"Should we meet with a Jubjub, that desperate bird,/We shall need all our strength for the job!"
-- Lewis Carroll, "The Hunting of the Snark"
Some years ago, a person I will call B. [to protect his identity] spent several months in Europe. He visited the red-light district of Amsterdam, hiked across Ireland, and entered East Germany without authorization (this was before the Wall came down).
A week after his return, as I cut the front lawn, I heard a dog bark over the noise of the mower. I switched off the engine and heard a loud whap-whap-whap as well. Down the block, B. raced furiously along on his ten-speed bike, chased by the ugly Dalmatian from 115th Street. The "whap"s came from a brown paper bag B. gripped in one hand, which slapped against his knee as he pedaled. The dog gave up about halfway along my block, and B.'s momentum carried him to my yard.
"I hate that dumb dog," he announced.
"Why didn't you drive over?" I asked.
"Why waste gas when I can ride my bike?" he asked back. Then he thrust the bag at me. "Here."
"You're sure going out of your way to take out the trash."
B. rolled his eyes -- and his whole head -- the way he did whenever he heard anything supremely stupid.
"No, no, no. This is something I borrowed from the Paris Museum of Natural History. I knew you'd pout all summer if I didn't bring you something from Europe."
The bag contained a number of manuscripts, some in French, some in German, and one or two in English. They were written on yellowing foolscap in various hands.
"How did you get these from the Paris Museum?" I asked.
"I walked into one of their little back rooms and put them in a bag."
"You can't just waltz into a museum and grab the first thing that catches your eye!"
"It's easy," said B. "You just act like you belong there and walk right in. Besides, these papers were rotting on a dusty shelf between a stuffed monkey and some heathenous Egyptian statue. They weren't using them."
I groaned, because it's useless to try to beat sense into B. I might have refused the gift, but curiosity got the better of me, and I carried the bag into the house.
I started with a thin manuscript covered with proofreader's marks. It was in German, and when I saw the author's name I sought out a German instructor at a local college to help me translate it. I am currently translating the larger documents, but the present narrative is fascinating enough to muster a separate study. It purports to be no less than a chapter deleted from Axel Lidenbrock's history of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, as edited by Jules Verne.
The document begins right after the end of Chapter Twenty-Eight of Journey (as numbered in the Robert Baldick translation of 1965). Axel Lidenbrock is hiking through endless corridors eighty miles beneath the surface of the earth with his uncle, Professor Otto Lidenbrock, and their Icelandic guide Hans Bjelke. The young adventurer takes a wrong turn and gets lost in the pitch black tunnels. A freak of acoustics allows him to contact his companions, and he tries to find them in the darkness. Unfortunately, Axel stumbles into a vertical shaft:
When I awakened, I imagined that the fall down the unseen well had killed me. I moaned at the unfairness of Fate, dashing my hopes -- and my body -- just as I verged on rejoining Professor Lidenbrock and Hans. Yet it occurred to me that I should not awaken were I dead -- lest it be in a better world than the black Abyss through which I had wandered.
I moved my hand and felt a granite surface made no softer by glass-sharp grit. My head pounded and my joints ached. It certainly seemed as if I still lay in the labyrinth of volcanic tubes some eighty miles beneath the Atlantic.
When I opened my eyes, however, I saw grey light stippling the rock ceiling above me. Light! In this Stygian darkness, deeper and more profound than that between the planets, how could there be any illumination beyond our small Ruhmkorff coils?
I sat up, a mistake; my head spun as if it had come loose from my neck. I set my hands against granite to steady myself, and eventually I focused on a rough circle of light.
Surely that was the entrance of a tunnel, like the throat of Snaefellsjokull I had stared back at so longingly weeks ago, before following my uncle into the depths. Yet I made this comparison because of the sunlight refracting into it.
I rolled onto hands and knees and rose unsteadily. How could sunlight penetrate the miles of stone, earth, and sea? Had I or Nature gone mad?
