CHAPTER XXXIII.

A BATTLE OF MONSTERS

_Saturday, August 15_.--The sea unbroken all round. No land in

sight. 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 the

horizon all round with his glass, and folds his arms with the air of

an injured man.

I remark that Professor Liedenbrock has a tendency to relapse into an

impatient mood, and I make a note of it in my log. All my danger and

sufferings were needed to strike a spark of human feeling out of

him; 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 as

favourably as possible under the circumstances? Is not the raft

spinning along with marvellous speed?

"-You seem anxious, my uncle," I said, seeing him continually with

his 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 estimated

the length of this underground sea at thirty leagues. Now we had made

three times the distance, yet still the southern coast was not in

sight.

"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 to

take 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 Saknussemm

has shown us--"

"That is just the question. Have we followed that road? Did

Saknussemm meet this sheet of water? Did he cross it? Has not the

stream that we followed led us altogether astray?"

"At any rate we cannot feel sorry to have come so far. This prospect

is magnificent, and--"

"But I don't care for prospects. I came with an object, and I mean to

attain 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 lips

with impatience. At six in the evening Hans asks for his wages, and

his three rix dollars are counted out to him.

_Sunday, August 16. _--Nothing new. Weather unchanged. The wind

freshens. On awaking, my first thought was to observe the intensity

of the light. I was possessed with an apprehension lest the electric

light should grow dim, or fail altogether. But there seemed no reason

to fear. The shadow of the raft was clearly outlined upon the surface

of the waves.

Truly this sea is of infinite width. It must be as wide as the

Mediterranean or the Atlantic--and why not?

My uncle took soundings several times. He tied the heaviest of our

pickaxes to a long rope which he let down two hundred fathoms. No

bottom yet; and we had some difficulty in hauling up our plummet.

But when the pick was shipped again, Hans pointed out on its surface

deep prints as if it had been violently compressed between two hard

bodies.

I looked at the hunter.

"_Tänder,_" said he.

I could not understand him, and turned to my uncle who was entirely

absorbed in his calculations. I had rather not disturb him while he

is quiet. I return to the Icelander. He by a snapping motion of his

jaws conveys his ideas to me.

"Teeth!" I cried, considering the iron bar with more attention.

Yes, indeed, those are the marks of teeth imprinted upon the metal!

The jaws which they arm must be possessed of amazing strength. Is

there some monster beneath us belonging to the extinct races, more

voracious than the shark, more fearful in vastness than the whale? I

could not take my eyes off this indented iron bar. Surely will my

last night's dream be realised?

These thoughts agitated me all day, and my imagination scarcely

calmed down after several hours' sleep.

_Monday, August 17.--_ I am trying to recall the peculiar instincts

of the monsters of the pre-adamite world, who, coming next in

succession after the molluscs, the crustaceans and the fishes,

preceded the animals of mammalian race upon the earth. The world then

belonged to reptiles. Those monsters held the mastery in the seas of

the secondary period. They possessed a perfect organisation, gigantic

proportions, prodigious strength. The saurians of our day, the

alligators and the crocodiles, are but feeble reproductions of their

forefathers of primitive ages.

I shudder as I recall these monsters to my remembrance. No human eye

has ever beheld them living. They burdened this earth a thousand ages

before man appeared, but their fossil remains, found in the

argillaceous limestone called by the English the lias, have enabled

their colossal structure to be perfectly built up again and

anatomically ascertained.

I saw at the Hamburg museum the skeleton of one of these creatures

thirty feet in length. Am I then fated--I, a denizen of earth--to

be placed face to face with these representatives of long extinct

families? No; surely it cannot be! Yet the deep marks of conical

teeth upon the iron pick are certainly those of the crocodile.

My eyes are fearfully bent upon the sea. I dread to see one of these

monsters darting forth from its submarine caverns. I suppose

Professor Liedenbrock was of my opinion too, and even shared my

fears, for after having examined the pick, his eyes traversed the

ocean from side to side. What a very bad notion that was of his, I

thought to myself, to take soundings just here! He has disturbed some

monstrous beast in its remote den, and if we are not attacked on our

voyage--

I look at our guns and see that they are all right. My uncle notices

it, and looks on approvingly.

Already widely disturbed regions on the surface of the water indicate

some commotion below. The danger is approaching. We must be on the

look out.

_Tuesday, August 18. _--Evening came, or rather the time came when

sleep weighs down the weary eyelids, for there is no night here, and

the ceaseless light wearies the eyes with its persistency just as if

we were sailing under an arctic sun. Hans was at the helm. During his

watch I slept.

Two hours afterwards a terrible shock awoke me. The raft was heaved

up on a watery mountain and pitched down again, at a distance of

twenty fathoms.

