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Title: The Garotters

Author: William D. Howells

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[Redactor's Note:

The following version of Jules Verne's
"Journey into the Interior of the Earth"
was published by Ward,
Lock,
&Co.,
Ltd.,
London,
in 1877.

This version is believed
to be the most faithful rendition into English of this classic currently in the public domain.

The few notes of the translator are located near the point where they are referenced.

The Runic characters in Chapter III are visible in the HTML version of the text.

The character set is ISO-8891-1,
mainly the Windows character set.

The translation is by Frederick Amadeus Malleson.

While the translation is fairly literal,
and Malleson
(a clergyman)
has taken pains
with the scientific portions of the work and added the chapter headings,
he has made some unfortunate emendations mainly concerning biblical references,
and has added a few
'improvements'
of his own,
which are detailed below:

III.

"_pertubata seu inordinata,_
"
as Euclid has it."

XXX.

cry,
"Thalatta! thalatta!"
the sea! the sea! The deeply indented shore was lined
with a breadth of fine shining sand,
softly XXXII.

hippopotamus.

{as if the creator,
pressed
for time in the first hours of the world,
had assembled several animals into one.} The colossal mastodon XXXII.

I return
to the scriptural periods or ages of the world,
conventionally called
'days,'
long before the appearance of man when the unfinished world was as yet unfitted
for his support.

{I return
to the biblical epochs of the creation,
well in advance of the birth of man,
when the incomplete earth was not yet sufficient
for him.} XXXVIII.

(footnote)
,
and which is illustrated in the negro countenance and in the lowest savages.

XXXIX.

of the geologic period .

{antediluvian}
(These corrections have kindly been pointed out by Christian Sánchez of the Jules Verne Forum.)] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A JOURNEY INTO THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH by Jules Verne ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PREFACE THE
"Voyages Extraordinaires"
of M.

Jules Verne deserve
to be made widely known in English-speaking countries by means of carefully prepared translations.

Witty and ingenious adaptations of the researches and discoveries of modern science
to the popular taste,
which demands that these should be presented
to ordinary readers in the lighter form of cleverly mingled truth and fiction,
these books will assuredly be read
with profit and delight,
especially by English youth.

Certainly no writer before M.

Jules Verne has been so happy in weaving together in judicious combination severe scientific truth
with a charming exercise of playful imagination.

Iceland,
the starting point of the marvellous underground journey imagined in this volume,
is invested at the present time with.

a painful interest in consequence of the disastrous eruptions last Easter Day,
which covered
with lava and ashes the poor and scanty vegetation upon which four thousand persons were partly dependent
for the means of subsistence.

For a long time
to come the natives of that interesting island,
who cleave
to their desert home
with all that _amor patriae_ which is so much more easily understood than explained,
will look,
and look not in vain,
for the help of those on whom fall the smiles of a kindlier sun in regions not torn by earthquakes nor blasted and ravaged by volcanic fires.

Will the readers of this little book,
who,
are gifted
with the means of indulging in the luxury of extended beneficence,
remember the distress of their brethren in the far north,
whom distance has not barred from the claim of being counted our
"neighbours"?

And whatever their humane feelings may prompt them
to bestow will be gladly added
to the Mansion-House Iceland Relief Fund.

In his desire
to ascertain how far the picture of Iceland,
drawn in the work of Jules Verne is a correct one,
the translator hopes in the course of a mail or two
to receive a communication from a leading man of science in the island,
which may furnish matter
for additional information in a future edition.

The scientific portion of the French original is not without a few errors,
which the translator,
with the kind assistance of Mr. Cameron of H.

M.

Geological Survey,
has ventured
to point out and correct.

It is scarcely
to be expected in a work in which the element of amusement is intended
to enter more largely than that of scientific instruction,
that any great degree of accuracy should be arrived at.

Yet the translator hopes that what trifling deviations from the text or corrections in foot notes he is responsible for,
will have done a little towards the increased usefulness of the work.

F.

A.

M.

The Vicarage,
Broughton-in-Furness ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS I THE PROFESSOR AND HIS FAMILY II A MYSTERY
to BE SOLVED AT ANY PRICE III THE RUNIC WRITING EXERCISES THE PROFESSOR IV THE ENEMY
to BE STARVED INTO SUBMISSION V FAMINE,
THEN VICTORY,
FOLLOWED BY DISMAY VI EXCITING DISCUSSIONS ABOUT AN UNPARALLELED EXERCISE VII A WOMAN'S COURAGE VIII SERIOUS PREPARATIONS
for VERTICAL DESCENT IX ICELAND,
BUT WHAT NEXT?

X INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS
with ICELANDIC SAVANTS XI A GUIDE FOUND
to THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH XII A BARREN LAND XIII HOSPITALITY UNDER THE ARCTIC CIRCLE XIV BUT ARCTICS CAN BE INHOSPITABLE,
TOO XV SNÆFFEL AT LAST XVI BOLDLY DOWN THE CRATER XVII VERTICAL DESCENT XVIII THE WONDERS OF TERRESTIAL DEPTHS XIX GEOLOGICAL STUDIES IN SITU XX THE FIRST SIGNS OF DISTRESS XXI COMPASSION FUSES THE PROFESSOR'S HEART XXII TOTAL FAILURE OF WATER XXIII WATER DISCOVERED XXIV WELL SAID,
OLD MOLE! CANST THOU WORK IN THE GROUND SO FAST?

XXV DE PROFUNDIS XXVI THE WORST PERIL OF ALL XXVII LOST IN THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH XXVIII THE RESCUE IN THE WHISPERING GALLERY XXIX THALATTA! THALATTA! XXX A NEW MARE INTERNUM XXXI PREPARATIONS
for A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY XXXII WONDERS OF THE DEEP XXXIII A BATTLE OF MONSTERS XXXIV THE GREAT GEYSER XXXV AN ELECTRIC STORM XXXVI CALM PHILOSOPHIC DISCUSSIONS XXXVII THE LIEDENBROCK MUSEUM OF GEOLOGY XXXVIII THE PROFESSOR IN HIS CHAIR AGAIN XXXIX FOREST SCENERY ILLUMINATED BY ELECTRICITY XL PREPARATIONS
for BLASTING A PASSAGE
to THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH XLI THE GREAT EXPLOSION AND THE RUSH DOWN BELOW XLII HEADLONG SPEED UPWARD THROUGH THE HORRORS OF DARKNESS XLIII SHOT OUT OF A VOLCANO AT LAST! XLIV SUNNY LANDS IN THE BLUE MEDITERRANEAN XLV ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A JOURNEY INTO THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH CHAPTER I.

THE PROFESSOR AND HIS FAMILY On the 24th of May,
1863,
my uncle,
Professor Liedenbrock,
rushed into his little house,
No.

19 Königstrasse,
one of the oldest streets in the oldest portion of the city of Hamburg.

Martha must have concluded that she was very much behindhand,
for the dinner had only just been put into the oven.

