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CHAPTER XXXII.THE BATTLE OF THE ELEMENTS.FRIDAY, AUGUST 21.This morning the magnificent geyser had fully disappeared.The wind had freshened up, and we were fast leaving the neighborhood of Henry's Island.
Even the roaring sound of the mighty column was lost to the air.The weather, if under the circumstances we may use such an expression, is about to change very suddenly.
The atmosphere is being gradually loaded with vapors, which carry with them the electricity formed by the constant evaporation of the saline waters. The clouds are slowly but sensibly falling towards the sea, and are assuming a dark olive texture.
The electric rays can scarcely pierce through the opaque curtain, which has fallen like a drop seen before this wondrous theatre, on the stage of which another and terrible drama is soon to be enacted.
This time it is no fight of animals, it is the fearful battle of the elements.I feel that I am very peculiarly influenced, as all creatures are on land, when a deluge is about to take place.
The cumuli, a perfectly oval kind of cloud, piled upon the south, presented a most awful and sinister appearance, with a pitiless aspect often seen before a storm. The air is extremely heavy, the sea is comparatively calm.
In the distance the clouds have assumed the appearance of enormous balls of cotton, or, rather, pods, piled one above the other in picturesque confusion.By degrees they appear to swell out, break, and gain in number what they lose in grandeur.
Their heaviness is so great that they are unable to lift themselves from the horizon.
but, under the influence of the upper currents of air, they are gradually broken up, become much darker, and then present the appearance of one single layer of a formidable character.
Now and then a lighter cloud, still lit up from above, rebounds upon this gray carpet, and is lost in the opaque mass. There can be no doubt that the entire atmosphere is saturated with electric fluid.I myself fall impregnated.
My hairs literally stand on end, as if under the influence of a galvanic battery.If one of my companions ventured to touch me, I think he would receive rather a violent and unpleasant shock.
About ten o'clock in the morning the symptoms of the storm became more thorough and decisive.The wind appeared to soften down, as if to take breath for a renewed attack.
The vast funeral pall above us looked like a huge bag, like the cave of Aeolus in which the storm was collecting its forces for the attack.
I tried all I could not to believe in the menacing signs of the sky, and yet I could not avoid saying, as it were, involuntarily, I believe we are going to have bad weather, The professor made me no answer.
He was in a horrible, in a detestable humor, to see the ocean stretching interminably before his eyes.On hearing my words he simply shrugged his shoulders."'We shall have a tremendous storm,' I said again, pointing to the horizon.
These clouds are falling lower and lower upon the sea, as if to crush it. A great silence prevailed, the wind folly ceased, nature assumed a dead calm, and ceased to breathe.
Upon the mast, where I noticed a sort of slight igneous fatuous, the sail hangs in loose heavy folds. The raft is motionless in the midst of a dark, heavy sea, without undulation, without motion.It is as still as glass.
But as we are making no progress, what is the use of keeping up the sail, which may be the cause of our perdition, if the tempest should suddenly strike us without warning?""'Let us lower the sail,' I said.It is only an act of common prudence.
No, no!"cried my uncle in an exasperated tone.A hundred times no.Let the wind strike us and do its worst.Let the storm sweep us away where it will.
Only let me see the glimmer of some coast, of some rocky cliffs, even if they dash our raft into a thousand pieces.No, keep up the sail, no matter what happens.
These words were scarcely uttered when the southern horizon underwent a sudden and violent change.The long-accumulated vapors were resolved into water, and the air required to fill up the void produced became a wild and raging tempest.
It came from the most distant corners of the mighty cavern. It raged from every point of the compass.It roared, it yelled, it shrieked with glee as if demons let loose.The darkness increased and became indeed darkness visible.
The raft rose and fell with a storm, and bounded over the waves.My uncle was cast headlong upon the deck.I, with great difficulty, dragged myself towards him.
He was holding on with might and main to the end of a cable, and appeared to gaze with pleasure and delight at the spectacle of the unchained elements. Hans never moved a muscle.
His long hair, driven hither and thither by the tempest, and scattered wildly over his motionless face, gave him a most extraordinary appearance, for every single hair was illuminated by little sparkling sprigs.
His countenance presents the extraordinary appearance of an antediluvian man, a true contemporary of the Megatherium. Still, the mast holds good against the storm.The sail spreads out and feels like a soap bubble about to burst.
The raft rushes on at a pace impossible to estimate, but still less swiftly than the body of water displaced beneath it, the rapidity of which may be seen by the lines which fly right and left in the wake. The sail, the sail!"
I cried, making a trumpet on my hands, and then endeavouring to lower it."'Let it alone,' said my uncle, more exasperated than ever."'Nay,' said Hans, gently shaking his head.
Nevertheless, the rain formed a roaring cataract before this horizon, of which we were in search, and to which we were rushing like madmen.
But before this wilderness of waters reached us, the mighty veil of cloud was torn in twain, the sea began to foam wildly, and the electricity produced by some vast and extraordinary chemical action in the upper layer of cloud is brought into play.
To the fearful claps of thunder are added dazzling flashes of lightning, such as I had never seen. The flashes crossed one another, hurled from every side, while the thunder came pealing like an echo.The mass of vapor becomes incandescent.
