CHAPTER THIRTY

"The sea!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, the Lidenbrock Sea," my uncle said. "Since I am surely the first explorer to find it, it should be named after myself."

It was either a large lake or an ocean I was standing next to. I saw no end to the great body of water. I was standing on the beach, filled with golden sand. It looked incredibly like the oceans on the surface of the Earth, but was deserted and wild-looking. There was an electric-like light filling the area. It was brighter than the light of the moon, but was not similar to sunlight. The ceiling, or the sky over the ocean, seemed to be made of big clouds moving overhead, from which rain would fall, at times. I could not see over the clouds, but I imagined there to be a ceiling made of thick rock. The clouds seemed to be nearly twelve thousand feet high, higher than clouds above the surface of the Earth, probably because the air at the center of the Earth was much thicker than that on the surface.

I looked at this new place with amazement and fear. After walking through passageways for the last forty-seven days, I was delighted to breathe that air.

"Do you feel strong enough to walk for awhile?" my uncle asked.

"Yes, of course," I answered.

"Let's go to the shore, then, Axel," he said.

I walked eagerly. As I looked around, I saw the Hansbach stream flow from one of the passageways into the sea.

"We'll miss that stream," I said quietly.

"Why? It doesn't matter now if we have that stream or another one."

I was surprised at my uncle's ungrateful comment, as that stream had save our lives.

But then I saw something else amazing. Fifteen hundred feet away, I saw a thick forest. I walked quickly and was surprised to see plant types that I could recognize but were much taller and thicker than those on the surface of the Earth.

"It's only a forest of mushrooms," my uncle said.

He was right, but these plants, which lived well in warm, moist climates, had developed into the size of trees on the surface of the Earth. These white mushrooms were thirty or forty feet tall. There were thousands of them. We walked closer and saw there were other types of plants that were green on the surface, exposed to sunlight, but were colorless in this mysterious forest. Among these plants, I noticed trees that had not lived on the surface of the Earth for thousands of years, but were at the center of the Earth. I then noticed the bones of animals that had lived on the surface of the Earth thousands of years ago, as well. I realized that such animals could still be alive in that mysterious forest. I became quite worried as I looked around, but saw nothing except the sea and the forest.

After walking around this mysterious land for a bit longer, we returned to our things. I went to sleep with strange thoughts in my mind, determined to cross that mysterious sea.

(end of section)