Chapter 30Terrific Saurian Combat

Saturday, August fifteenth. The sea is still totally boring. Same gray color, same bright glare from above. No sign of land anywhere. It feels like the horizon is moving away from us, the further we go.

My head's still foggy and heavy from that crazy dream, which I can't shake.

The Professor, who didn’t dream, is in one of his moods. Scanning the horizon, everywhere. Telescope glued to his eyes. When he doesn't find anything, he gets all dramatic and paces around.

I wrote in my journal that my uncle, the Professor, was going back to being grumpy. It took my danger and suffering to get even a tiny bit of kindness out of him. Now that I'm better, his old self is back.

Seriously, what did he even have to be mad about, now more than ever? The trip was going great, right? The raft was moving super fast.

So, what was his deal? After a couple of "um" moments, I decided to ask.

"You seem stressed, Uncle," I said, as he put down his telescope and paced around, muttering.

"Nah, I'm fine," he snapped, his voice dry. "Not even close."

"Maybe I should have said impatient?" I softened my words. "Close enough to make me so."

"But we're moving so fast - faster than most rafts ever do," I pointed out.

"What's that even matter?" my uncle shouted.

"I’m not bugged about how fast we've been going, but I’m seriously annoyed to find the sea so much bigger than I thought."

I then remembered that the Professor, before we left, had said this underground ocean was, like, at most thirty leagues long. Now we’d traveled way more than that, and hadn't seen any sign of the shore. I started to get why my uncle was so mad.

"We’re not going anywhere," the Professor suddenly yelled.

"We’re not making any progress with our big discoveries. This is a total waste of time. I didn’t ditch my life to go on a fun trip, you know? This whole raft thing across a giant lake is annoying and tiring me out."

He called this crazy adventure a fun trip, and this huge inland sea a lake!

"But," I argued, "if we’re following the route that Saknussemm showed us, we can't be that far off."

"'That's the question,' like Shakespeare said - the big, the legendary Shakespeare. Are we even following the route that Saknussemm showed us? Did Saknussemm ever see this massive body of water? If he did, did he cross it?"

"I'm starting to think that the stream we used as a guide totally led us astray."

"Still," I said, "we can’t regret getting this far. It’s worth the whole journey just to see this amazing sight - it’s something to witness."

"I don’t care about seeing, or any of your fancy spectacles. I came down into the center of the Earth with a goal, and I’m getting it done. Don’t start with me about admiring scenery, or any other mushy stuff."

After that, I figured it was best to stay quiet and let the Professor bite his lip until it bled, without saying another word.

At six o'clock that evening, our down-to-earth guide, Hans, asked for his weekly pay, and after getting his three rix-dollars, carefully put them in his pocket. He was totally chill and happy.

Sunday, August sixteenth. Nothing new to write down. Same weather as always. The wind's picking up a bit, looks like a storm’s coming. When I woke up, the light was crazy bright. I’m still low-key freaked that this electric thing will just... disappear, and we’ll be stuck in total darkness.

But so far, so good. The raft’s shadow - mast and sails - is totally visible on the water.

This sea is, like, seriously endless. It's gotta be as big as the Mediterranean - maybe even bigger than the Atlantic. Why not?

My uncle has tried sounding the deep sea a few times. He tied one of our heaviest crowbars to a rope, let it out two hundred fathoms. It was a total struggle to haul it back up.

When the crowbar finally made it on board, Hans pointed something out. The iron looked crushed between two really hard things.

I gave our guide a questioning look. "Tander," he said.

I was totally lost. I turned to my uncle, he was deep in thought. Didn’t really want to bug him. So I turned back to our Icelander.

Hans opened his mouth a couple of times, like he was trying to bite something. That's how he got his point across.

"Teeth!" I yelled, staring at the iron.

Seriously, there’s no question. The marks on the iron bar? They’re totally tooth marks! What kind of jaws did that thing have? Have we stumbled upon some crazy, unknown creature still lurking in the ocean depths - a monster even hungrier than a shark, bigger and scarier than a whale?

