National Geographic - Our World
Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/695862
Express Yourself Read and listen to the adaptation of an excerpt from A Journey to the Center of the Earth. 1 Tuesday, August 18 vening came, or rather the time came when sleep weighs down the tired eyes, for there is no night here. Hans was controlling the raft. During his watch, I slept. Two hours later a terrible shock awoke me. e raft was lifted up on a very high wave, and then dropped again. "What is the matter? Axel? Hans?" shouted my uncle, Professor Otto Lidenbrock. "Have we struck land?" Hans pointed with his nger at a dark mass over ve hundred meters away, rising and falling in the water. I looked and cried, "It is an enormous porpoise." "Yes," replied my uncle, "and there is a sea lizard of massive size." "And farther on a monstrous crocodile. Look at its giant jaws and its rows of teeth! It is diving down!" "ere's a whale, a whale!" cried the professor. We stood amazed, at the presence of such a herd of marine monsters. ey were of enormous size; the smallest of them would have crunched our raft, crew and all, at one snap of its huge jaws. Getting away was out of the question now. e reptiles rose; they circled around our little raft faster than express trains. We stood dumb with fear. At nearly three hundred meters from us the battle was fought. We could see the two monsters engaged in deadly conict. But it now seems to me as if the other animals were taking part, too—the porpoise, the whale, the lizard, the tortoise. Every moment I seem to see one or the other of them. I point them to Hans. He shakes his head negatively. "Tva," he says. "What two? Does he mean that there are only two animals?" "He is right," said my uncle. "Surely you must be mistaken," I cried. "No: the rst of those monsters has a porpoise's snout, a lizard's head, a crocodile's teeth. It is the ichthyosaurus (the sh lizard), the most terrible of the ancient monsters of the deep." "And the other?" "e other is a plesiosaurus (almost lizard), a serpent, with the characteristics of a turtle. He is the enemy of the other." Hans had spoken truly. Two monsters only were creating all this commotion, and before my eyes are two reptiles of the ancient world. I can distinguish the eye of the ichthyosaurus glowing like a red-hot coal, and as large as a man's head. is one is not less than thirty meters long, and I can judge of its size when it shows its tail. Its jaw is enormous, and according to naturalists it is armed with no less than one hundred and eighty-two teeth. e plesiosaurus, a serpent with a tube-shaped body and a short tail, has four appers or paddles. Its body is entirely covered with scales, and its neck, as exible as a swan's, rises nine meters above the waves. ose huge creatures attacked each other with the greatest hatred. E 108 80