Axel gets lost in the chapter called "Alone" when he is in a horizontal tunnel, walking ahead of his companions. He is completely absorbed in studying the rock layers of the tunnel's walls with his Ruhmkorff coils light when all of the sudden he realizes he is all alone.

He turns around and retraces his steps, but after fifteen minutes he finds nobody. He shouts and hears no answer. He begins to be genuinely worried. However, he decides to stay calm and takes comfort that he has the stream beside him as a guide. Then he takes a wrong turn and the stream disappears.

In the chapter "Lost," Axel realizes he is truly lost. He fears dying of hunger and thirst, remembers his life back home, and prays to God for deliverance. Then he remembers that he has a pack with a three-day supply of food and a full water bottle. He decides he must find the stream again. However, he gets even more badly lost. Then his Ruhmkorff coils go out, and he is plunged into darkness. He becomes completely hysterical:

I began to run, to fly, rushing at haphazard in this inextricable labyrinth, always going downwards, running wildly underneath the terrestrial crust, like an inhabitant of the subterranean furnaces, screaming, roaring, howling, until bruised by the pointed rock ...

After he is exhausted, he falls unconscious.