I can’t even look away from the bar, it’s practically crushed!

Is my dream about to become a real nightmare?

All day, I was stuck thinking about this, and my imagination didn’t calm down or let me think straight until after a long night's sleep.

Like always, we took Sunday as a day to chill and think about things.

Monday, August seventeenth. I've been trying to remember everything I know about those ancient animals from way back when - the ones that came after the mollusks, crustaceans, and fish, and before mammals showed up. Reptiles were running the show back then.

These freaky monsters ruled the seas, which formed the layers of the Jura mountains. Nature made them perfectly built. They were so huge and powerful!

Even the biggest lizards, crocodiles, and alligators we have today are just pale copies of their ancestors from ages ago. If there were giants back then, there were also giant animals.

I got seriously chilled just thinking about those awful monsters. No one had ever seen them in real life. They roamed the earth way before humans even existed, like, thousands of years ago.

Their fossil bones, found in limestone, let us piece together what they looked like - get a tiny glimpse of their massive size.

I remember seeing the skeleton of one of these amazing saurians at the huge museum in Hamburg. It was at least thirty feet long, nose to tail. Am I really living on Earth now, about to come face-to-face with one of these ancient creatures?

It’s hard to wrap my head around; I can barely believe it's real. But these deep marks from huge teeth on the iron bar! Can you really deny they’re crocodile bites?

My eyes were wide with terror, staring into that underground sea. Every second, I expected one of those monsters to rise up from its huge, dark depths.

I think the Professor felt the same way, at least a little, even if he wasn't as freaked out as I was. After checking out the crowbar, he quickly scanned the massive, mysterious ocean.

"What made him wander off like that?" I wondered.

"Like the water's depth even matters to us. He probably woke up some crazy monster in its home, and we're gonna regret it."

I checked our weapons, making sure they were ready for anything. My uncle watched me and gave me a nod. He knew what we were up against.

The water's already rising on the surface - something’s moving down there. Danger’s getting closer. It's coming on fast. We need to stay alert.

Tuesday, August eighteenth. Evening finally rolled around, and sleepiness hit us hard. There's no real night here, like in the Arctic summer. Hans, though, is glued to the rudder. I honestly can’t say when he gets any rest. I used his watchfulness to catch some zzz's.

But two hours later, I woke up with a major jolt. The raft had smacked into a sunken rock. It got lifted right out of the water by some crazy, mysterious force, then shot off twenty fathoms away.

"Yo, what’s going on?" my uncle shouted, jumping up. "Are we sinking, or what?"

Hans raised his hand and pointed to a huge black thing moving up and down, about two hundred yards out.

I stared, totally freaked. My worst nightmares were coming true.

"It’s a gigantic monster!" I yelled, clutching my hands.

"Yeah," the agitated Professor shouted back, "and look over there - a massive sea lizard, huge and scary."

"And further out, a gigantic crocodile. Check out his jaws and those crazy teeth. Gone now."

"A whale! A whale! "the Professor shouted. " I can see her huge fins."

"See, see how she spouts water!"

Two columns of water shot way up in the air, then crashed back into the sea with a huge roar, echoing all around this creepy place. We just stood there - shocked, stunned, and terrified by this group of nightmare sea creatures.

They were unrealistically big; even the smallest one could have crushed our raft and us with a single bite.

Hans, grabbing the rudder that had flown out of his hand, yanked it hard to starboard to get away from that crazy close call. But as soon as he did, he realized he was dodging from Scylla to Charybdis.

To one side was a turtle, like, forty feet across, and a serpent just as long, with a huge, gross head popping out of the water.

No matter which way we looked, we couldn't escape. Those freaky reptiles started coming at us, twisting and turning around the raft super fast. They circled our poor raft in a bunch of rings. I grabbed my rifle in a panic.

But what's a rifle ball gonna do against the armor scales covering these monster’s bodies?

