some displacement should occur and crush us all! Suppose the torrent, bursting through, should drown us in a sudden flood! There was nothing vain in these fancies. But still no fears of falling rocks or rushing floods could stay us now; and our thirst was so intense that, to satisfy it, we would have dared the waves of the north Atlantic.
Hans set about the task which my uncle and I together could not have accomplished. If our impatience had armed our hands with power, we should have shattered the rock into a thousand fragments. Not so Hans. Full of self possession, he calmly wore his way through the rock with a steady succession of light and skilful strokes, working through an aperture six inches wide at the outside. I could hear a louder noise of flowing waters, and I fancied I could feel the delicious fluid refreshing my parched lips.
The pick had soon penetrated two feet into the granite partition, and our man had worked for above an hour. I was in an agony of impatience. My uncle wanted to employ stronger measures, and I had some difficulty in dissuading him; still he had just taken a pickaxe in his hand, when a sudden hissing was heard, and a jet of water spurted out with violence against the opposite wall.
Hans, almost thrown off his feet by the violence of the shock, uttered a cry of grief and disappointment, of which I soon under-. stood the cause, when plunging my hands into the spouting torrent, I withdrew them in haste, for the water was scalding hot.
“The water is at the boiling point,” I cried.
“Well, never mind, let it cool,” my uncle replied.
The tunnel was filling with steam, whilst a stream was forming, which by degrees wandered away into subterranean windings, and soon we had the satisfaction of swallowing our first draught.
Could anything be more delicious than the sensation that our burning intolerable thirst was passing away, and leaving us to enjoy comfort and pleasure? But where was this water from? No matter. It was water; and though still warm, it brought life back to the dying. I kept drinking without stopping, and almost without tasting.
At last after a most delightful time of reviving energy, I cried, “Why, this is a chalybeate spring!”
“Nothing could be better for the digestion,” said my uncle. “It is highly impregnated with iron. It will be as good for us as going to the Spa, or to Töplitz.”
“Well, it is delicious!”
“Of course it is, water should be, found six miles underground. It has an inky flavour, which is not at all unpleasant. What a capital source of strength Hans has found for us here. We will call it after his name.”
“Agreed,” I cried.
And Hansbach it was from that moment.
Hans was none the prouder. After a moderate draught, he went quietly into a corner to rest.
“Now,” I said, “we must not lose this water.”
“What is the use of troubling ourselves?” my uncle, replied. “I fancy it will never fail.”
“Never mind, we cannot be sure; let us fill the water bottle and our flasks, and then stop up the opening.”
My advice was followed so far as getting in a supply; but the stopping up of the hole was not so easy to accomplish. It was in vain that we took up fragments of granite, and stuffed them in with tow, we only scalded our hands without succeeding. The pressure was too great, and our efforts were fruitless.
“It is quite plain,” said I, “that the higher body of this water is at a considerable elevation. The force of the jet shows that.”
“No doubt,” answered my uncle. “If this column of water is 32,000 feet high - that is, from the surface of the earth, it is equal to the weight of a thousand atmospheres. But I have got an idea.”
“Well?”
“Why should we trouble ourselves to stop the stream from coming out at all?”
“Because —” Well, I could not assign a reason.
“When our flasks are empty, where shall we fill them again? Can we tell that?”
No; there was no certainty.
“Well, let us allow the water to run on. It will flow down, and will both guide and refresh us.”
“That is well planned,” I cried. “With this stream for our guide, there is no reason why we should not succeed in our undertaking.”
“Ah, my boy! you agree with me now,” cried the Professor, laughing.
“I agree with you most heartily.”
“Well, let us rest awhile; and then we will start again.”
I was forgetting that it was night. The chronometer soon informed me of that fact; and in a very short time, refreshed and thankful, we all three fell into a sound sleep.
Chapter XXIV.
Well Said, Old Mole! Canst Thou Work I’ The Ground So Fast?
By the next day we had forgotten all our sufferings. At first, I was wondering that I was no longer thirsty, and I was for asking for the reason. The answer came in the murmuring of the stream at my feet.
We breakfasted, and drank of this excellent chalybeate water. I felt wonderfully stronger, and quite decided upon pushing on. Why should not so firmly convinced a man as my uncle, furnished with so industrious a guide as Hans, and accompanied by so determined a nephew as myself, go on to final success? Such were the magnificent plans which struggled for mastery within me. If it had been proposed to me to return to the summit of Snæfell, I should have indignantly declined.
Most fortunately, all we had to do was to descend.
“Let us start!” I cried, awakening by my shouts the echoes of the vaulted hollows of the earth.
On Thursday, at 8 a.m., we started afresh. The granite tunnel winding from side to side, earned us past unexpected turns, and
seemed almost to form a labyrinth; but, on the whole, its direction seemed to be southeasterly. My uncle never ceased to consult his compass, to keep account of the ground gone over.
The gallery dipped down a very little way from the horizontal, scarcely more than two inches in a fathom, and the stream ran gently murmuring at our feet. I compared it to a friendly genius guiding us underground, and caressed with my hand the soft naiad, whose comforting voice accompanied our steps. With my reviving spirits these mythological notions seemed to come unbidden.
As for my uncle, he was beginning to storm against the horizontal road. He loved nothing better than a vertical path; but this way seemed indefinitely prolonged, and instead of sliding along the hypothenuse as we were now doing, he would willingly have dropped down the terrestrial radius. But there was no help for it, and as long as we were approaching the centre at all we felt that we must not complain.
From time to time, a steeper path appeared; our naiad then began to tumble
