An Underground Water-World

When I opened my eyes, I heard the sound of the sea. The sun was high in the sky. But this was not possible! We were under the ground! My uncle stood over me. «He’s OK, Hans.»

I saw Hans smile. My head hurt. I touched it and I felt a bandage on it. I tried to speak, but it was difficult. «Where are we?»

«Don’t speak, Axel. You had a terrible fall. We heard you screaming. We were in a tunnel next to yours. Luckily, the two channels came out here, on this beach.»

My uncle sat down next to me and spoke with more excitement in his voice.

«Axel, we found an underground sea. There are trees here and the bones of animals that lived thousands of years ago. When you get better, we are sailing across this sea. Oh Axel, you can’t imagine how happy I am!»

I could not move much for two days. I heard Hans building a boat for us to sail in, but I could not understand how there was light. The professor explained this to me.

«It is a mystery, like so many things, but it is something like electricity coming from the heat of these rocks. We are inside something like a giant cave. The top of it is a few miles high. There are even clouds because of the water.»

I looked up and saw the clouds. I could not see the top of this cave, but it was difficult to believe that all of this was under the earth.

When I felt strong again, I took a walk along the beach. There were shells there from a time before man walked on the earth. I saw the bones of something which looked like a huge elephant. I thought, ‘Can things live under the earth? Are there any animals alive down here?’

The boat was ready and we were ready to sail. We left the beach and a strong wind pushed us quickly out to sea. After a few hours on this strange sea, Hans tied the pickaxe to a rope and threw it into the water. The professor wanted to know how deep the sea was. It never touched the bottom. When Hans pulled it back into the boat, its metal head looked different. There were large marks on it.

«What’s that?»

Hans looked at it closely.

«Teeth.»

Teeth? Could something so big live in these waters? The professor looked at his compass.

«We are travelling south. If I am right, we left Iceland when we went under the volcano. We travelled under the Atlantic Ocean and now we are under Scotland.»

«That’s fantastic!»

«But we’re still not going down. I want to go further down!»

Suddenly, there were huge waves rocking the boat.

«What’s happening?»

Hans pointed to something dark about a mile away from us. It came closer and I thought I saw a giant dolphin. I was wrong. It was an alligator. It came closer and I saw that I was wrong again. It was something with the body of a dolphin and the head of an alligator. It was over one hundred feet long. Then, I saw a huge snake with a shell on its back like a turtle’s.

We took the guns in our hands, but the animals did not care about us. They fought each other. It was a horrible fight.

We heard the snake hissing and the dolphin screaming.

They both dove under the water. Everything was quiet. Then, the snake’s head came out of the water. It hissed one more time before it died in the water. But where was the monster dolphin?