Chapter 29On the Waters. A Raft Voyage

We were up super early on August thirteenth. No time to waste. We had to try out this new way of getting around - fast and not exhausting.

The mast was made of two pieces of wood, tied together for extra strength. We used a yard from another piece of wood, and the sail was a linen sheet from our bed. Luckily, we had plenty of rope, and the whole thing looked solid and ready for the sea when we tested it.

At six a.m., when the excited Professor gave the go-ahead to hop on, the food, our gear, all our instruments, our weapons, and a good supply of fresh water (we'd collected it from springs in the rocks) went onto the raft.

Hans, being seriously clever, had built a rudder so he could steer the thing with ease. He naturally grabbed the tiller. The guy was as good a sailor as he was a guide and a duck hunter. I then let go of the rope holding us to the shore, the sail caught the wind, and we shot off quickly.

Our sea journey had finally started; and we were heading towards far-off, unknown places again.

Just as we were about to leave the little port where the raft was built, my uncle - who was a total whiz when it came to place names - wanted to give it a name, and threw out a few ideas, including mine.

"Okay," I said, "before you decide, I have another one." "Spill it."

"I'd like to call it Gretchen. Port Gretchen will sound really cool on our map later."

"Alright then, Port Gretchen it is," said the Professor.

And that’s how the memory of my dear girl got linked to our crazy, unforgettable trip.

As we left the shore, the wind was whipping in from north and east. We were zooming forward, way faster than you’d think a raft could go. The thick air down there really pushed us, and the sail felt the force.

After about an hour, my uncle, who’s been taking notes, figured out just how fast we were moving. It was insane - way beyond anything you'd see on the surface.

"If we keep this up," he said, "we'll cover at least thirty leagues in a day. A raft doing that? Seriously unbelievable."

I was totally blown away and just kept going forward on the raft. The northern shore was already disappearing on the horizon. Both shores seemed to pull apart, leaving a wide-open space for us to leave. All I could see ahead was the huge, endless sea - we were the only living things out there.

Massive, dark clouds cast gloomy shadows below - they felt like they were crushing the grey, moody water. I'd never seen anything so creepy and dark. Silver flashes of electric light reflected off little spots of water, making sparkly lights trail behind our big raft.

Soon, we couldn’t see land anywhere - not even a hint of where we were headed. It was so quiet and still, without anything to look at, that if it weren’t for the glowing water trail, I’d have thought we were just floating, not moving.

But I knew we were going super fast.

Around noon, we were totally surrounded by crazy amounts of seaweed. I knew these plants could be powerful, able to creep along the ocean floor and even stop big ships. But I'd never seen anything like the seaweed in the Central Sea - it was gigantic and wild.

I could totally see how, from far away, the long lines of algae, bouncing on the waves, could look like living things. No wonder people believed in sea serpents!

We floated past huge clumps of fucus - seriously, some were three to four thousand feet long! They looked like giant snakes stretching way beyond the horizon. It was wild to see their colorful, endless lengths. Hour after hour went by, and we still hadn't reached the end of these floating weeds.

My surprise grew, and I was starting to lose it.

What kind of natural force could create plants this huge? What did the planet even look like in the early centuries, when heat and humidity ruled and plants covered everything?

That's what geologists and philosophers would geek out over, for sure.

Meanwhile, we kept going, and then night fell. But just like the night before, the air was still glowing. Whatever was causing it, we could tell how long it would last.

After we ate and had a little chat, I crashed out at the foot of the mast and fell asleep pretty quickly.

Hans stayed put at the tiller, letting the raft bob up and down with the waves. With the wind behind us and the sail set just right, all he had to do was keep his oar centered.

Ever since we left Port Gretchen - they renamed it, seriously - my uncle told me to keep a regular log of our journey, telling me to write down everything, even the smallest details, every cool or weird thing we saw, the wind direction, how fast we were going, how far we traveled.

Basically, every part of this crazy trip.

So, yeah, this is the story of our voyage on the Central Sea, straight from the log.

Friday, August fourteenth. A steady breeze from the northwest. The raft was moving super fast and going straight. We could still barely see the coast, about thirty leagues behind us. Nothing in sight ahead, just the horizon. The light was still crazy bright, not getting brighter or dimmer.

It was just... stuck. The weather was amazing; the clouds were way up high, fluffy, and surrounded by air that looked like melted silver.

Thermometer read plus32 degrees Celsius.

Around noon, Hans got the line ready and baited a hook, then dropped it into the water below. He used a tiny piece of meat to hide the hook. I was so hyped, but for a while, nothing happened. Were there even fish down there? That was the big question. Nope, I thought.

Then, BAM - a sudden, strong tug. Hans calmly reeled it in, and there was a fish, struggling like crazy to get away. "A fish!" my uncle yelled.

"It’s a sturgeon!" I shouted, "Definitely a small one!"

The Professor checked out the fish carefully, noticing every detail, and he didn’t agree with my take. The fish had a flat head, a round body, and bony scales covering its lower parts.

Its mouth had zero teeth, and the super-developed pectoral fins sprouted straight from its body, which, technically, didn't even have a tail. The animal definitely belonged to the same group as sturgeon, but it was different in a bunch of important ways.

My uncle, though, wasn’t wrong. After a long, careful look, he said:

"This fish, my boy, belongs to a family that’s been extinct for ages, and we’ve never found any trace of it on Earth - except for fossil remains in the Devonian layers."

"You’re saying," I blurted out, "that we actually caught a live fish from that ancient stock that existed before the flood?"

"Yep," said the Professor, still checking it out.

"And if you look closely, you’ll see that those fossil fish don’t match any species we have today. Holding a living example of this order is enough to make a naturalist seriously happy for life."