"Well,
now,"
said I
to myself,
"if that most impatient of men is hungry,
what a disturbance he will make!"
"M.

Liedenbrock so soon!"
cried poor Martha in great alarm,
half opening the dining-room door.

"Yes,
Martha;
but very likely the dinner is not half cooked,
for it is not two yet.

Saint Michael's clock has only just struck half-past one."

"Then why has the master come home so soon?"
"Perhaps he will tell us that himself."

"Here he is,
Monsieur Axel;
I will run and hide myself while you argue
with him."

And Martha retreated in safety into her own dominions.

I was left alone.

But how was it possible
for a man of my undecided turn of mind
to argue successfully
with so irascible a person as the Professor?

With this persuasion I was hurrying away
to my own little retreat upstairs,
when the street door creaked upon its hinges;
heavy feet made the whole flight of stairs
to shake;
and the master of the house,
passing rapidly through the dining-room,
threw himself in haste into his own sanctum.

But on his rapid way he had found time
to fling his hazel stick into a corner,
his rough broadbrim upon the table,
and these few emphatic words at his nephew:

"Axel,
follow me!"
I had scarcely had time
to move when the Professor was again shouting after me:

"What! not come yet?"
And I rushed into my redoubtable master's study.

Otto Liedenbrock had no mischief in him,
I willingly allow that;
but unless he very considerably changes as he grows older,
at the end he will be a most original character.

He was professor at the Johannæum,
and was delivering a series of lectures on mineralogy,
in the course of every one of which he broke into a passion once or twice at least.

Not at all that he was over-anxious about the improvement of his class,
or about the degree of attention
with which they listened
to him,
or the success which might eventually crown his labours.

Such little matters of detail never troubled him much.

His teaching was as the German philosophy calls it,
'subjective';
it was
to benefit himself,
not others.

He was a learned egotist.

He was a well of science,
and the pulleys worked uneasily when you wanted
to draw anything out of it.

In a word,
he was a learned miser.

Germany has not a few professors of this sort.

To his misfortune,
my uncle was not gifted
with a sufficiently rapid utterance;
not,
to be sure,
when he was talking at home,
but certainly in his public delivery;
this is a want much
to be deplored in a speaker.

The fact is,
that during the course of his lectures at the Johannæum,
the Professor often came
to a complete standstill;
he fought
with wilful words that refused
to pass his struggling lips,
such words as resist and distend the cheeks,
and at last break out into the unasked-for shape of a round and most unscientific oath:

then his fury would gradually abate.

Now in mineralogy there are many half-Greek and half-Latin terms,
very hard
to articulate,
and which would be most trying
to a poet's measures.

I don't wish
to say a word against so respectable a science,
far be that from me.

True,
in the august presence of rhombohedral crystals,
retinasphaltic resins,
gehlenites,
Fassaites,
molybdenites,
tungstates of manganese,
and titanite of zirconium,
why,
the most facile of tongues may make a slip now and then.

It therefore happened that this venial fault of my uncle's came
to be pretty well understood in time,
and an unfair advantage was taken of it;
the students laid wait
for him in dangerous places,
and when he began
to stumble,
loud was the laughter,
which is not in good taste,
not even in Germans.

And if there was always a full audience
to honour the Liedenbrock courses,
I should be sorry
to conjecture how many came
to make merry at my uncle's expense.

Nevertheless my good uncle was a man of deep learning - a fact I am most anxious
to assert and reassert.

Sometimes he might irretrievably injure a specimen by his too great ardour in handling it;
but still he united the genius of a true geologist
with the keen eye of the mineralogist.

Armed
with his hammer,
his steel pointer,
his magnetic needles,
his blowpipe,
and his bottle of nitric acid,
he was a powerful man of science.

He would refer any mineral
to its proper place among the six hundred [l] elementary substances now enumerated,
by its fracture,
its appearance,
its hardness,
its fusibility,
its sonorousness,
its smell,
and its taste.

The name of Liedenbrock was honourably mentioned in colleges and learned societies.

Humphry Davy,
[2] Humboldt,
Captain Sir John Franklin,
General Sabine,
never failed
to call upon him on their way through Hamburg.

Becquerel,
Ebelman,
Brewster,
Dumas,
Milne-Edwards,
Saint-Claire-Deville frequently consulted him upon the most difficult problems in chemistry,
a science which was indebted
to him
for considerable discoveries,
for in 1853 there had appeared at Leipzig an imposing folio by Otto Liedenbrock,
entitled,
"A Treatise upon Transcendental Chemistry,"
with plates;
a work,
however,
which failed
to cover its expenses.

To all these titles
to honour let me add that my uncle was the curator of the museum of mineralogy formed by M.

Struve,
the Russian ambassador;
a most valuable collection,
the fame of which is European.

Such was the gentleman who addressed me in that impetuous manner.

Fancy a tall,
spare man,
of an iron constitution,
and
with a fair complexion which took off a good ten years from the fifty he must own to.

His restless eyes were in incessant motion behind his full-sized spectacles.

His long,
thin nose was like a knife blade.

Boys have been heard
to remark that that organ was magnetised and attracted iron filings.

But this was merely a mischievous report;
it had no attraction except
for snuff,
which it seemed
to draw
to itself in great quantities.

When I have added,
to complete my portrait,
that my uncle walked by mathematical strides of a yard and a half,
and that in walking he kept his fists firmly closed,
a sure sign of an irritable temperament,
I think I shall have said enough
to disenchant any one who should by mistake have coveted much of his company.

He lived in his own little house in Königstrasse,
a structure half brick and half wood,
with a gable cut into steps;
it looked upon one of those winding canals which intersect each other in the middle of the ancient quarter of Hamburg,
and which the great fire of 1842 had fortunately spared.

[1] Sixty-three.

(Tr.)
[2] As Sir Humphry Davy died in 1829,
the translator must be pardoned
for pointing out here an anachronism,
unless we are
to assume that the learned Professor's celebrity dawned in his earliest years.

(Tr.)
It is true that the old house stood slightly off the perpendicular,
and bulged out a little towards the street;
its roof sloped a little
to one side,
like the cap over the left ear of a Tugendbund student;
its lines wanted accuracy;
but after all,
it stood firm,
thanks
to an old elm which buttressed it in front,
and which often in spring sent its young sprays through the window panes.

My uncle was tolerably well off
for a German professor.

The house was his own,
and everything in it.

The living contents were his god-daughter Gräuben,
a young Virlandaise of seventeen,
Martha,
and myself.

As his nephew and an orphan,
I became his laboratory assistant.

I freely confess that I was exceedingly fond of geology and all its kindred sciences;
the blood of a mineralogist was in my veins,
and in the midst of my specimens I was always happy.

In a word,
a man might live happily enough in the little old house in the Königstrasse,
in spite of the restless impatience of its master,
for although he was a little too excitable - he was very fond of me.

But the man had no notion how
to wait;
nature herself was too slow
for him.

