Chapter 43 - Page 2

waters,and all kinds of volcanic matter; we are going to be pitched out,expelled, tossed up, vomited, spit out high into the air, along withfragments of rock, showers of ashes and scoria, in the midst of atowering rush of smoke and flames; and it is the best thing thatcould happen to us!"

"Yes," replied the Professor, eyeing me over his spectacles, "I don'tsee any other way of reaching the surface of the earth."

I pass rapidly over the thousand ideas which passed through my mind.My uncle was right, undoubtedly right; and never had he seemed to memore daring and more confirmed in his notions than at this momentwhen he was calmly contemplating the chances of being shot out of avolcano!

In the meantime up we went; the night passed away in continualascent; the din and uproar around us became more and moreintensified; I was stifled and stunned; I thought my last hour wasapproaching; and yet imagination is such a strong thing that even inthis supreme hour I was occupied with strange and almost childishspeculations. But I was the victim, not the master, of my ownthoughts.

It was very evident that we were being hurried upward upon the crestof a wave of eruption; beneath our raft were boiling waters, andunder these the more sluggish lava was working its way up in a heatedmass, together with shoals of fragments of rock which, when theyarrived at the crater, would be dispersed in all directions high andlow. We were imprisoned in the shaft or chimney of some volcano.There was no room to doubt of that.

But this time, instead of Snæfell, an extinct volcano, we were insideone in full activity. I wondered, therefore, where could thismountain be, and in what part of the world we were to be shot out.

I made no doubt but that it would be in some northern region. Beforeits disorders set in, the needle had never deviated from thatdirection. From Cape Saknussemm we had been carried due north forhundreds of leagues. Were we under Iceland again? Were we destined tobe thrown up out of Hecla, or by which of the seven other fierycraters in that island? Within a radius of five hundred leagues tothe west I remembered under this parallel of latitude only theimperfectly known volcanoes of the north-east coast of America. Tothe east there was only one in the 80th degree of north latitude, theEsk in Jan Mayen Island, not far from Spitzbergen! Certainly therewas no lack of craters, and there were some capacious enough to throwout a whole army! But I wanted to know which of them was to serve usfor an exit from the inner world.

Towards morning the ascending movement became accelerated. If theheat increased, instead of diminishing, as we approached nearer tothe surface of the globe, this effect was due to local causes alone,and those volcanic. The manner of our locomotion left no doubt in mymind. An enormous force, a force of hundreds of atmospheres,generated by the extreme pressure of confined vapours,