Chapter 33Our Route Reversed

Here's my journal about our trip on the raft - lucky for me, it survived the wreck. I’m gonna keep going with my story like I was doing before I started my daily notes.

What actually happened when the chaos hit, when the raft slammed into the rocks, I honestly can't even tell you. I remember being thrown hard into the crazy waves, and if I didn't die a seriously awful death, it was all thanks to Hans, who was a total lifesaver.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the drop-off.

That brave Icelander carried me, like, far away from the waves, and set me down on this hot, burning sand. Later, I found my uncle, the Professor, there too.

Then, he went back toward those dangerous rocks, where the waves were crashing. He was always so practical and thoughtful. I couldn’t even speak; I was totally overwhelmed. My body ached and felt broken from being so tired. It took hours before I felt even remotely okay.

Meanwhile, it started pouring - like, a crazy downpour that soaked us both. But the intensity of the rain actually showed the storm was ending. Some rocks gave us a little bit of cover from the rain.

Underneath those rocks, Hans got some food ready, but I couldn't eat a thing. We were both so wiped out from those three long days and nights, we just crashed into a deep, rough sleep. My dreams were wild, but finally, I just passed out.

Next day when I woke up, the change was wild. The weather was amazing. Air and sea, like, totally chilled out, had gone back to normal. Not a trace of the storm, not even a little bit, was left. I woke up to the first happy sounds I’d heard from the Professor in ages.

Seriously, his happiness was intense.

"Well, my lad," he shouted, rubbing his hands together, "did you sleep okay?"

You could’ve sworn we were back in the old house on the Konigstrasse. Like, I’d just come down for breakfast. And my wedding with Gretchen was happening today? My uncle was being so chill, it was annoying.

But seriously, considering how the storm blew us eastward, we’d flown over all of Germany. Over Hamburg, where I was so happy. Right over the street where everything I loved and cared about was.

It was a fact: I was only forty leagues away from her. But those forty leagues were like, solid granite!

All those bummer thoughts went through my head before I even tried to answer my uncle.

"What’s wrong with you?" he yelled.

"Can’t you just say if you slept well or not?"

"Yeah, I slept really well," I said, "but my whole body aches. Probably nothing, though."

"Nah, nothing at all, my boy. It’s just from being tired the last few days - that's it."

"You seem... really happy this morning," I said.

"Delighted, my dear boy, delighted. Happier than I’ve ever been. We finally made it to the place we wanted."

"The end of the whole thing?" I asked, totally surprised.

"No; but to the edge of that sea that I started to worry would just go on forever, circling the whole world. We'll chill and get back on the road, and try again to get to the center of the Earth."

"My dear Uncle," I started, kinda hesitant, "can I ask you one question?"

"Sure, Harry; a bunch if you want."

"Just one will do. What about getting back?" I asked.

"What about getting back? Seriously? We haven’t even finished our trip yet."

"I know, I know. I just want to know how you plan on getting us home."

"The easiest way in the world," said the unflappable Professor.

"Once we hit the exact center of this sphere, we’ll either find a new way to climb back to the surface, or we’ll just turn around and retrace our steps. I’m pretty sure the way behind us won't close up while we're moving forward."

"Then the first thing we need to do is fix the raft," was my kinda bummed-out reply.

"Totally. We gotta take care of that first," continued the Professor.

"Then there’s the big question of food," I pressed.

"Do we have enough left to pull off something as huge and wild as you're planning?"

"I’m on top of it, and the answer’s yes. Hans is a smart cookie, and I think he saved most of the supplies. But the best way to ease your worries is to come check it out yourself. Saying that, he led the way out of the open grotto where we're taking shelter.

I was almost starting to hope for something I was scared of - that a shipwreck like that wouldn’t leave any trace of what it was carrying. But I was way off.

As soon as I hit the shores of this inland sea, I found Hans standing super serious amidst a ton of stuff, all neatly arranged. My uncle wrung his hands, totally grateful, you know? His heart was just overflowing.

This guy, who was seriously dedicated to his job - I never saw anyone better - had been grinding all the time we were sleeping. He’d risked his neck to save the most important things from our cargo.

We definitely lost some stuff, obviously. Our weapons were gone. But we’d learned to make do. Thankfully, the gunpowder was safe, after almost blowing us all up in the storm.

"Well," said the Professor, trying to stay positive, "no guns means no hunting."

"Yeah, we can live without them, but what about all our instruments?"

"Here’s the manometer - the most useful one, for sure. I’m taking it as a replacement for everything else. With it alone, I can figure out how deep we are as we go. It’s the only way I’ll know when we reach the center of the earth. Ha, ha!"

"Without this little thing, we could totally mess up and end up on the other side of the world!"

He said all this with these weird, forced laughs.

"But the compass!" I yelled. "Without that, what are we gonna do?"

"It’s right here, safe!" he shouted, genuinely happy.

"And look, we’re good on the chronometer and the thermometers too. Hans the hunter is seriously a lifesaver!"

