are going up--going up, still going up. But who knows? Who
knows?"

Then he still hoped. He felt along the vertical sides of the shaft with
his hand, and some few minutes later, he would go on again in the
following style:

"This is gneiss. This is mica schist--siliceous mineral. Good again;
this is the epoch of transition, at all events, we are close to
them--and then, and then--"

What could the Professor mean? Could he, by any conceivable means,
measure the thickness of the crust of the earth suspended above our
heads? Did he possess any possible means of making any approximation to
this calculation? No.

The manometer was wanting, and no summary estimation could take the
place of it.

And yet, as we progressed, the temperature increased in the most
extraordinary degree, and I began to feel as if I were bathed in a hot
and burning atmosphere. Never before had I felt anything like it. I
could only compare it to the hot vapor from an iron foundry, when the
liquid iron is in a state of ebullition and runs over. By degrees, and
one after the other, Hans, my uncle, and myself had taken off our coats
and waistcoats. They were unbearable. Even the slightest garment was not
only uncomfortable, but the cause of extreme suffering.

"Are we ascending to a living fire?" I cried; when, to my horror and
astonishment, the heat became greater than before.

"No, no," said my uncle, "it is simply impossible, quite impossible."

"And yet," said I, touching the side of the shaft with my naked hand,
"this wall is literally burning."

At this moment, feeling as I did that the sides of this extraordinary
wall were red hot, I plunged my hands into the water to cool them. I
drew them back with a cry of despair.

"The water is boiling!" I cried.

My uncle, the Professor, made no reply other than a gesture of rage and
despair.

Something very like the truth had probably struck his imagination.

But I could take no share in either what was going on, or in his
speculations. An invincible dread had taken possession of my brain and
soul. I could only look forward to an immediate catastrophe, such a
catastrophe as not even the most vivid imagination could have thought
of. An idea, at first vague and uncertain, was gradually being changed
into certainty.

I tremulously rejected it at first, but it forced itself upon me by
degrees with extreme obstinacy. It was so terrible an idea that I
scarcely dared to whisper it to myself.

A