In April,
after a had planted in the terra-cotta pots outside his window seedling plants of mignonette and convolvulus,
he would go and give them a little pull by their leaves
to make them grow faster.

In dealing
with such a strange individual there was nothing
for it but prompt obedience.

I therefore rushed after him.

CHAPTER II.

A MYSTERY
to BE SOLVED AT ANY PRICE That study of his was a museum,
and nothing else.

Specimens of everything known in mineralogy lay there in their places in perfect order,
and correctly named,
divided into inflammable,
metallic,
and lithoid minerals.

How well I knew all these bits of science! Many a time,
instead of enjoying the company of lads of my own age,
I had preferred dusting these graphites,
anthracites,
coals,
lignites,
and peats! And there were bitumens,
resins,
organic salts,
to be protected from the least grain of dust;
and metals,
from iron
to gold,
metals whose current value altogether disappeared in the presence of the republican equality of scientific specimens;
and stones too,
enough
to rebuild entirely the house in Königstrasse,
even
with a handsome additional room,
which would have suited me admirably.

But on entering this study now I thought of none of all these wonders;
my uncle alone filled my thoughts.

He had thrown himself into a velvet easy-chair,
and was grasping between his hands a book over which he bent,
pondering
with intense admiration.

"Here's a remarkable book! What a wonderful book!"
he was exclaiming.

These ejaculations brought
to my mind the fact that my uncle was liable
to occasional fits of bibliomania;
but no old book had any value in his eyes unless it had the virtue of being nowhere else
to be found,
or,
at any rate,
of being illegible.

"Well,
now;
don't you see it yet?

Why I have got a priceless treasure,
that I found his morning,
in rummaging in old Hevelius's shop,
the Jew."

"Magnificent!"
I replied,
with a good imitation of enthusiasm.

What was the good of all this fuss about an old quarto,
bound in rough calf,
a yellow,
faded volume,
with a ragged seal depending from it?

But
for all that there was no lull yet in the admiring exclamations of the Professor.

"See,"
he went on,
both asking the questions and supplying the answers.

"Isn't it a beauty?

Yes;
splendid! Did you ever see such a binding?

Doesn't the book open easily?

Yes;
it stops open anywhere.

But does it shut equally well?

Yes;
for the binding and the leaves are flush,
all in a straight line,
and no gaps or openings anywhere.

And look at its back,
after seven hundred years.

Why,
Bozerian,
Closs,
or Purgold might have been proud of such a binding!"
While rapidly making these comments my uncle kept opening and shutting the old tome.

I really could do no less than ask a question about its contents,
although I did not feel the slightest interest.

"And what is the title of this marvellous work?"
I asked
with an affected eagerness which he must have been very blind not
to see through.

"This work,"
replied my uncle,
firing up
with renewed enthusiasm,
"this work is the Heims Kringla of Snorre Turlleson,
the most famous Icelandic author of the twelfth century! It is the chronicle of the Norwegian princes who ruled in Iceland."

"Indeed;"
I cried,
keeping up wonderfully,
"of course it is a German translation?"
"What!"
sharply replied the Professor,
"a translation! What should I do
with a translation?

This _is_ the Icelandic original,
in the magnificent idiomatic vernacular,
which is both rich and simple,
and admits of an infinite variety of grammatical combinations and verbal modifications."

"Like German."

I happily ventured.

"Yes."

replied my uncle,
shrugging his shoulders;
"but,
in addition
to all this,
the Icelandic has three numbers like the Greek,
and irregular declensions of nouns proper like the Latin."

"Ah!"
said I,
a little moved out of my indifference;
"and is the type good?"
"Type! What do you mean by talking of type,
wretched Axel?

Type! Do you take it
for a printed book,
you ignorant fool?

It is a manuscript,
a Runic manuscript."

"Runic?"
"Yes.

Do you want me
to explain what that is?"
"Of course not,"
I replied in the tone of an injured man.

But my uncle persevered,
and told me,
against my will,
of many things I cared nothing about.

"Runic characters were in use in Iceland in former ages.

They were invented,
it is said,
by Odin himself.

Look there,
and wonder,
impious young man,
and admire these letters,
the invention of the Scandinavian god!"
Well,
well! not knowing what
to say,
I was going
to prostrate myself before this wonderful book,
a way of answering equally pleasing
to gods and kings,
and which has the advantage of never giving them any embarrassment,
when a little incident happened
to divert conversation into another channel.

This was the appearance of a dirty slip of parchment,
which slipped out of the volume and fell upon the floor.

My uncle pounced upon this shred
with incredible avidity.

An old document,
enclosed an immemorial time within the folds of this old book,
had
for him an immeasurable value.

"What's this?"
he cried.

And he laid out upon the table a piece of parchment,
five inches by three,
and along which were traced certain mysterious characters.

Here is the exact facsimile.

I think it important
to let these strange signs be publicly known,
for they were the means of drawing on Professor Liedenbrock and his nephew
to undertake the most wonderful expedition of the nineteenth century.

[Runic glyphs occur here] The Professor mused a few moments over this series of characters;
then raising his spectacles he pronounced:

"These are Runic letters;
they are exactly like those of the manuscript of Snorre Turlleson.

But,
what on earth is their meaning?"
Runic letters appearing
to my mind
to be an invention of the learned
to mystify this poor world,
I was not sorry
to see my uncle suffering the pangs of mystification.

At least,
so it seemed
to me,
judging from his fingers,
which were beginning
to work
with terrible energy.

"It is certainly old Icelandic,"
he muttered between his teeth.

And Professor Liedenbrock must have known,
for he was acknowledged
to be quite a polyglot.

Not that he could speak fluently in the two thousand languages and twelve thousand dialects which are spoken on the earth,
but he knew at least his share of them.

So he was going,
in the presence of this difficulty,
to give way
to all the impetuosity of his character,
and I was preparing
for a violent outbreak,
when two o'clock struck by the little timepiece over the fireplace.

At that moment our good housekeeper Martha opened the study door,
saying:

"Dinner is ready!"
I am afraid he sent that soup
to where it would boil away
to nothing,
and Martha took
to her heels
for safety.

I followed her,
and hardly knowing how I got there I found myself seated in my usual place.

I waited a few minutes.

No Professor came.

Never within my remembrance had he missed the important ceremonial of dinner.

And yet what a good dinner it was! There was parsley soup,
an omelette of ham garnished
with spiced sorrel,
a fillet of veal
with compote of prunes;
for dessert,
crystallised fruit;
the whole washed down
with sweet Moselle.

All this my uncle was going
to sacrifice
to a bit of old parchment.

As an affectionate and attentive nephew I considered it my duty
to eat
for him as well as
for myself,
which I did conscientiously.

"I have never known such a thing,"
said Martha.

"M.

Liedenbrock is not at table!"
"Who could have believed it?"
I said,
with my mouth full.

"Something serious is going
to happen,"
said the servant,
shaking her head.

