Chapter 30

CHAPTER XXX.

A NEW MARE INTERNUM

At first I could hardly see anything. My eyes, unaccustomed to thelight, quickly closed. When I was able to reopen them, I stood morestupefied even than surprised.

"The sea!" I cried.

"Yes," my uncle replied, "the Liedenbrock Sea; and I don't supposeany other discoverer will ever dispute my claim to name it aftermyself as its first discoverer."

A vast sheet of water, the commencement of a lake or an ocean, spreadfar away beyond the range of the eye, reminding me forcibly of thatopen sea which drew from Xenophon's ten thousand Greeks, after theirlong retreat, the simultaneous cry, "Thalatta! thalatta!" the sea!the sea! The deeply indented shore was lined with a breadth of fineshining sand, softly lapped by the waves, and strewn with the smallshells which had been inhabited by the first of created beings. Thewaves broke on this shore with the hollow echoing murmur peculiar tovast inclosed spaces. A light foam flew over the waves before thebreath of a moderate breeze, and some of the spray fell upon my face.On this slightly inclining shore, about a hundred fathoms from thelimit of the waves, came down the foot of a huge wall of vast cliffs,which rose majestically to an enormous height. Some of these,dividing the beach with their sharp spurs, formed capes andpromontories, worn away by the ceaseless action of the surf. Fartheron the eye discerned their massive outline sharply defined againstthe hazy distant horizon.

It was quite an ocean, with the irregular shores of earth, but desertand frightfully wild in appearance.

If my eyes were able to range afar over this great sea, it wasbecause a peculiar light brought to view every detail of it. It wasnot the light of the sun, with his dazzling shafts of brightness andthe splendour of his rays; nor was it the pale and uncertain shimmerof the moonbeams, the dim reflection of a nobler body of light. No;the illuminating power of this light, its trembling diffusiveness,its bright, clear whiteness, and its low temperature, showed that itmust be of electric origin. It was like an aurora borealis, acontinuous cosmical phenomenon, filling a cavern of sufficient extentto contain an ocean.

The vault that spanned the space above, the sky, if it could becalled so, seemed composed of vast plains of cloud, shifting andvariable vapours, which by their condensation must at certain timesfall in torrents of rain. I should have thought that under sopowerful a pressure of the atmosphere there could be no evaporation;and yet, under a law unknown to me, there were broad tracts of vapoursuspended in the air. But then 'the weather was fine.' The play ofthe electric light produced singular effects upon the upper strata ofcloud. Deep shadows reposed upon their lower wreaths; and often,between two separated fields of cloud, there glided down a ray ofunspeakable lustre. But it was not solar light, and there was