I tottered slowly forward. I reached the mouth of the tunnel and stepped onto an expanse of shingle that sloped gradually down to a wide body of water. Long rollers washed languidly onto the shore. I smelled the cold salt of a sea, and above I spotted clouds scudding against a ribbed ceiling of basalt. The light came from no sun; the ceiling of this monstrous grotto seemed phosphorescent of itself, in the manner of a glowworm or firefly.
"An ocean!" I exclaimed. "A veritable sea, scores of miles beneath the surface of the earth!"
I winced and set my hand to my temple. I must move slowly -- and talk softly -- for the time being.
I stepped along the beach, boots crunching on pebbles and sand. I did not see how Professor Lidenbrock and Hans could possibly miss this grotto, which dwarfed even the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. Did they venture out onto this shore, I would see them or vice-versa.
Black outcroppings of volcanic rock stood at the water's edge; atop them I might see for leagues. I angled toward them, hoping my sense of balance had not been impaired.
I had barely set foot on a low shelf of scoria before I heard a noise. It was a loud, distinct sobbing, as of someone in great sorrow.
I froze. Admittedly, anyone lost like myself in the depths of the earth had every right to weep, but surely no one besides our small party could be here. Or had I stumbled upon some fantastic inhabitant of the inner world?
I climbed carefully up wide steps of volcanic rock that resembled the stina of Iceland, and, rounding a pinnacle, I nearly collided with the sobbing one. I had only time to make out a broad body with rounded shoulders before the figure set an arm across its forehead and toppled back with a moan.
I caught the fainting figure, and for a long moment I merely stared at it, wondering what manner of subterranean beast it was. Its "arms" were broad flappers, scaled like a sea turtle's. Indeed, the hard body leaning against me was encased in the green-brown carapace of a chelonian. Yet the head that lolled atop the creature had the broad brow and muzzle of a bovine.
This curious beast merely puzzled me, but suddenly, with a whipping of wings, something popped up from the nether side of the outcropping and lit on the ridge. It had the torso and hindquarters of a lion or panther, but great metallic green eyes regarded me over a huge raptorial beak. I screamed and fell back like the turtle-thing; unfortunately, no one stood there to catch me.
I opened my eyes eventually to see fleecy clouds painted gold by the mysterious light. My pack had cushioned my fall, else I would have cracked my skull on the igneous shelf.
"You're really quite good," said a voice.
The turtle thing stood upright nearby. Its head was that of a calf, teardrop-shaped ears, liquid brown eyes and all. It crossed its long flappers over its yellow plastron.
I could think of nothing to say except "Good?"
"At Fainting in Coils," said the Cow-Turtle. "But you need practice in Reeling and Writhing. We've been taking lessons, you know."
The beast clapped its flippers.
"Be a good fellow, Gryphon, and demonstrate."
"Gryphon?"
The Cow-Turtle stood on my right; I glanced to the left in time to see the second creature flop backwards. It rolled and writhed on the sandy shelf like a kitten in the thrall of catnip.
"This is madness," I muttered.
"No, that's Reeling and Writhing," said the Cow-Thing.
I wiped gritty saliva from my chin.
"I struck my head harder than I thought."
The Gryphon stopped wriggling.
"I should think striking a gong would be more efficient," it said in a sonorous tone. "I scarcely heard your head at all."
"I didn't hit it on purpose," I said angrily.
"Certainly not," agreed the Cow Turtle. "You would be much damper did you hit your head on Porpoise."
I rose carefully. The Gryphon rolled over, shook itself like a goose emerging from a pond, and sat up on leonine haunches.
"Are you real?" I asked the Cow-Thing.
It huffed and lifted its snout as if insulted.
"Real enough!" it snapped.
"He's a bit touchy there," said the eagle-headed beast. "He's a Mock Turtle, you see."
"But a genuine mockery!" snapped the Cow-Thing, then it looked off as if pondering its own retort.
