About midday on the sixth day on the raft we heard a roaring noise. At first I thought it was waves breaking on rocks, or a waterfall. Hans climbed the mast and saw a great jet of water rising from the sea. We thought it was another giant sea-monster! By eight o'clock that evening we could make out something about a kilometre long lying in the sea. The jet of water rained down upon it. I was terrified.

"It's an island," Hans suddenly called out.

"But what about the jet of water?" I asked.

"A geyser," my uncle answered. "It's like those in Iceland."

Now the jet of water looked beautiful. The light sparkled on the water and made a rainbow. We landed on the island and the ground trembled under our feet. It was burning hot. The water from the geyser was boiling and filled the air with clouds of steam. Such heat must have come from fires burning deep underground. I was sure that if we went deeper we must reach the burning depths. But my uncle became angry when I told him of my fears. I kept quiet, for now I could be sure of nothing.

Before leaving the island I noted that we were one thousand and eighty kilometres from Port Grauben where we had set sail on this sea. We must have been somewhere under England. The following day the wind was strong and we sailed even faster. The clouds thickened and the sky grew darker. The air was full of electricity as if gathering for a storm. The coming storm added to my uncle's anger. He did not want it to hold us up. Then the wind dropped, and nothing moved.

I asked if I should take down the sail and mast before the storm started, but my uncle said "no" to this.

"Let the wind carry us away!" he said. "Perhaps we shall then reach the other side of this endless sea!"

As if in answer, the wind rose and became a hurricane. The raft tossed and bounded ahead. We clung to it as the wind raged. Hans however sat calmly at the tiller. The electricity in the air played on his hair. He seemed to have a strange light round his head. The wind blew us along at a great speed. The rain beat down. Thunder rolled and lightning flashed all round us. Massive hailstones fell. They made a bright electric flash as they hit our tools or any metal. Even the crests of the waves were edged with flames.

It seemed as if the whole world was blowing up in a great explosion. For three days we were blown before the gale. I clung to the mast and feared we would drown. Then a ball of fire landed on the raft. The mast and sail were flung into the air. The fireball was half white and half blue and about twenty five centimetres across. It jumped from rope to deck and from out sacks to boxes, spinning fast as it moved. For a second it touched a bag of gunpowder. By a miracle we were not blown up.

The fireball rolled near my foot and I tried to move away. But my foot was held fast to the deck. I saw that all the iron of the raft was magnetised by the fireball. The iron nails in my boots were clinging to an iron plate in the deck! With a pull I freed myself. The fireball burst in a blaze. Flames covered us. Then all went dark. We threw ourselves to the deck to rest and regain our strength. The wind still raged but we were too tired to care. I only knew that we were being carried along at a great speed and must have passed under France.

Dazed and weak we were at last flung up on a rocky coast. I would have been dashed to pieces had not Hans pulled me out of the wild sea. He saved my uncle too, and then went back to save what he could of our goods from the wreck.

We awoke to a beautiful day and felt rested. My uncle was even bright and cheerful now that we had crossed the sea. "Now we can really start going down again," he said. My heart sank at the thought of going yet deeper into the Earth. I longed to get back to Hamburg and to Grauben.

Hans had collected together our goods from the wreck. Our guns had gone, but the gunpowder and gun-cotton were safe and dry. We still had a compass, some other instruments and tools and ropes. Most of our food had been saved and we had enough for four months. After breakfast we sat down to work out where we were and to plan our next step.

"Hans is mending the raft," my uncle said, "but I don't think we'll need it again. I've an idea we'll not get out the way we came in."

I wondered what he meant and how he knew.

As the storm had blown us to the south-east, we agreed we must be somewhere under the Mediterranean. We looked at the compass to check our position, but what we saw puzzled us. We checked again. According to the compass we were back on the side of the sea from which we had started. Sadly, we decided that the wind had changed during the storm and driven us back.

My uncle was at first surprised and then angry. He stormed and raged. I begged him to turn back but nothing would make him change his mind. Hans quietly obeyed his master. Again there was nothing I could do but go on.

Whilst Hans worked on the raft, my uncle and I set out to explore. We walked along the shore, which was covered with the shells of prehistoric animals. We also found some huge turtle shells. Soon we came upon piles of bones. There were the bones of every kind of animal that had ever lived.

"Look at this, Axel!" the Professor called in a trembling voice. "A human skull!"

I was no less amazed than my uncle. A few more steps brought an even greater shock. There, in the dust, was the body of a prehistoric man. It still had flesh, hair and nails and seemed almost alive! We had seen the bones of dinosaurs and also seen live ones. Here was the body of a prehistoric man. Would we find a live man?

We walked on. In about a kilometre we came to a great forest. There were trees and plants from a world of millions of years ago. But these plants were not green. Without sunlight they were all a faded brown. My uncle pushed on through the bushes and into the forest. Under the trees something moved. We stopped and peered through the leaves. There, before us, was a herd of prehistoric elephants, the gigantic mastodons. They were feeding on leaves which they tore from the trees with their trunks.

"Come on," whispered my uncle. "Let's go on."

"It wouldn't be safe if they charged," I warned him.

"Perhaps not," he agreed in a low voice. "Look over there!"

I could not believe my eyes. Leaning against a tree was a man. He was keeping watch over his herd of mastodons. He was at least four metres tall, and taller than the mastodons. His head was as big as a bison's and he had a thick mane of matted hair. He held the branch of a tree in his hand.

