Chapter 21Under the Ocean

By the next day, we’d pretty much forgotten our past struggles. The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t thirsty, and I actually wondered why. The stream running beside us, with its little ripples, gave me the answer.

We ate breakfast like we hadn't eaten in days, then drank our fill of the amazing water. I felt totally renewed, ready for anything my uncle wanted to do. I started thinking. If my uncle was so sure of himself, and we had such a great guide in Hans, and I was so dedicated, why couldn’t we succeed?

These ideas just popped into my head. If he’d asked me to climb Mount Sneffels again, I would've straight-up refused.

Luckily, that wasn't the plan. We were headed deeper into the earth.

"Let's go!" I shouted, making the echoes bounce off the walls.

We started moving again on Thursday at eight in the morning. The huge granite tunnel twisted and turned, looking like a maze. It generally went southwest. My uncle stopped a bunch of times to check his compass.

The tunnel started sloping down, pretty much level. The stream flowed quietly beside us. I couldn’t help but think of it as some kind of spirit, guiding us through the earth. I dipped my fingers in the warm water, which sounded like a nymph as we walked. I was feeling seriously good.

My uncle, though, started complaining about how flat the tunnel was. He said his route was taking way too long, instead of "sliding down the celestial ray," as he put it.

We didn't really have a choice, though. As long as the path led towards the center - even if we weren’t making much progress - there was no point in complaining.

Plus, sometimes the slopes got super steep, the naiad sang louder, and we seriously started going downhill.

But, I still hadn’t gotten over the thrill of finding water.

That day and the next, we did a ton of horizontal travel, and practically no vertical.

On Friday evening, July tenth, according to our calculations, we should’ve been thirty leagues southeast of Reykjavik, and about two and a half leagues deep. Then we got a pretty wild surprise.

A huge, creepy well opened up under our feet. My uncle was so stoked, he actually clapped his hands - seeing how crazy steep and sharp the drop was.

Ah, ah! he shouted, totally excited; this will take us way down. Look at the rock formations. Hah!

he exclaimed, it's a total nightmare staircase!

Hans, who’s always been solid about the ropes, made sure they were secured so nothing would happen. Then we started going down. I wouldn't even call it dangerous - I was already so used to it, it felt like a normal thing.

This well was like a narrow crack in the massive granite, the kind they call a fissure. It was clear the earth cooling down quickly caused it. I couldn't figure out how it hadn't left any marks if it had ever been a funnel for Sneffels’ eruptions.

We were basically spiraling down, like those twisty staircases you see in modern buildings.

We had to chill every fifteen minutes or so just to rest our legs. Our calves were killing us. We’d plop down on some jutting rock, legs dangling, and gossip while we scarfed down a bite - still sipping from the stream, which was still warm and hadn't bailed on us.

It's basically a given that this weird, twisty crack turned the Hansbach into a waterfall, shrinking it a bit. But it was still enough, and more, for what we needed. Plus, we knew that once the slope leveled out, it’d go back to flowing smoothly.

Right then, it reminded me of my uncle, all worked up and raging. When it flowed calmly, I pictured the chill vibes of the Icelandic guide.

For the whole of July sixth and seventh, we followed this crazy spiral staircase down into the earth, going two leagues deeper into the crust - putting us five leagues below sea level. But on the eighth, around noon, the crack suddenly got way less steep, still heading southeast.

The path was way easier now, but also super boring. Honestly, it couldn’t have played out any other way. Our trip was never gonna have any cool views or scenery. At least, that's how I felt.

Finally, on Wednesday the fifteenth, we were actually seven leagues (twenty-one miles) underground, fifty leagues from the Sneffels mountain. Even though we were seriously beat, we were feeling pretty good, health-wise. We didn’t even touch our first-aid kit.

My uncle kept a super-detailed log of the compass, the manometer, and the thermometer readings - he later put it all in his long, fancy report about our trip. So he knew exactly where we were.

When he told me we were fifty leagues across from where we started, I totally gasped. "What’s up?" he asked.

"Nothing huge, just an idea popped into my head," I replied. "Spill it, kid."

"I think, if your math is right, we’re not over Iceland anymore." "You think so?"

"We can check real quick," I said, grabbing a map and a compass.

"See?" I said, after measuring carefully.

"I’m not wrong. We’re way past Cape Portland; and those fifty leagues southeast will take us into the open ocean."

"The open ocean!" my uncle exclaimed, clapping his hands together.

"Yeah!" I yelled. "No doubt, old Ocean’s flowing over our heads!"

Well, my boy, what’s more obvious? Don’t you know they have coal mines near Newcastle that go way out under the sea?

"My awesome uncle, the Professor, probably thought it was a no-brainer, but the idea was seriously not chill for me. But then, when you really thought about it, did it even matter if the plains and mountains of Iceland were hanging above us, or the massive waves of the Atlantic?"

It all came down to how solid that granite roof was. But I got used to it pretty fast, since the passage was now level, sometimes sloped, and always heading southeast, taking us deeper and deeper into the Earth’s crazy depths.

Three days later - July eighteenth, a Saturday - we finally hit this huge grotto. My uncle tossed Hans his usual rix-dollars, and we decided the next day would be a chill day to just relax.