My opinion was,
that nothing more serious would happen than an awful scene when my uncle should have discovered that his dinner was devoured.

I had come
to the last of the fruit when a very loud voice tore me away from the pleasures of my dessert.

With one spring I bounded out of the dining-room into the study.

CHAPTER III.

THE RUNIC WRITING EXERCISES THE PROFESSOR
"Undoubtedly it is Runic,"
said the Professor,
bending his brows;
"but there is a secret in it,
and I mean
to discover the key."

A violent gesture finished the sentence.

"Sit there,"
he added,
holding out his fist towards the table.

"Sit there,
and write."

I was seated in a trice.

"Now I will dictate
to you every letter of our alphabet which corresponds
with each of these Icelandic characters.

We will see what that will give us.

But,
by St. Michael,
if you should dare
to deceive me -"
The dictation commenced.

I did my best.

Every letter was given me one after the other,
with the following remarkable result:

mm.rnlls esrevel seecIde sgtssmf vnteief niedrke kt,samn atrateS saodrrn emtnaeI nvaect rrilSa Atsaar .nvcrc ieaabs ccrmi eevtVl frAntv dt,iac oseibo KediiI [Redactor:

In the original version the initial letter is an
'm'
with a superscore over it.

It is my supposition that this is the translator's way of writing
'mm'
and I have replaced it accordingly,
since our typography does not allow such a character.] When this work was ended my uncle tore the paper from me and examined it attentively
for a long time.

"What does it all mean?"
he kept repeating mechanically.

Upon my honour I could not have enlightened him.

Besides he did not ask me,
and he went on talking
to himself.

"This is what is called a cryptogram,
or cipher,"
he said,
"in which letters are purposely thrown in confusion,
which if properly arranged would reveal their sense.

Only think that under this jargon there may lie concealed the clue
to some great discovery!"
As
for me,
I was of opinion that there was nothing at all,
in it;
though,
of course,
I took care not
to say so.

Then the Professor took the book and the parchment,
and diligently compared them together.

"These two writings are not by the same hand,"
he said;
"the cipher is of later date than the book,
an undoubted proof of which I see in a moment.

The first letter is a double m,
a letter which is not
to be found in Turlleson's book,
and which was only added
to the alphabet in the fourteenth century.

Therefore there are two hundred years between the manuscript and the document."

I admitted that this was a strictly logical conclusion.

"I am therefore led
to imagine,"
continued my uncle,
"that some possessor of this book wrote these mysterious letters.

But who was that possessor?

Is his name nowhere
to be found in the manuscript?"
My uncle raised his spectacles,
took up a strong lens,
and carefully examined the blank pages of the book.

On the front of the second,
the title-page,
he noticed a sort of stain which looked like an ink blot.

But in looking at it very closely he thought he could distinguish some half-effaced letters.

My uncle at once fastened upon this as the centre of interest,
and he laboured at that blot,
until by the help of his microscope he ended by making out the following Runic characters which he read without difficulty.

"Arne Saknussemm!"
he cried in triumph.

"Why that is the name of another Icelander,
a savant of the sixteenth century,
a celebrated alchemist!"
I gazed at my uncle
with satisfactory admiration.

"Those alchemists,"
he resumed,
"Avicenna,
Bacon,
Lully,
Paracelsus,
were the real and only savants of their time.

They made discoveries at which we are astonished.

Has not this Saknussemm concealed under his cryptogram some surprising invention?

It is so;
it must be so!"
The Professor's imagination took fire at this hypothesis.

"No doubt,"
I ventured
to reply,
"but what interest would he have in thus hiding so marvellous a discovery?"
"Why?

Why?

How can I tell?

Did not Galileo do the same by Saturn?

We shall see.

I will get at the secret of this document,
and I will neither sleep nor eat until I have found it out."

My comment on this was a half-suppressed
"Oh!"
"Nor you either,
Axel,"
he added.

"The deuce!"
said I
to myself;
"then it is lucky I have eaten two dinners to-day!"
"First of all we must find out the key
to this cipher;
that cannot be difficult."

At these words I quickly raised my head;
but my uncle went on soliloquising.

"There's nothing easier.

In this document there are a hundred and thirty-two letters,
viz.,
seventy-seven consonants and fifty-five vowels.

This is the proportion found in southern languages,
whilst northern tongues are much richer in consonants;
therefore this is in a southern language."

These were very fair conclusions,
I thought.

"But what language is it?"
Here I looked
for a display of learning,
but I met instead
with profound analysis.

"This Saknussemm,"
he went on,
"was a very well-informed man;
now since he was not writing in his own mother tongue,
he would naturally select that which was currently adopted by the choice spirits of the sixteenth century;
I mean Latin.

If I am mistaken,
I can but try Spanish,
French,
Italian,
Greek,
or Hebrew.

But the savants of the sixteenth century generally wrote in Latin.

I am therefore entitled
to pronounce this,
à priori,
to be Latin.

It is Latin."

I jumped up in my chair.

My Latin memories rose in revolt against the notion that these barbarous words could belong
to the sweet language of Virgil.

"Yes,
it is Latin,"
my uncle went on;
"but it is Latin confused and in disorder;
"_pertubata seu inordinata,_"
as Euclid has it."

"Very well,"
thought I,
"if you can bring order out of that confusion,
my dear uncle,
you are a clever man."

"Let us examine carefully,"
said he again,
taking up the leaf upon which I had written.

"Here is a series of one hundred and thirty-two letters in apparent disorder.

There are words consisting of consonants only,
as _nrrlls;_ others,
on the other hand,
in which vowels predominate,
as
for instance the fifth,
_uneeief,_ or the last but one,
_oseibo_.

Now this arrangement has evidently not been premeditated;
it has arisen mathematically in obedience
to the unknown law which has ruled in the succession of these letters.

It appears
to me a certainty that the original sentence was written in a proper manner,
and afterwards distorted by a law which we have yet
to discover.

Whoever possesses the key of this cipher will read it
with fluency.

What is that key?

Axel,
have you got it?"
I answered not a word,
and
for a very good reason.

My eyes had fallen upon a charming picture,
suspended against the wall,
the portrait of Gräuben.

My uncle's ward was at that time at Altona,
staying
with a relation,
and in her absence I was very downhearted;
for I may confess it
to you now,
the pretty Virlandaise and the professor's nephew loved each other
with a patience and a calmness entirely German.

We had become engaged unknown
to my uncle,
who was too much taken up
with geology
to be able
to enter into such feelings as ours.

Gräuben was a lovely blue-eyed blonde,
rather given
to gravity and seriousness;
but that did not prevent her from loving me very sincerely.

As
for me,
I adored her,
if there is such a word in the German language.

Thus it happened that the picture of my pretty Virlandaise threw me in a moment out of the world of realities into that of memory and fancy.

There looked down upon me the faithful companion of my labours and my recreations.

Every day she helped me
to arrange my uncle's precious specimens;
she and I labelled them together.

Mademoiselle Gräuben was an accomplished mineralogist;
she could have taught a few things
to a savant.

