were fast leaving the neighborhood of Henry's Island. Even the roaring sound of the mighty column was lost to the ear.
The weather, if, under the circumstances, we may use such an expression, is about to change very suddenly. The atmosphere is being gradually loaded with vapors, which carry with them the electricity formed by the constant evaporation of the saline waters; the clouds are slowly but sensibly falling towards the sea, and are assuming a dark olive texture; the electric rays can scarcely pierce through the opaque curtain which has fallen, like a drop-scene before this wondrous theatre, on the stage of which another and terrible drama was soon to be enacted. This time it is no fight of animals; it is the fearful battle of the elements.
In the distance, the clouds have assumed the appearance of enormous balls of cotton, or rather pods, piled one above the other in picturesque confusion. By degrees, they appear to swell out, break, and gain in number what they lose in grandeur; their heaviness is so great that they are unable to lift themselves from the horizon; but under the influence of the upper currents of air, they are gradually broken up, become much darker, and then present the appearance of one single layer of a formidable character; now and then a lighter cloud, still lit up from above, rebounds upon this gray carpet, and is lost in the opaque mass.
There can be no doubt that the entire atmosphere is saturated with electric fluid; I am myself wholly impregnated; my hairs literally stand on end as if under the influence of a galvanic battery. If one of my companions ventured to touch me, I think he would receive rather a violent and unpleasant shock.
About ten o'clock in the morning, the symptoms of the storm became more thorough and decisive; the wind appeared to soften down as if to take breath for a renewed attack; the vast funereal pall above us looked like a huge bag—like the cave of Aeolus, in which the storm was collecting its forces for the attack. I tried all I could not to believe in the menacing signs of the sky, and yet I could not avoid saying, as it were involuntarily—"I believe we are going to have bad weather."
The Professor made me no answer. He was in a horrible, in a detestable humor—to see the ocean stretching interminably before his eyes. On hearing my words he simply shrugged his shoulders.
"We shall have a tremendous storm," I said again, pointing to the horizon. "These clouds are falling lower and lower upon the sea, as if to crush it."
A great silence prevailed. The wind wholly ceased. Nature assumed a dead calm, and ceased to breathe. Upon the mast, where I noticed a sort of alight ignis fatuus, the sail hung in loose heavy folds. The raft lay motionless in the midst of a dark heavy sea—without undulation, without motion. It was as still as glass. "Let us lower the sail," I said, "it is only an act of common prudence,"
"No—no," cried my uncle, in an exasperated tone, "a hundred times, no. Let the wind strike us and do its worst, let the storm sweep us away where it will—only let me see the glimmer of some coast—of some rocky cliffs, even if they dash our raft, into a thousand pieces. No! keep up the sail—no matter what happens."
These words were scarcely uttered, when the southern horizon underwent a sudden and violent change. The long accumulated vapors were resolved into water, and the air required to fill up the void produced became a wild and raging tempest. It came from the most distant corners of the mighty cavern. It raged from every point of the com-
