02. Recollection

(Replenished with the water the journey continued with haste, but somehow they find themselves separated. Professor Lidenbrook's nephew Axel found himself alone. His mind was seized with unparalleled fear and he saw memories of home flashing before him. His fiancee Grauben, his house and friends in Hamburg. He saw hallucinations of all the incidents of the journey. And, unworthy as he felt, he knelt in fervent prayer and then, in panic, he ran
blindly through a tunnel only to reach a dead end, where he fell panting for breath. In the darkness he cried... voices...
voices... voices... He heard voices. He heard his uncle's voice. Due to the shape of the gallery and the conducting power of the
rocks, his uncle's voice was uncannily traveling around the walls. By means of their chronometers they discovered they were four miles apart, so Axel set about the task of rejoining the Professor and their guide).

------------Recollection-------------

Memories of a life on earth go flashing past,
Of home, of Grauben, friends of whom he's seen his last
Contemplating what his life's been worth,
While trapped beneath the earth,
An embryo at birth

Pain and fear destroy the beauty I have seen,
Of caverns, where no other man has been
Silurian epoch hosts me as my grave,
My final blow I wave,
life too late to save

Crystals of opaque quartz, studded limpid tears,
Forming magic chandeliers, lighting blistered galleries. 

(Suddenly the ground disappeared from beneath his feet. He fell down a vertical shaft, his head hitting a sharp rock. He lost
consciousness. On opening his eyes, he found himself with the Professor and the guide, and, looking around him, he saw an ocean stretching as far as the eye could see, a giant forest of mushrooms, a line of huge cliffs, and strange clouds hung
overhead, as he lay on a deeply indented shore of golden sand strewn with shells. For a moment, he thought he was back on the
surface of the earth, but soon realized that they had reached a world within a world).

(Having made a raft from wood taken from the giant mushroom forest, with rigging consisting of a mast made of two staves lashed together, a yard made of a third, and a sail borrowed from their stock of rugs, they set sail from the harbor - Port Grauben,
named after Axel's fiancee. With a north-westerly wind propelling them along at about three miles an hour, silvery beams of light, reflected here and there by drops of spray, produced luminous points in the eddy created by the raft. Soon all land was lost to
view. Five days out to sea, they witnessed a terrifying battle between two sea monsters. One having the snout of a porpoise, the head of a lizard, and teeth of a crocodile - an Ichthyosaurus. And the other, the mortal enemy of the first, a serpent with a turtle's shell, the Plesiosaurus).