"What is the matter?" shouted my uncle. "Have we struck land?"

Hans pointed with his finger at a dark mass six hundred yards away,

rising and falling alternately with heavy plunges. I looked and cried:

"It is an enormous porpoise."

"Yes," replied my uncle, "and there is a sea lizard of vast size."

"And farther on a monstrous crocodile. Look at its vast jaws and its

rows of teeth! It is diving down!"

"There's a whale, a whale!" cried the Professor. "I can see its great

fins. See how he is throwing out air and water through his blowers."

And in fact two liquid columns were rising to a considerable height

above the sea. We stood amazed, thunderstruck, at the presence of

such a herd of marine monsters. They were of supernatural dimensions;

the smallest of them would have crunched our raft, crew and all, at

one snap of its huge jaws.

Hans wants to tack to get away from this dangerous neighbourhood; but

he sees on the other hand enemies not less terrible; a tortoise forty

feet long, and a serpent of thirty, lifting its fearful head and

gleaming eyes above the flood.

Flight was out of the question now. The reptiles rose; they wheeled

around our little raft with a rapidity greater than that of express

trains. They described around us gradually narrowing circles. I took

up my rifle. But what could a ball do against the scaly armour with

which these enormous beasts were clad?

We stood dumb with fear. They approach us close: on one side the

crocodile, on the other the serpent. The remainder of the sea

monsters have disappeared. I prepare to fire. Hans stops me by a

gesture. The two monsters pass within a hundred and fifty yards of

the raft, and hurl themselves the one upon the other, with a fury

which prevents them from seeing us.

At three hundred yards from us the battle was fought. We could

distinctly observe the two monsters engaged in deadly conflict. But

it now seems to me as if the other animals were taking part in the

fray--the porpoise, the whale, the lizard, the tortoise. Every

moment I seem to see one or other of them. I point them to the

Icelander. He shakes his head negatively.

"_Tva,_" says he.

"What two? Does he mean that there are only two animals?"

"He is right," said my uncle, whose glass has never left his eye.

"Surely you must be mistaken," I cried.

"No: the first of those monsters has a porpoise's snout, a lizard's

head, a crocodile's teeth; and hence our mistake. It is the

ichthyosaurus (the fish lizard), the most terrible of the ancient

monsters of the deep."

"And the other?"

"The other is a plesiosaurus (almost lizard), a serpent, armoured

with the carapace and the paddles of a turtle; he is the dreadful

enemy of the other."

Hans had spoken truly. Two monsters only were creating all this

commotion; and before my eyes are two reptiles of the primitive

world. I can distinguish the eye of the ichthyosaurus glowing like a

red-hot coal, and as large as a man's head. Nature has endowed it

with an optical apparatus of extreme power, and capable of resisting

the pressure of the great volume of water in the depths it inhabits.

It has been appropriately called the saurian whale, for it has both

the swiftness and the rapid movements of this monster of our own day.

This one is not less than a hundred feet long, and I can judge of its

size when it sweeps over the waters the vertical coils of its tail.

Its jaw is enormous, and according to naturalists it is armed with no

less than one hundred and eighty-two teeth.

The plesiosaurus, a serpent with a cylindrical body and a short tail,

has four flappers or paddles to act like oars. Its body is entirely

covered with a thick armour of scales, and its neck, as flexible as a

swan's, rises thirty feet above the waves.

Those huge creatures attacked each other with the greatest animosity.

They heaved around them liquid mountains, which rolled even to our

raft and rocked it perilously. Twenty times we were near capsizing.

Hissings of prodigious force are heard. The two beasts are fast

locked together; I cannot distinguish the one from the other. The

probable rage of the conqueror inspires us with intense fear.

One hour, two hours, pass away. The struggle continues with unabated

ferocity. The combatants alternately approach and recede from our

raft. We remain motionless, ready to fire. Suddenly the ichthyosaurus

and the plesiosaurus disappear below, leaving a whirlpool eddying in

the water. Several minutes pass by while the fight goes on under

water.

All at once an enormous head is darted up, the head of the

plesiosaurus. The monster is wounded to death. I no longer see his

scaly armour. Only his long neck shoots up, drops again, coils and

uncoils, droops, lashes the waters like a gigantic whip, and writhes

like a worm that you tread on. The water is splashed for a long way

around. The spray almost blinds us. But soon the reptile's agony

draws to an end; its movements become fainter, its contortions cease

to be so violent, and the long serpentine form lies a lifeless log on

the labouring deep.

As for the ichthyosaurus--has he returned to his submarine cavern?

or will he reappear on the surface of the sea?