The hailstones which strike the metal of our boots and our weapons are actually luminous.The waves, as they rise, appear to be fire-eating monsters, beneath which seethes an intense fire.Their crests are mounted by combs of flame.
My eyes are dazzled, blinded by the intensity of light, my ears are deafened by the awful roar of the elements.
I am compelled to hold on to the mast, which bends like a reed beneath the violence of the storm, to which none ever before seen by mariners bore any resemblance. Here my traveling notes become very incomplete, loose, and vague.
I have only been able to make out one or two fugitive observations, jotted down in a mere mechanical way.But even their brevity, even their obscurity, show the emotions which overcame me. Sunday, August 23.Where have we got to?
In what region are we wandering?We are still carried forward with inconceivable rapidity.The night has been fearful, something not to be described.The storm shows no signs of cessation.We exist in the midst of an uproar which has no name.
The detonations as of artillery are incessant.Our ears literally bleed. We are unable to exchange a word or hear each other speak.The lightning never ceases to flash for a single instant.
I can see the zigzags after a rapid dart strike the arched roof of this mightiest of mighty walls. if it were to give way and fall upon us.
Other lightnings plunge their forked streaks in every direction, and take the form of globes of fire which explode like bombshells over a beleaguered city.The general crash and roar do not apparently increase.
It has already gone far beyond what human ear can appreciate. If all the powder magazines in the world were to explode together, it would be impossible for us to hear worse noise.There is a constant emission of light from the storm clouds.
The electric matter is incessantly released.Evidently, the gaseous principles of the air are out of order.Innumerable columns of water rush up like water-spouts and fall back upon the surface of the ocean in foam. Whither are we going?
My uncle still lies at full length upon the raft, without speaking, without taking any note of time.The heat increases.I look at the thermometer.To my surprise, it indicates—the exact figure is here rubbed out in my manuscript. Monday, August 24.
This terrible storm will never end.Why should not this state of the atmosphere, so dense and murky, once modified, again remain definitive?We are utterly broken and harassed by fatigue.Hans remains just as usual.
The raft runs to the southeast invariably.We have now already run two hundred leagues from the newly discovered island. About twelve o'clock the storm became worse than ever.
We are obliged now to fasten every bit of cargo tightly on the deck of the raft, or everything would be swept away.We make ourselves fast, too, each man lashing the other.The waves drive over us, so that several times we are actually underwater.
We had been under the painful necessity of abstaining from speech for three days and three nights.We opened our mouths, we moved our lips, but no sound came.Even when we placed our mouths to each other's ears, it was the same.
The wind carried the voice away. My uncle once contrived to get his head close to mine after several almost vain endeavors.He appeared to my nearly exhausted senses to articulate some word.
I had a notion more from intuition than anything else that he said to me,—'We are lost.' I took out my notebook, from which under the most desperate circumstances I never parted, and wrote a few words as legibly as I could.Take in sail!
With a deep sigh he nodded his head and acquiesced.His head had scarcely time to fall back in the position from which he had momentarily raised it, then a disk or ball of fire appeared on the very edge of the raft. our devoted, our doomed craft.
The mast and sail are carried away bodily, and I see them swept away to a prodigious height like a kite.We were frozen, actually shivered with terror.
The ball of fire, half white, half azure-colored, about the size of a ten-inch bombshell, moved along, turning with prodigious rapidity to leeward of the storm. It ran about here, there, and everywhere.
It clambered up one of the bulwarks of the raft, it leaped upon the sack of provisions, and then finally descended lightly, fell like a football, and landed on our powder-barrel.Horrible situation!An explosion, of course, was now inevitable.
By Heaven's mercy, it was not so! The dazzling disk moved on one side, it approached Hans, who looked at it with singular fixity.Then it approached my uncle, who cast himself on his knees to avoid it.
It came towards me as I stood pale and shuddering in the dazzling light and heat. It pirouetted round my feet, which I endeavored to withdraw.An odor of nitrous gas filled the whole air.It penetrated to the throat, to the lungs.I felt ready to choke.
Why is it that I cannot withdraw my feet?Are they riveted to the flooring of the raft? No, the fall of the electric globe has turned all the iron on board into lodestones.
The instruments, the tools, the arms are clanging together with awful and horrible noise.The nails of my heavy boots adhere closely to the plate of iron encrusted in the wood.I cannot withdraw my foot.
It is the old story again of the mountain of Adamant.
At last, by a violent and almost superhuman effort, I tear it away, just as the ball, which is still executing its gyratory motions, is about to run round it and drag me with it, if—Oh, what intense, stupendous light!The globe of fire bursts.
We are enveloped in cascades of living fire, which flood the space around with luminous matter. Then all went out, and darkness once more fell upon the deep.
I had just time to see my uncle once more cast apparently senseless on the flooring of the raft, hands at the helm spitting fire under the influence of the electricity which seemed to have gone through him."'Whither are we going?'
I ask, and echo answers, "'Whither?' Thursday, August 25.—I have just come out of a long, fainting fit.The awful and hideous storm still continues.
The lightning has increased in vividness, and pours out its fiery wrath like a brood of serpents let loose in the atmosphere.Are we still upon the sea?Yes, and being carried along with incredible velocity.
We have passed under England, under the Channel, under France, probably under the whole extent of Europe."Another awful clamor in the distance.This time it is certain that the sea is breaking upon the rocks at no great distance.
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