She was fond of investigating abstruse scientific questions.

What pleasant hours we have spent in study;
and how often I envied the very stones which she handled
with her charming fingers.

Then,
when our leisure hours came,
we used
to go out together and turn into the shady avenues by the Alster,
and went happily side by side up
to the old windmill,
which forms such an improvement
to the landscape at the head of the lake.

On the road we chatted hand in hand;
I told her amusing tales at which she laughed heartilv.

Then we reached the banks of the Elbe,
and after having bid good-bye
to the swan,
sailing gracefully amidst the white water lilies,
we returned
to the quay by the steamer.

That is just where I was in my dream,
when my uncle
with a vehement thump on the table dragged me back
to the realities of life.

"Come,"
said he,
"the very first idea which would come into any one's head
to confuse the letters of a sentence would be
to write the words vertically instead of horizontally."

"Indeed!"
said I.

"Now we must see what would be the effect of that,
Axel;
put down upon this paper any sentence you like,
only instead of arranging the letters in the usual way,
one after the other,
place them in succession in vertical columns,
so as
to group them together in five or six vertical lines."

I caught his meaning,
and immediately produced the following literary wonder:

I y l o a u l o l w r b o u ,
n G e v w m d r n e e y e a !
"Good,"
said the professor,
without reading them,
"now set down those words in a horizontal line."

I obeyed,
and
with this result:

Iyloau lolwrb ou,nGe vwmdrn eeyea!
"Excellent!"
said my uncle,
taking the paper hastily out of my hands.

"This begins
to look just like an ancient document:

the vowels and the consonants are grouped together in equal disorder;
there are even capitals in the middle of words,
and commas too,
just as in Saknussemm's parchment."

I considered these remarks very clever.

"Now,"
said my uncle,
looking straight at me,
"to read the sentence which you have just written,
and
with which I am wholly unacquainted,
I shall only have
to take the first letter of each word,
then the second,
the third,
and so forth."

And my uncle,
to his great astonishment,
and my much greater,
read:

"I love you well,
my own dear Gräuben!"
"Hallo!"
cried the Professor.

Yes,
indeed,
without knowing what I was about,
like an awkward and unlucky lover,
I had compromised myself by writing this unfortunate sentence.

"Aha! you are in love
with Gräuben?"
he said,
with the right look
for a guardian.

"Yes;
no!"
I stammered.

"You love Gräuben,"
he went on once or twice dreamily.

"Well,
let us apply the process I have suggested
to the document in question."

My uncle,
falling back into his absorbing contemplations,
had already forgotten my imprudent words.

I merely say imprudent,
for the great mind of so learned a man of course had no place
for love affairs,
and happily the grand business of the document gained me the victory.

Just as the moment of the supreme experiment arrived the Professor's eyes flashed right through his spectacles.

There was a quivering in his fingers as he grasped the old parchment.

He was deeply moved.

At last he gave a preliminary cough,
and
with profound gravity,
naming in succession the first,
then the second letter of each word,
he dictated me the following:

mmessvnkaSenrA.icefdoK.segnittamvrtn ecertserrette,rotaisadva,ednecsedsadne lacartniiilvIsiratracSarbmvtabiledmek meretarcsilvcoIsleffenSnI.

I confess I felt considerably excited in coming
to the end;
these letters named,
one at a time,
had carried no sense
to my mind;
I therefore waited
for the Professor
with great pomp
to unfold the magnificent but hidden Latin of this mysterious phrase.

But who could have foretold the result?

A violent thump made the furniture rattle,
and spilt some ink,
and my pen dropped from between my fingers.

"That's not it,"
cried my uncle,
"there's no sense in it."

Then darting out like a shot,
bowling down stairs like an avalanche,
he rushed into the Königstrasse and fled.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ENEMY
to BE STARVED INTO SUBMISSION
"He is gone!"
cried Martha,
running out of her kitchen at the noise of the violent slamming of doors.

"Yes,"
I replied,
"completely gone."

"Well;
and how about his dinner?"
said the old servant.

"He won't have any."

"And his supper?"
"He won't have any."

"What?"
cried Martha,
with clasped hands.

"No,
my dear Martha,
he will eat no more.

No one in the house is
to eat anything at all.

Uncle Liedenbrock is going
to make us all fast until he has succeeded in deciphering an undecipherable scrawl."

"Oh,
my dear! must we then all die of hunger?"
I hardly dared
to confess that,
with so absolute a ruler as my uncle,
this fate was inevitable.

The old servant,
visibly moved,
returned
to the kitchen,
moaning piteously.

When I was alone,
I thought I would go and tell Gräuben all about it.

But how should I be able
to escape from the house?

The Professor might return at any moment.

And suppose he called me?

And suppose he tackled me again
with this logomachy,
which might vainly have been set before ancient Oedipus.

And if I did not obey his call,
who could answer
for what might happen?

The wisest course was
to remain where I was.

A mineralogist at Besançon had just sent us a collection of siliceous nodules,
which I had
to classify:

so I set
to work;
I sorted,
labelled,
and arranged in their own glass case all these hollow specimens,
in the cavity of each of which was a nest of little crystals.

But this work did not succeed in absorbing all my attention.

That old document kept working in my brain.

My head throbbed
with excitement,
and I felt an undefined uneasiness.

I was possessed
with a presentiment of coming evil.

In an hour my nodules were all arranged upon successive shelves.

Then I dropped down into the old velvet arm-chair,
my head thrown back and my hands joined over it.

I lighted my long crooked pipe,
with a painting on it of an idle-looking naiad;
then I amused myself watching the process of the conversion of the tobacco into carbon,
which was by slow degrees making my naiad into a negress.

Now and then I listened
to hear whether a well-known step was on the stairs.

No.

Where could my uncle be at that moment?

I fancied him running under the noble trees which line the road
to Altona,
gesticulating,
making shots
with his cane,
thrashing the long grass,
cutting the heads off the thistles,
and disturbing the contemplative storks in their peaceful solitude.

Would he return in triumph or in discouragement?

Which would get the upper hand,
he or the secret?

I was thus asking myself questions,
and mechanically taking between my fingers the sheet of paper mysteriously disfigured
with the incomprehensible succession of letters I had written down;
and I repeated
to myself
"What does it all mean?"
I sought
to group the letters so as
to form words.

Quite impossible! When I put them together by twos,
threes,
fives or sixes,
nothing came of it but nonsense.

To be sure the fourteenth,
fifteenth and sixteenth letters made the English word
'ice';
the eighty-third and two following made
'sir';
and in the midst of the document,
in the second and third lines,
I observed the words,
"rots,"
"mutabile,"
"ira,"
"net,"
"atra."

"Come now,"
I thought,
"these words seem
to justify my uncle's view about the language of the document.

In the fourth line appeared the word
"luco",
which means a sacred wood.

It is true that in the third line was the word
"tabiled",
which looked like Hebrew,
and in the last the purely French words
"mer",
"arc",
"mere."