This was no place to stay and we got away quickly. Once out of the forest, we ran towards the shore. We then looked for signs that we were near Port Grauben but could find none. As we walked on the beach I saw something shining in the sand. I picked up a rusty dagger. We looked at it carefully. The dagger was old, and rust showed it had lain in the sand for a long time.

"This belonged to someone who came here before us!" said my uncle. "Perhaps we'll find something to show us the way to the centre of the Earth."

We searched the cliffs and at last found a dark tunnel. By the entrance, scratched into the rock, were Runic signs.

"A.S.! Arne Saknussemm!" shouted my uncle.

Once more we knew we were on the right path.

"I can't explain how we travelled north," my uncle said. "I was sure we were going south-east. But here we are, in the right place. That's all that matters!"

We went back to Hans. Together we sailed the raft along the coast until we reached Arne Saknussemm's tunnel. We went ashore. I was keen to explore the passage, and when my uncle lit his electric lamp, I led the way.

The opening led straight into the tunnel, but in a short distance we found our way blocked by a huge rock.

"How did Saknussemm get through?" I asked angrily.

"This rock must have fallen since he was here," my uncle replied.

"Then let's use our gun-cotton and blow it out of our way," I suggested.

Hans got his pickaxe and made a hole in the rock. He packed it with gun-cotton. Then my uncle and I made a fuse, using damp gunpowder in a linen tube. By midnight all was ready.

We were awake and ready early the next morning. We decided that I would light the fuse and then join the others on the raft. While the fuse burned we would push out with the raft so that when the explosion came, we would be away from danger.

I picked up the fuse and opened my lantern to get a light. Then I lit the fuse and made sure it was burning well. I raced back to the raft. Hans pushed off. At a safe distance from shore we waited. The seconds ticked by. Suddenly, the rock exploded. We stared into a bottomless pit. The sea swelled into a great wave and the raft tossed madly. We were thrown to the deck and there was no light. In the darkness the roar of water filled my ears. We had blown up a rock which blocked the entrance to a pit leading down to the centre of the Earth. Now that the rock had gone, the sea could rush in, carrying us with it!

We were rushing on roaring water down into the Earth. We clung to one another, and to the raft. We rushed down and down at high speed in complete darkness. Then Hans managed to light a lantern, and we saw that all our cargo had gone except for a compass and a little food. The water fell steeply and sometimes we spun round. When the lantern burned out I shut my eyes and waited. Our speed increased. The fall grew steeper. Time seemed endless. There was a sudden shock, and the raft almost stopped.

We had hit a water-spout and the water was falling on the raft. I was sure we would be drowned. But we surfaced and all was silence. After the roaring of the water it seemed strangely quiet.

"We're going up!" called my uncle.

Hans lit a torch. We were rising on the water in a narrow shaft. Escape seemed impossible. As the water rose, the heat grew greater. Soon the water below us was boiling. The walls of the shaft were burning hot. In the light of the torch I thought I saw the rocks move. There was a loud explosion. The walls of the shaft shook. In terror, I looked at my uncle. To my surprise he was calm.

"The Earth is moving!" I called to him.

"This is no earthquake, Axel," he said. "We're in the chimney of an erupting volcano! This is the best thing that could have happened to us! We will be carried up to the surface!"

All we could do was sit and wait whilst we were carried upwards.

Below the water were burning rocks. If we ever reached the surface the rocks would be hurled out in a red-hot explosion.

Towards morning the air grew hotter and our speed increased. I saw tunnels into the walls of the shaft. Smoke and flames poured from them. Our raft floated on red-hot lava. The heat was terrible. The raft whirled round in a shower of hot ash. Flames sprang up all around us. It seemed all must be lost. I fainted.

When I came to my senses I felt Hans' strong hand on me. We were lying on the side of a volcano. We were all cut and bruised, but not badly hurt. I could not believe that we were lying in the sun on the surface of the Earth.

"Where can we be?" I asked.

"Perhaps the compass can help us," said my uncle.

I checked the compass. "If the compass is right," I told him, "we're at the North Pole!"

We looked at the countryside around us. Below we saw trees. There were olives, figs and vines. The sun was hot. This was not Iceland! We decided to go down the slope of the volcano and look for a village. We were tired and dirty and our clothes were in rags. We found a stream and gladly cooled ourselves and drank thirstily.

A small boy saw us and started to run away but Hans caught him. My uncle spoke to the boy in German and French but he did not answer. Then, in answer to a question in Italian, the boy replied, "Stromboli." We were on Stromboli in the Mediterranean Sea. We had travelled from the volcano in Iceland to Stromboli in the Mediterranean. What a journey we had made through the Earth!

We went down to the coast where the people thought we had been shipwrecked. They gave us food and clothes and, in two days, sent us on our way home. As we sat quietly in boats and trains we puzzled over the mystery of the compass. But all this was forgotten when we reached Hamburg.

Grauben was overjoyed to see us. The news of our strange journey had spread through the country. Soon it spread through the world. Great scientists came to talk with the famous Professor Lidenbrock and his assistant. The quiet Hans soon felt homesick, and we sadly watched him leave to return to Iceland. So, at last, everyone was happy. All had turned out well for us. But there was still the mystery of the compass.

One day, in the study, I picked up the compass and looked at it. The answer was clear.

"Look, uncle," I said. "The needle points south instead of north. That fireball in the storm magnetised all the iron. It changed the poles of the compass. It made it point south, not north!"

"Of course," said the Professor. "So simple that I never thought of it."

With that last mystery solved my uncle became a very contented man. I could not have been happier. As we had planned, Grauben and I were married and we all three lived happily together in Hamburg.

(The End)