"But," I said, "what family does it belong to?"

"To the order of Ganoides - fish with angular, bright enamel scales - one of the Cephalaspides family, in the genus - "

"Well, sir," I chimed in, noticing my uncle seemed to be stuck.

"To the genus Pterychtis - yeah, I’m sure of it. Still, this fish has a really weird thing going on, something we’ve never seen in any other fish but those from underground waters, wells, lakes, caves, and hidden pools. "And what’s that? "It’s blind."

"Blind!" I said, totally surprised.

"Not just blind," the Professor continued, "but completely without eyes."

I checked out our find myself. It was seriously weird, but it was real.

"Maybe this is a one-off," I suggested.

We rebaited the hook and tossed it back in. This underground ocean had to be pretty stocked with fish, because in two hours we hauled in a ton of Pterychtis, plus other fish from a supposed extinct family - the Dipterides (fish with just two fins, hence the name).

My uncle couldn't quite place them, though. But every single one was blind. This unexpected catch let us restock our supplies, which was awesome.

We were now sure that this underground sea only held fish we knew from fossils - and both fish and reptiles seemed more complete the further back they came from.

We started hoping we’d find some of those saurian creatures that scientists have pieced together from bone scraps and cartilage.

I grabbed the telescope and scanned the horizon - looked all over the sea; it was totally empty. We were probably still too close to the coast.

After checking out the ocean, I looked up at the weird, mysterious sky. Why couldn't one of those birds Cuvier brought back to life spread its huge wings in this dull, underground air? It’d definitely find enough to eat from the fish in the sea. I stared at the emptiness above for a while.

It was as quiet and deserted as the shores we'd just left.

Still, even though I couldn't see or find anything, my imagination totally ran wild. I was basically dreaming with my eyes open. I thought I saw those massive, ancient turtles on the water - seriously, as big as floating islands.

Along those gloomy shores, I spotted a ghostly line of animals from way back when, like the Liptotherium they found in Brazilian caves, and the Mesicotherium, a Siberian ice age native.

Further out, the Lophrodon, a giant tapir, hid behind rocks, ready to fight for food against the Anoplotherium, a weird animal that was kind of like a rhino, a horse, a hippo, and a camel all rolled into one.

Then there was the huge Mastodon, twisting his gross trunk and smashing rocks into dust. And the Megatherium - back arched like a cat ready to pounce, huge claws digging into the ground for food - roaring so loud it shook the whole place.

Higher up, the first monkey ever, was climbing and playing on the granite hills. Even further away, the Pterodactyl with its wing-like hands, was gliding through the thick air like a giant bat.

Above everything, near the gray sky, were these massive birds, way more powerful than cassowaries or ostriches, spreading their huge wings and flapping against the giant stone ceiling of the inland sea.

I swear, it was all my imagination, but I felt like I was seeing the whole crew of these ancient creatures. I was totally transported back to ages long before humans, when the earth wasn't even ready for us to live on it.

It was a dream, seriously, about a ton of ages way before people even existed. First, the mammals vanished, then the huge birds, then those reptiles from way back. After that, fish, crustaceans, and mollusks - poof, gone. Even the zoophytes from the transition period just... disappeared.

The whole vibe of life on Earth, like, before everything, was replaying itself, and I was the only person around with a heartbeat! There were no seasons, no climates - just this crazy, constant heat building up, totally canceling out the sun's rays.

The plants were, like, massive. I walked through this brushwood taller than the biggest trees in California, squishing this damp, super-smelly soil covered in a million different plants.

I chilled out, leaning against these giant tree trunks - Canadian trees were basically ferns compared to these. Whole ages just flew by; hundreds of years packed into a single day.

Then, like a movie, I saw this insane series of changes happening to the planet. Plants vanished, the rocks lost their structure, and suddenly everything was liquid. It was all because of this intense heat messing with the earth’s stuff. The water went wild, boiling and turning into vapor.

A huge cloud of steam covered the whole world, and the planet itself became this gigantic, glowing ball of gas, a crazy color between white-hot and red - basically, as big and bright as the sun.

In the very center of this massive thing - like, fourteen hundred thousand times bigger than Earth - I was spun around in space and got super close to the planets.

My body felt weird, almost like it turned into a gas, and mixed with these crazy clouds rushing forward like a huge comet into endless space!

What a wild dream! Where was it taking me? My hand started scribbling down all the amazing details - stuff that felt more like a total looney tune than anything real. During this whole hallucination, I forgot everything - the Professor, the guide, and the raft we were on.

My mind was totally out of it.

"What’s up, Harry?" my uncle said suddenly.

My eyes were wide open, like I was sleepwalking, and I was staring at him, but I couldn't really see him or anything around me.

"Be careful, kid," my uncle said again, "you’ll fall into the sea."

As he said that, I felt someone grab my arm - it was our awesome guide. If it hadn't been for Hans being so quick, I totally would've fallen into the waves and drowned.

"Have you lost it?" my uncle yelled, shaking me.

"What - what’s happening?" I said, finally snapping back.

"Are you feeling okay, Henry?"

the Professor asked, sounding worried.

"Yeah - yeah, I’m fine. I just had this crazy dream. It’s gone now. Everything seems okay," I added, looking around with confused eyes.

"Cool," my uncle said. "Nice breeze, great sea. We’re moving fast, and if my math is right, we’ll see land soon. I'm stoked to ditch this tiny raft for the mysterious shore of the underground ocean."

As my uncle said those words, I stood up and checked out the horizon. But the water still blended with the clouds hanging around, and way off, it looked like they were touching the water's edge.