"
All this was enough
to drive a poor fellow crazy.

Four different languages in this ridiculous sentence! What connection could there possibly be between such words as ice,
sir,
anger,
cruel,
sacred wood,
changeable,
mother,
bow,
and sea?

The first and the last might have something
to do
with each other;
it was not at all surprising that in a document written in Iceland there should be mention of a sea of ice;
but it was quite another thing
to get
to the end of this cryptogram
with so small a clue.

So I was struggling
with an insurmountable difficulty;
my brain got heated,
my eyes watered over that sheet of paper;
its hundred and thirty-two letters seemed
to flutter and fly around me like those motes of mingled light and darkness which float in the air around the head when the blood is rushing upwards
with undue violence.

I was a prey
to a kind of hallucination;
I was stifling;
I wanted air.

Unconsciously I fanned myself
with the bit of paper,
the back and front of which successively came before my eyes.

What was my surprise when,
in one of those rapid revolutions,
at the moment when the back was turned
to me I thought I caught sight of the Latin words
"craterem,"
"terrestre,"
and others.

A sudden light burst in upon me;
these hints alone gave me the first glimpse of the truth;
I had discovered the key
to the cipher.

To read the document,
it would not even be necessary
to read it through the paper.

Such as it was,
just such as it had been dictated
to me,
so it might be spelt out
with ease.

All those ingenious professorial combinations were coming right.

He was right as
to the arrangement of the letters;
he was right as
to the language.

He had been within a hair's breadth of reading this Latin document from end
to end;
but that hair's breadth,
chance had given it
to me! You may be sure I felt stirred up.

My eyes were dim,
I could scarcely see.

I had laid the paper upon the table.

At a glance I could tell the whole secret.

At last I became more calm.

I made a wise resolve
to walk twice round the room quietly and settle my nerves,
and then I returned into the deep gulf of the huge armchair.

"Now I'll read it,"
I cried,
after having well distended my lungs
with air.

I leaned over the table;
I laid my finger successively upon every letter;
and without a pause,
without one moment's hesitation,
I read off the whole sentence aloud.

Stupefaction! terror! I sat overwhelmed as if
with a sudden deadly blow.

What! that which I read had actually,
really been done! A mortal man had had the audacity
to penetrate! .

.

.

"Ah!"
I cried,
springing up.

"But no! no! My uncle shall never know it.

He would insist upon doing it too.

He would want
to know all about it.

Ropes could not hold him,
such a determined geologist as he is! He would start,
he would,
in spite of everything and everybody,
and he would take me
with him,
and we should never get back.

No,
never! never!"
My over-excitement was beyond all description.

"No! no! it shall not be,"
I declared energetically;
"and as it is in my power
to prevent the knowledge of it coming into the mind of my tyrant,
I will do it.

By dint of turning this document round and round,
he too might discover the key.

I will destroy it."

There was a little fire left on the hearth.

I seized not only the paper but Saknussemm's parchment;
with a feverish hand I was about
to fling it all upon the coals and utterly destroy and abolish this dangerous secret,
when the,
study door opened,
and my uncle appeared.

CHAPTER V.

FAMINE,
THEN VICTORY,
FOLLOWED BY DISMAY I had only just time
to replace the unfortunate document upon the table.

Professor Liedenbrock seemed
to be greatly abstracted.

The ruling thought gave him no rest.

Evidently he had gone deeply into the matter,
analytically and
with profound scrutiny.

He had brought all the resources of his mind
to bear upon it during his walk,
and he had come back
to apply some new combination.

He sat in his armchair,
and pen in hand he began what looked very much like algebraic formula:

I followed
with my eyes his trembling hands,
I took count of every movement.

Might not some unhoped-for result come of it?

I trembled,
too,
very unnecessarily,
since the true key was in my hands,
and no other would open the secret.

For three long hours my uncle worked on without a word,
without lifting his head;
rubbing out,
beginning again,
then rubbing out again,
and so on a hundred times.

I knew very well that if he succeeded in setting down these letters in every possible relative position,
the sentence would come out.

But I knew also that twenty letters alone could form two quintillions,
four hundred and thirty-two quadrillions,
nine hundred and two trillions,
eight billions,
a hundred and seventy-six millions,
six hundred and forty thousand combinations.

Now,
here were a hundred and thirty-two letters in this sentence,
and these hundred and thirty-two letters would give a number of different sentences,
each made up of at least a hundred and thirty-three figures,
a number which passed far beyond all calculation or conception.

So I felt reassured as far as regarded this heroic method of solving the difficulty.

But time was passing away;
night came on;
the street noises ceased;
my uncle,
bending over his task,
noticed nothing,
not even Martha half opening the door;
he heard not a sound,
not even that excellent woman saying:

"Will not monsieur take any supper to-night?"
And poor Martha had
to go away unanswered.

As
for me,
after long resistance,
I was overcome by sleep,
and fell off at the end of the sofa,
while uncle Liedenbrock went on calculating and rubbing out his calculations.

When I awoke next morning that indefatigable worker was still at his post.

His red eyes,
his pale complexion,
his hair tangled between his feverish fingers,
the red spots on his cheeks,
revealed his desperate struggle
with impossibilities,
and the weariness of spirit,
the mental wrestlings he must have undergone all through that unhappy night.

To tell the plain truth,
I pitied him.

In spite of the reproaches which I considered I had a right
to lay upon him,
a certain feeling of compassion was beginning
to gain upon me.

The poor man was so entirely taken up
with his one idea that he had even forgotten how
to get angry.

All the strength of his feelings was concentrated upon one point alone;
and as their usual vent was closed,
it was
to be feared lest extreme tension should give rise
to an explosion sooner or later.

I might
with a word have loosened the screw of the steel vice that was crushing his brain;
but that word I would not speak.

Yet I was not an ill-natured fellow.

Why was I dumb at such a crisis?

Why so insensible
to my uncle's interests?

"No,
no,"
I repeated,
"I shall not speak.

He would insist upon going;
nothing on earth could stop him.

His imagination is a volcano,
and
to do that which other geologists have never done he would risk his life.

I will preserve silence.

I will keep the secret which mere chance has revealed
to me.

To discover it,
would be
to kill Professor Liedenbrock! Let him find it out himself if he can.

I will never have it laid
to my door that I led him
to his destruction."

Having formed this resolution,
I folded my arms and waited.

But I had not reckoned upon one little incident which turned up a few hours after.

When our good Martha wanted
to go
to Market,
she found the door locked.

The big key was gone.

Who could have taken it out?

Assuredly,
it was my uncle,
when he returned the night before from his hurried walk.

Was this done on purpose?

Or was it a mistake?

Did he want
to reduce us by famine?

This seemed like going rather too far! What! should Martha and I be victims of a position of things in which we had not the smallest interest?

It was a fact that a few years before this,
whilst my uncle was working at his great classification of minerals,
he was forty-eight hours without eating,
and all his household were obliged
to share in this scientific fast.

