"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.
And yet all the while certain, and as it were, involuntary observations determined my convictions. By the doubtful glare of the torch, I could make out some singular changes in the granitic strata; a strange and terrible phenomenon was about to be produced, in which electricity played a part.
Then this boiling water, this terrible and excessive heat? I determined as a last resource to examine the compass.
The compass had gone mad!