I sighed. I feared neither chimerical monster, which in itself showed that I was not in my right mind. Perhaps I still lay unconscious in the tunnels. Or perhaps I did find the beach and climb this outcropping. I might be talking to and listening to thin air, like Mad Heinrich who wandered through Hamburg in my youth.
I could only hope the latter case was so; at least I had a chance that way of stumbling upon Professor Lidenbrock and Hans.
I scanned the beach in either direction. I spotted other rocky spires, some riddled with tunnels that made them look like castles or watchtowers. The shore backed up to the great cavern wall. A dozen or more cave-openings lined the wall. I could not identify the one out of which I had stumbled.
"What's your sorrow?" queried the Cow -- rather, Mock -- Turtle, peering over my shoulder.
"I'm lost on this wretched subterranean shore," I explained rather crossly.
The feathery Gryphon stood up beside me and stared as I did, shading its eyes with an eagle claw. Finally it shook its head.
"It's all your fancy, that. I don't see you out there, nowheres."
I scowled, finding my hallucinatory companions increasingly annoying.
"I mean, I've gotten separated from my expedition, and I'm trying to locate it."
"I don't know about expeditions," said the Gryphon. "Expeditions take a dreadful long time."
"True," I agreed. "Say -- what's that?"
I clambered down the far side of the outcropping. Some odd objects lay scattered on the sand. I slogged hastily along, avoiding the crashing waves, and found some two-pronged forks, an ivory thimble, a bar of soap, and a large brass cowbell. These items were strewn over a series of footprints blurred by wind and wave, which led to a black "castle" of porphyry. Could this be the track of Professor Lidenbrock and Hans? Did they drop these items or even leave them as a sign, like Arne Saknussemm's initials? I didn't remember any of us bringing a cowbell or hayfork, but my memory was addled due to my fall.
I trudged on toward the spire of rock, edging sideways on occasion to avoid grounded sea-jellies and empty oyster shells.
Something slid up to the beach ahead. The Mock Turtle must have plunged into the water and swum ahead of me as I climbed from the rocks, for now it rose onto its hooved feet in the swirling foam. I was surprised it could even stand upright, but I kept my comments to myself as I passed the creature.
The blurred trail led into a great, dark, intimidating cleft in the rock. I paused for a moment.
"Professor Lidenbrock! Hans!" I called.
No answer. Well, the unexpected surf might drown out my voice. I started in.
"I shouldn't," called the Mock Turtle.
"And why not?" I asked.
The chimera pointed with a green flipper.
"Just the place for a Snark."
I ignored the amphibious hallucination and its cryptic remark. I halloed again, and from far off I heard an answering cry.
"There!" I said in triumph. "That must be Professor Lidenbrock!"
"Humph! More likely 'tis the voice of the Lobster!" argued the Mock Turtle. "And I still say: Just the place for a Snark!"
I strode forward, unconsciously imitating my uncle by marching with fists clenched and arms stiffly down. I entered the canyon.
"Professor Lidenbrock? Hans?" I called after a moment.
In the shadows of the cleft I imagined many cave openings, like the pores in pumice expanded a thousandfold. Little creeping things scrabbled out of these holes as I passed, some like birds and animals, some like squat dwarves, some like huge insects.
Perspiration trickled down my neck, and I wondered if I shouldn't heed the Mock Turtle's warning.
"Remember: Just the place for a Snark," came a faint call from the entrance. The Mock Turtle clapped its flappers over its bovine mouth as if in horror. "Oh, dear, I said it three times!"
Blast it, that creature is just an hallucination, I told myself. No doubt these half-formed demons are as well.
I called for my uncle again, and my voice rang weirdly against the stone walls. The canyon grew narrower. The half-seen things jumped like squirrels and vanished altogether.
I heard a low rumble. I told myself it was a particularly massive curl slamming over the rocks.
An irritating screech filled the canyon. A gangly, white, heron-like bird fluttered up out of some cul-de-sac and mounted to the sky.