As
for me,
what I remember is,
that I got severe cramps in my stomach,
which hardly suited the constitution of a hungry,
growing lad.

Now it appeared
to me as if breakfast was going
to be wanting,
just as supper had been the night before.

Yet I resolved
to be a hero,
and not
to be conquered by the pangs of hunger.

Martha took it very seriously,
and,
poor woman,
was very much distressed.

As
for me,
the impossibility of leaving the house distressed me a good deal more,
and
for a very good reason.

A caged lover's feelings may easily be imagined.

My uncle went on working,
his imagination went off rambling into the ideal world of combinations;
he was far away from earth,
and really far away from earthly wants.

About noon hunger began
to stimulate me severely.

Martha had,
without thinking any harm,
cleared out the larder the night before,
so that now there was nothing left in the house.

Still I held out;
I made it a point of honour.

Two o'clock struck.

This was becoming ridiculous;
worse than that,
unbearable.

I began
to say
to myself that I was exaggerating the importance of the document;
that my uncle would surely not believe in it,
that he would set it down as a mere puzzle;
that if it came
to the worst,
we should lay violent hands on him and keep him at home if he thought on venturing on the expedition that,
after all,
he might himself discover the key of the cipher,
and that then I should be clear at the mere expense of my involuntary abstinence.

These reasons seemed excellent
to me,
though on the night before I should have rejected them
with indignation;
I even went so far as
to condemn myself
for my absurdity in having waited so long,
and I finally resolved
to let it all out.

I was therefore meditating a proper introduction
to the matter,
so as not
to seem too abrupt,
when the Professor jumped up,
clapped on his hat,
and prepared
to go out.

Surely he was not going out,
to shut us in again! no,
never!
"Uncle!"
I cried.

He seemed not
to hear me.

"Uncle Liedenbrock!"
I cried,
lifting up my voice.

"Ay,"
he answered like a man suddenly waking.

"Uncle,
that key!"
"What key?

The door key?"
"No,
no!"
I cried.

"The key of the document."

The Professor stared at me over his spectacles;
no doubt he saw something unusual in the expression of my countenance;
for he laid hold of my arm,
and speechlessly questioned me
with his eyes.

Yes,
never was a question more forcibly put.

I nodded my head up and down.

He shook his pityingly,
as if he was dealing
with a lunatic.

I gave a more affirmative gesture.

His eyes glistened and sparkled
with live fire,
his hand was shaken threateningly.

This mute conversation at such a momentous crisis would have riveted the attention of the most indifferent.

And the fact really was that I dared not speak now,
so intense was the excitement
for fear lest my uncle should smother me in his first joyful embraces.

But he became so urgent that I was at last compelled
to answer.

"Yes,
that key,
chance -"
"What is that you are saying?"
he shouted
with indescribable emotion.

"There,
read that!"
I said,
presenting a sheet of paper on which I had written.

"But there is nothing in this,"
he answered,
crumpling up the paper.

"No,
nothing until you proceed
to read from the end
to the beginning."

I had not finished my sentence when the Professor broke out into a cry,
nay,
a roar.

A new revelation burst in upon him.

He was transformed!
"Aha,
clever Saknussemm!"
he cried.

"You had first written out your sentence the wrong way."

And darting upon the paper,
with eyes bedimmed,
and voice choked
with emotion,
he read the whole document from the last letter
to the first.

It was conceived in the following terms:

In Sneffels Joculis craterem quem delibat Umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende,
Audax viator,
et terrestre centrum attinges.

Quod feci,
Arne Saknussemm.

[1] Which bad Latin may be translated thus:

"Descend,
bold traveller,
into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels,
which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July,
and you will attain the centre of the earth;
which I have done,
Arne Saknussemm."

In reading this,
my uncle gave a spring as if he had touched a Leyden jar.

His audacity,
his joy,
and his convictions were magnificent
to behold.

He came and he went;
he seized his head between both his hands;
he pushed the chairs out of their places,
he piled up his books;
incredible as it may seem,
he rattled his precious nodules of flints together;
he sent a kick here,
a thump there.

At last his nerves calmed down,
and like a man exhausted by too lavish an expenditure of vital power,
he sank back exhausted into his armchair.

"What o'clock is it?"
he asked after a few moments of silence.

"Three o'clock,"
I replied.

"Is it really?

The dinner-hour is past,
and I did not know it.

I am half dead
with hunger.

Come on,
and after dinner -"
[1] In the cipher,
_audax_ is written _avdas,_ and _quod_ and _quem,_ _hod_ and _ken_.

(Tr.)
"Well?"
"After dinner,
pack up my trunk."

"What?"
I cried.

"And yours!"
replied the indefatigable Professor,
entering the dining-room.

CHAPTER VI.

EXCITING DISCUSSIONS ABOUT AN UNPARALLELED ENTERPRISE At these words a cold shiver ran through me.

Yet I controlled myself;
I even resolved
to put a good face upon it.

Scientific arguments alone could have any weight
with Professor Liedenbrock.

Now there were good ones against the practicability of such a journey.

Penetrate
to the centre of the earth! What nonsense! But I kept my dialectic battery in reserve
for a suitable opportunity,
and I interested myself in the prospect of my dinner,
which was not yet forthcoming.

It is no use
to tell of the rage and imprecations of my uncle before the empty table.

Explanations were given,
Martha was set at liberty,
ran off
to the market,
and did her part so well that in an hour afterwards my hunger was appeased,
and I was able
to return
to the contemplation of the gravity of the situation.

During all dinner time my uncle was almost merry;
he indulged in some of those learned jokes which never do anybody any harm.

Dessert over,
he beckoned me into his study.

I obeyed;
he sat at one end of his table,
I at the other.

"Axel,"
said he very mildly;
"you are a very ingenious young man,
you have done me a splendid service,
at a moment when,
wearied out
with the struggle,
I was going
to abandon the contest.

Where should I have lost myself?

None can tell.

Never,
my lad,
shall I forget it;
and you shall have your share in the glory
to which your discovery will lead."

"Oh,
come!"
thought I,
"he is in a good way.

Now is the time
for discussing that same glory."

"Before all things,"
my uncle resumed,
"I enjoin you
to preserve the most inviolable secrecy:

you understand?

There are not a few in the scientific world who envy my success,
and many would be ready
to undertake this enterprise,
to whom our return should be the first news of it."

"Do you really think there are many people bold enough?"
said I.

"Certainly;
who would hesitate
to acquire such renown?

If that document were divulged,
a whole army of geologists would be ready
to rush into the footsteps of Arne Saknussemm."

"I don't feel so very sure of that,
uncle,"
I replied;
"for we have no proof of the authenticity of this document."

"What! not of the book,
inside which we have discovered it?"
"Granted.

I admit that Saknussemm may have written these lines.

But does it follow that he has really accomplished such a journey?

And may it not be that this old parchment is intended
to mislead?"
I almost regretted having uttered this last word,
which dropped from me in an unguarded moment.

