The Greatest Sci-Fi Classics. Эдгар Аллан По

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Chapter XXXIII.

       A Battle Of Monsters

       Table of Contents

      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 preadamite world, who, coming next in succession after the molluscs, the crustaceans and le 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 СКАЧАТЬ