We froze, totally freaked out. They kept coming, closer and closer. Our fate seemed sealed - terrifying and awful. A massive crocodile on one side, a giant sea serpent on the other. The rest of the creepy sea creatures had vanished beneath the waves!

I was about to fire, no matter what. But Hans, the guide, stopped me with a hand gesture. Those two gross, hungry monsters swam within fifty fathoms of the raft and then went after each other - they were so mad they didn't even see us.

The fight started. We could see everything they were doing.

But to my hyped-up brain, it looked like all the other animals were about to jump into the crazy, deadly battle - the monster, the whale, the lizard, and the turtle. I could see them every second. I pointed them out to the Icelander. But he just shook his head. "Tva," he said.

"What - just two? He’s gotta be wrong," I said, totally confused.

"He’s spot on," my uncle replied coolly and calmly, checking out the intense fight through his telescope and talking like he was giving a lecture.

"Seriously? How’s that possible?"

"Yeah, seriously. The first one of these freaky monsters has a porpoise snout, a lizard head, and crocodile teeth. That’s what totally fooled us. It’s the scariest of all those ancient reptiles - the famous Ichthyosaurus, or giant fish lizard. "And the other one?"

"The other’s a huge serpent, hiding under the tough, curved shell of a turtle. It’s a seriously scary enemy to its rival, the Plesiosaurus, or sea crocodile." Hans was totally right.

Those two monsters were the only ones messing with the water’s surface!

"Can you believe it? People have actually seen two reptiles from the really old ocean!" I saw the Ichthyosaurus’s eyes - bright red and huge, like, bigger than my head.

Nature is wild; it gave this animal super-powerful eyes that could handle the crazy pressure of all that water down where it hunted. Some scientists call it the whale of the lizard world, because it's as big and fast as our ocean’s king.

This one’s gotta be at least a hundred feet long, and I can tell just how wide it is when I see its massive tail break the surface. Its jaw is insane - strong and huge, and scientists say it has over a hundred and eighty teeth.

Then there was the Plesiosaurus, a giant serpent with a long, round body, a short, stubby tail, and fins like a whole row of oars on a Roman warship.

Its whole body was covered in a shell, and its neck - flexible like a swan's - rose more than thirty feet above the waves, like a tower of living flesh!

They went at it with insane fury. Seriously, no one had ever seen anything like it. It felt more like a crazy dream than real life. They were throwing up huge waves that crashed all over the raft, which was already rocking like crazy. We were almost thrown into the water like, twenty times!

We could hear these creepy hisses that seemed to shake the whole cavern - totally terrifying. The two monsters were locked in this tight embrace, and I couldn’t even tell who was who. But the fight couldn’t last forever, and we were screwed no matter who won.

An hour, then two, then three went by, and nothing was settled. The struggle kept going, super intense, but still no clear winner. They’s get close, then pull away from the raft. A couple of times we thought they were gonna leave us alone, but instead, they just kept getting closer.

We were huddled on the raft, ready to fire if we had to, even though we knew it probably wouldn’t hurt them much. But we weren’t going down without a fight.

Then, bam! The Ichthyosaurus and the Plesiosaurus just vanished under the waves, leaving this massive whirlpool behind. We almost got sucked down with it!

It was like, several minutes before we saw anything again. Was this insane fight gonna end at the bottom of the ocean? Were we gonna miss the grand finale? We just didn’t know.

Out of nowhere, a huge thing pops up from the water - the head of a massive Plesiosaurus. The monster’s seriously hurt, like, dying. I can't see its body at all. Just its long, snake-like neck, twisting and curling as it goes out.

It lashed the water like a giant whip, then wriggled like it’s been chopped in half. Water sprayed everywhere. A ton of it splashed over our raft, totally blinding us.

But then, the beast got closer and closer. Its movements slowed down. The twisting almost stopped. Finally, its huge body just flopped there, a dead weight on the now-calm water.

What about the Ichthyosaurus? Has he gone down to his underwater lair to chill, or is he gonna come back to mess with us?

That question hung in the air. And we had a moment to breathe.