No doubt about it. As for the nautical stuff and everything else, we were all set. Then I spotted ladders, ropes, pickaxes, crowbars, and shovels scattered on the beach.

But the biggest question was still looming: food.

"But what are we gonna eat?" I asked.

"Let's check out the supplies," my uncle said seriously.

The boxes holding our food for the trip were lined up on the beach, and they were in really good shape. The sea had left everything alone, and basically, with biscuits, salted meat, Schiedam, and dried fish, we had about four months' worth if we were careful.

"Four months!" the optimistic Professor shouted, super excited.

"That's tons of time to go and come back, and with what's left, I'll throw a huge dinner for my buddies at the Johanneum."

I sighed. I should be used to my uncle by now, but he still blew me away every day. He was the biggest mystery I’d ever met.

"Now," he said, "before anything else, we need fresh water. It’s rained a lot, and filled all the cracks in the rocks. We're good on water, and that's super important right now. As for the raft, I'll tell Hans to fix it up as best he can; though I doubt we’ll need it again."

"Seriously?" I asked, more confused than ever by how he thought.

"I have a feeling, my boy; it's just this: we're not coming back the way we came in."

I started to look at my uncle with a weird feeling. I’d had this thought before: that he was losing it. Little did I know how right and accurate his words would turn out to be.

"And now," he said, "we'd better grab some breakfast after sorting all this out."

I followed him to this jutting-out bit of land, after he's given our guide his last instructions. With dried meat, biscuits, and a seriously good cup of tea, we had a killer meal - honestly, one of the most welcome and chill I’ve ever had.

Being totally wiped, the fresh air, and just feeling calm after all that chaos, totally sparked my appetite. It really put me in a good mood, too.

While we were eating breakfast and between sips of tea, I asked my uncle if he had any idea where we were in relation to the world above.

"For my part," I added, "I think it’s gonna be kinda tough to figure out."

"Well, if we had to pinpoint exactly where we are," said my uncle, "it’s gonna be tricky. During those three days of that crazy storm, I couldn’t keep track of how fast we were moving, or which way the raft was headed. Still, we’ll do our best to get close. I don’t think we’re too far off."

"Well, if I remember right," I replied, "our last sighting was at the geyser island."

"Harry’s Island, my boy! Harry’s Island. Don’t brush off the honor of naming it - you gave your name to an island we discovered, the first humans to walk on it since the dawn of time!"

"Alright, then. At Harry’s Island, we’d already covered two hundred and seventy leagues of ocean, and I think we were about six hundred leagues, give or take, from Iceland."

"Awesome. Glad you remember that so well. Let’s start from there, and let’s add four days of storm, during which we must have been moving super fast. I’d say our speed was about eighty leagues every twenty-four hours."

I agreed that seemed like a fair estimate. That added three hundred leagues to the total.

"Yeah, and the Central Sea has to stretch at least six hundred leagues across. You know, Harry, we found a lake inland - it's bigger than the Mediterranean!"

"Totally. And we only know how big it is one way. It could be hundreds of miles long." "Probably."

"So," I said, after thinking about it for a bit, "if you're right, we’re literally under the Mediterranean right now." "You think so?"

"Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Aren't we nine hundred leagues from Reykjavik?"

"That's spot on, and we’ve had a wild ride getting here. But why we’re under the Mediterranean instead of Turkey or the Atlantic? We won't know until we're certain we stayed on course - and we don’t know that yet."

"I don't think we got too far off course; the wind felt pretty consistent. I think this shore has to be southeast of Port Gretchen."

"Cool - fingers crossed. We can figure it out by checking our departure point with the compass. Let's go, and we’ll check out that amazing invention." The Professor headed over to the rock where Hans had set up the gear.

My uncle was super cheerful; he was rubbing his hands together and striking all kinds of poses. He looked like a young man again. I'm not gonna lie, I'd never seen him so happy and friendly. I followed him, curious to see if I'd messed up figuring out where we were.

When we got to the rock, my uncle grabbed the compass, laid it flat, and stared at the needle. He’d shaken it earlier to get it going, so it swung around a lot before settling into the right spot, pulled by the magnetic force.

The Professor peered at the crazy instrument, totally intrigued. He had a huge reaction right away.

He closed his eyes, rubbed them, and took another look, a really close one.

Then he turned to me slowly, his face showing pure shock.

"What’s up?" I asked, starting to freak out a little.

He couldn't even talk. He was too stunned for words. He just pointed at the instrument.

I checked it out quickly, following his silent directions, and a surprised yell escaped my lips. The compass needle was pointing due north - the direction we thought was south!

It was pointing to the shore, not the open ocean.

I shook the compass; I looked at it carefully, super anxious. It was perfect. Nothing explained what was happening. No matter how we moved the needle, it always went back to that same weird spot.

We couldn’t ignore the bad news.

There was no way around it - the storm had thrown us a curveball. A sudden gust of wind we hadn't noticed had carried us back to the shore we'd left behind, like, forever ago!