Chapter 33

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A BATTLE OF MONSTERS

_Saturday, August 15_. - The sea unbroken all round. No land insight. The horizon seems extremely distant.

My head is still stupefied with the vivid reality of my dream.

My uncle has had no dreams, but he is out of temper. He examines thehorizon all round with his glass, and folds his arms with the air ofan injured man.

I remark that Professor Liedenbrock has a tendency to relapse into animpatient mood, and I make a note of it in my log. All my danger andsufferings were needed to strike a spark of human. feeling out ofhim; but now that I am well his nature has resumed its sway. And yet,what cause was there for anger? Is not the voyage prospering asfavourably as possible under the circumstances? Is not the raftspinning along with marvellous speed?

"-You seem anxious, my uncle," I said, seeing him continually withhis glass to his eye.

"Anxious! No, not at all."

"Impatient, then?"

"One might be, with less reason than now."

"Yet we are going very fast."

"What does that signify? I am not complaining that the rate is slow,but that the sea is so wide."

I then remembered that the Professor, before starting, had estimatedthe length of this underground sea at thirty leagues. Now we had madethree times the distance, yet still the southern coast was not insight.

"We are not descending as we ought to be," the Professor declares."We are losing time, and the fact is, I have not come all this way totake a little sail upon a pond on a raft."

He called this sea a pond, and our long voyage, taking a little sail!

"But," I remarked, "since we have followed the road that Saknussemmhas shown us -"

"That is just the question. Have we followed that road? DidSaknussemm meet this sheet of water? Did he cross it? Has not thestream that we followed led us altogether astray?"

"At any rate we cannot feel sorry to have come so far. This prospectis magnificent, and -"

"But I don't care for prospects. I came with an object, and I mean toattain it. Therefore don't talk to me about views and prospects."

I take this as my answer, and I leave the Professor to bite his lipswith impatience. At six in the evening Hans asks for his wages, andhis three rix dollars are counted out to him.

_Sunday, August 16. _- Nothing new. Weather unchanged. The windfreshens. On awaking, my first thought was to observe the intensityof the light. I was possessed with an apprehension lest the electriclight should grow dim, or fail altogether. But there seemed no reasonto fear. The shadow of the raft was clearly outlined upon the surfaceof the waves.

Truly this sea is of infinite width. It must be as wide as theMediterranean or the Atlantic - and why not?

My uncle took soundings several times. He tied the heaviest of ourpickaxes to a