I swallowed and continued. A heavy column or boulder came into view, blocking the path ahead. I frowned. How had Professor Lidenbrock -- or whoever made the tracks -- passed?
I stopped, yet the "boulder" still approached. An errant shaft of pseudo-sunlight played over it, and I saw that it was no rock formation.
The Thing was as big as an elephant. It resembled the reconstructed Iguanodons made famous by the Crystal Palace Exhibition, only its forefeet were broad, flat, and webbed, like an otter's paws. Its hide glinted with reptilian scales, but feline whiskers bristled on its flabby chops.
I yelled wildly; the monster broke into a clumsy run, its paws beating the sand with a sort of "galumph". I barely heard the whip of wings behind me, and I yelled again as something grabbed my travelling pack.
Brown wings flashed on either side of me. The Gryphon! The bird-lion hauled me up by the pack; the straps tightened painfully against my waist and under-arms, but I only prayed the leather would hold.
We flew up and back simultaneously. I thought of it almost as a mad geometry problem: how fast we must rise to elude the monster's claws versus how quickly we must retreat to keep ahead of its ever-increasing velocity.
"A rum idea, that," commented the Gryphon, yelling to be heard over the beat of its own pinions. "The Snark was a Boojum, you see."
We rose out of the black crevasse. The Thing swept at us with paws wider than snow shovels, then the Gryphon carried me over a ridge of porphyry.
A screech cut through the subterranean atmosphere like nails on a blackboard. The huge white bird banked toward us.
"You know, perhaps the volcanic tunnels were not so bad," I called over the wind.
"Hjkrrh," sighed my rescuer. "A jub-jub bird! And a desperate one, at that!"
"Desperate?" I asked. "How? Is it carnivorous? Hungry?"
The Gryphon sailed down toward the vast wall of the grotto.
"In a way," it said at last. "It's love-lorn."
The lion-eagle flapped to brake itself. It released me rather higher off the ground than I would have preferred. I landed on my feet, then knees, then face. Sandy soil blew into my eyes and mouth as the Gryphon ascended again.
I spat and pushed myself up. The monster bird screeched seemingly from inches behind me, and I dropped flat as a bearskin rug.
The jub-jub flashed over me, a few knife-sharp primaries parting my hair. I rose to hands and knees, watching the Gryphon sail away with the amorous avian in pursuit. Illusion or no, I felt a pang of guilt that I did not thank the lion-bird for its timely rescue.
The Snark or Boojum or whatever it was bellowed like a team of oxen. I rose, dizzy and sore, and spotted an opening in the cavern wall, large enough for me but a tight squeeze for the ponderous horror. I staggered in, bumping my head against stalactites and tripping over rubble. The light faded quickly, and once more I stumbled blindly through the womb of Earth.
I called for Uncle Lidenbrock and Hans, then, predictably by now, I stumbled and fell, losing consciousness within my delirium.
When I came to, I was in semi-darkness, stretched out on some thick rugs. My uncle was watching my face for some sign of life. At my first sigh he took my hand, and when I opened my eyes he gave a cry of joy.
"He's alive! He's alive!" he cried.
"Yes," I answered feebly.
Editor's Note: The last three short paragraphs of the Paris Museum manuscript are the beginning words of what is now Chapter Twenty-Nine of Journey (Baldick translation). Axel makes no further reference to his "hallucination", beyond an occasional word that further editing cut ("I thought I was hallucinating again," and the like). The chapter may have been deleted because it added nothing to the details of the famous scientific expedition. After the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Axel and editor Jules Verne probably feared accusations of plagiarism if they ever restored the missing chapter.
One can only wonder how the Lidenbrocks reacted to Lewis Carroll's "confirmation" of Axel's adventure. Perhaps they believed Axel came into telepathic contact with the Oxford professor, a hundred miles above, whose thoughts were also attuned to an underground world. We will never know.
However, I would like to learn how the Gryphon made out with the jub-jub bird.