ds his time in scanning the horizon, at
every point of the compass. His telescope is raised every moment to his
eyes, and when he finds nothing to give any clue to our whereabouts, he
assumes a Napoleonic attitude and walks anxiously.

I remarked that my uncle, the Professor, had a strong tendency to resume
his old impatient character, and I could not but make a note of this
disagreeable circumstance in my journal. I saw clearly that it had
required all the influence of my danger and suffering, to extract from
him one scintillation of humane feeling. Now that I was quite recovered,
his original nature had conquered and obtained the upper hand.

And, after all, what had he to be angry and annoyed about, now more than
at any other time? Was not the journey being accomplished under the most
favorable circumstances? Was not the raft progressing with the most
marvelous rapidity?

What, then, could be the matter? After one or two preliminary hems, I
determined to inquire.

"You seem uneasy, Uncle," said I, when for about the hundredth time he
put down his telescope and walked up and down, muttering to himself.

"No, I am not uneasy," he replied in a dry harsh tone, "by no means."

"Perhaps I should have said impatient," I replied, softening the force
of my remark.

"Enough to make me so, I think."

"And yet we are advancing at a rate seldom attained by a raft," I
remarked.

"What matters that?" cried my uncle. "I am not vexed at the rate we go
at, but I am annoyed to find the sea so much vaster than I expected."

I then recollected that the Professor, before our departure, had
estimated the length of this subterranean ocean as at most about thirty
leagues. Now we had traveled at least over thrice that distance without
discovering any trace of the distant shore. I began to understand my
uncle's anger.

"We are not going down," suddenly exclaimed the Professor. "We are not
progressing with our great discoveries. All this is utter loss of time.
After all, I did not come from home to undertake a party of pleasure.
This voyage on a raft over a pond annoys and wearies me."

He called this adventurous journey a party of pleasure, and this great
inland sea a pond!

"But," argued I, "if we have followed the route indicated by the great
Saknussemm, we cannot be going far wrong."

"'That is the question,' as the great, the immortal Shakespeare, has it.
Are we following the route indicated by that wondrous sage? Did
Sak