CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Saturday, August 15

The sea has remained the same. No land in sight.

My uncle was in a bad mood. He continued looking around, searching for land. I've noticed that he's becoming the impatient man he used to be before my recovery. Why should he get upset? Our journey is going quite well, and the raft is moving at a surprisingly quick speed.

"You seem worried, uncle," I said to him today.

"Worried? No."

"But you look upset, why? We're moving quite quickly."

"Our speed is not what upsets me. The sea is just too big!"

I remembered that before we left, he had announced his estimate of the sea to be seventy-five miles wide, but we had now gone three times that far, and we still hadn't seen land yet.

"We're not going down!" the professor continued. "This is all a waste of time."

"But," I said, "we've followed Saknussemm's directions ... "

"But, perhaps we haven't. Did Saknussemm come to this sea? Did he cross the sea? Perhaps we have taken another path, letting the stream guide us."

"This sight is amazing. We certainly can't regret coming here."

"Coming here has not been my goal. My plan was to get to the center of the Earth, which I still have not done."

I said nothing. At six o'clock in the evening, Hans asked for his pay.

Sunday, August 16

Nothing new. Same weather. Wind a little stronger. My uncle tried to measure the depth of the great sea, using a rope. At eighteen hundred feet below the sea, there still was no bottom. We had tied one of the metal instruments to the rope before we put it in the water. When we brought the rope up again, Hans noticed there were large teeth marks on the instrument. Quite a large animal had bitten the instrument. This troubled me for the rest of the day.

Monday, August 17

I thought about the gigantic animals that lived on the Earth thousands of years before humans. Those teeth marks looked as if they were made by one of those huge ancient animals. I looked at the guns we had brought to make sure they were in good condition. The surface of the water was now moving quickly over a large area, as if something below was moving around. Danger was near.

Tuesday, August 18

Two hours after I had gone asleep that night, I was awakened as the raft was being lifted out of the water, after which it was thrown through the air.

"What happened?" my uncle cried out.

Hans pointed to a large dark animal about three thousand feet away. I noticed that it was a large whale, much larger than those in the ocean waters on the surface of the Earth. Nearby, there was another sea animal, similar to a snake. And farther away there was a huge crocodile. We were amazed to see the sea monsters. The smallest one of them could have easily broken our raft. Soon, we saw two other animals fighting each other. One was a forty-foot turtle, and the other was a thirty-foot snake. I then realized that our guns were useless against these unbelievable animals. But, fortunate for us, they had not noticed us, as they were enemies with each other.

Soon, the only two animals on the surface of the water were the crocodile and the snake. They came quite close to us, but were swimming away, fighting each other savagely. Then, other sea animals joined the fight. The whale, another snake, and the sea turtle were now fighting, as well. I pointed them out to Hans. He shook his head.

"Tva," he said.

"Two? Does he mean that only two animals ... "

"He's right!" cried my uncle.

"But I can see ... "

"The first of those animals has the mouth of a whale, the head of a snake, and the teeth of a crocodile!"

"And the other?"

"The other is a snake with a turtle's back!"

Hans was right. Only two sea animals were fighting. These two animals had existed millions of years ago on the surface of the Earth, long before humans arrived.

An hour passed, then two. They continued fighting. Many times, their fight came near the raft. Suddenly they went underwater, and the surface was calm. After a few minutes, however, the snake with a turtle's back was wounded, and soon died. The other animal we never saw again.

(end of section)