The Professor bent his shaggy brows,
and I feared I had seriously compromised my own safety.

Happily no great harm came of it.

A smile flitted across the lip of my severe companion,
and he answered:

"That is what we shall see."

"Ah!"
said I,
rather put out.

"But do let me exhaust all the possible objections against this document."

"Speak,
my boy,
don't be afraid.

You are quite at liberty
to express your opinions.

You are no longer my nephew only,
but my colleague.

Pray go on."

"Well,
in the first place,
I wish
to ask what are this Jokul,
this Sneffels,
and this Scartaris,
names which I have never heard before?"
"Nothing easier.

I received not long ago a map from my friend,
Augustus Petermann,
at Liepzig.

Nothing could be more apropos.

Take down the third atlas in the second shelf in the large bookcase,
series Z,
plate 4."

I rose,
and
with the help of such precise instructions could not fail
to find the required atlas.

My uncle opened it and said:

"Here is one of the best maps of Iceland,
that of Handersen,
and I believe this will solve the worst of our difficulties."

I bent over the map.

"You see this volcanic island,"
said the Professor;
"observe that all the volcanoes are called jokuls,
a word which means glacier in Icelandic,
and under the high latitude of Iceland nearly all the active volcanoes discharge through beds of ice.

Hence this term of jokul is applied
to all the eruptive mountains in Iceland."

"Very good,"
said I;
"but what of Sneffels?"
I was hoping that this question would be unanswerable;
but I was mistaken.

My uncle replied:

"Follow my finger along the west coast of Iceland.

Do you see Rejkiavik,
the capital?

You do.

Well;
ascend the innumerable fiords that indent those sea-beaten shores,
and stop at the sixty-fifth degree of latitude.

What do you see there?"
"I see a peninsula looking like a thigh bone
with the knee bone at the end of it."

"A very fair comparison,
my lad.

Now do you see anything upon that knee bone?"
"Yes;
a mountain rising out of the sea."

"Right.

That is Snæfell."

"That Snæfell?"
"It is.

It is a mountain five thousand feet high,
one of the most remarkable in the world,
if its crater leads down
to the centre of the earth."

"But that is impossible,"
I said shrugging my shoulders,
and disgusted at such a ridiculous supposition.

"Impossible?"
said the Professor severely;
"and why,
pray?"
"Because this crater is evidently filled
with lava and burning rocks,
and therefore -"
"But suppose it is an extinct volcano?"
"Extinct?"
"Yes;
the number of active volcanoes on the surface of the globe is at the present time only about three hundred.

But there is a very much larger number of extinct ones.

Now,
Snæfell is one of these.

Since historic times there has been but one eruption of this mountain,
that of 1219;
from that time it has quieted down more and.

more,
and now it is no longer reckoned among active volcanoes."

To such positive statements I could make no reply.

I therefore took refuge in other dark passages of the document.

"What is the meaning of this word Scartaris,
and what have the kalends of July
to do
with it?"
My uncle took a few minutes
to consider.

For one short moment I felt a ray of hope,
speedily
to be extinguished.

For he soon answered thus:

"What is darkness
to you is light
to me.

This proves the ingenious care
with which Saknussemm guarded and defined his discovery.

Sneffels,
or Snæfell,
has several craters.

It was therefore necessary
to point out which of these leads
to the centre of the globe.

What did the Icelandic sage do?

He observed that at the approach of the kalends of July,
that is
to say in the last days of June,
one of the peaks,
called Scartaris,
flung its shadow down the mouth of that particular crater,
and he committed that fact
to his document.

Could there possibly have been a more exact guide?

As soon as we have arrived at the summit of Snæfell we shall have no hesitation as
to the proper road
to take."

Decidedly,
my uncle had answered every one of my objections.

I saw that his position on the old parchment was impregnable.

I therefore ceased
to press him upon that part of the subject,
and as above all things he must be convinced,
I passed on
to scientific objections,
which in my opinion were far more serious.

"Well,
then,"
I said,
"I am forced
to admit that Saknussemm's sentence is clear,
and leaves no room
for doubt.

I will even allow that the document bears every mark and evidence of authenticity.

That learned philosopher did get
to the bottom of Sneffels,
he has seen the shadow of Scartaris touch the edge of the crater before the kalends of July;
he may even have heard the legendary stories told in his day about that crater reaching
to the centre of the world;
but as
for reaching it himself,
as
for performing the journey,
and returning,
if he ever went,
I say no - he never,
never did that."

"Now
for your reason?"
said my uncle ironically.

"All the theories of science demonstrate such a feat
to be impracticable."

"The theories say that,
do they?"
replied the Professor in the tone of a meek disciple.

"Oh! unpleasant theories! How the theories will hinder.

us,
won't they?"
I saw that he was only laughing at me;
but I went on all the same.

"Yes;
it is perfectly well known that the internal temperature rises one degree
for every 70 feet in depth;
now,
admitting this proportion
to be constant,
and the radius of the earth being fifteen hundred leagues,
there must be a temperature of 360,032 degrees at the centre of the earth.

Therefore,
all the substances that compose the body of this earth must exist there in a state of incandescent gas;
for the metals that most resist the action of heat,
gold,
and platinum,
and the hardest rocks,
can never be either solid or liquid under such a temperature.

I have therefore good reason
for asking if it is possible
to penetrate through such a medium."

"So,
Axel,
it is the heat that troubles you?"
"Of course it is.

Were we
to reach a depth of thirty miles we should have arrived at the limit of the terrestrial crust,
for there the temperature will be more than 2372 degrees."

"Are you afraid of being put into a state of fusion?"
"I will leave you
to decide that question,"
I answered rather sullenly.

"This is my decision,"
replied Professor Liedenbrock,
putting on one of his grandest airs.

"Neither you nor anybody else knows
with any certainty what is going on in the interior of this globe,
since not the twelve thousandth part of its radius is known;
science is eminently perfectible;
and every new theory is soon routed by a newer.

Was it not always believed until Fourier that the temperature of the interplanetary spaces decreased perpetually?

and is it not known at the present time that the greatest cold of the ethereal regions is never lower than 40 degrees below zero Fahr.?

Why should it not be the same
with the internal heat?

Why should it not,
at a certain depth,
attain an impassable limit,
instead of rising
to such a point as
to fuse the most infusible metals?"
As my uncle was now taking his stand upon hypotheses,
of course,
there was nothing
to be said.

"Well,
I will tell you that true savants,
amongst them Poisson,
have demonstrated that if a heat of 360,000 degrees [1] existed in the interior of the globe,
the fiery gases arising from the fused matter would acquire an elastic force which the crust of the earth would be unable
to resist,
and that it would explode like the plates of a bursting boiler."

"That is Poisson's opinion,
my uncle,
nothing more."

"Granted.

But it is likewise the creed adopted by other distinguished geologists,
that the interior of the globe is neither gas nor water,
nor any of the heaviest minerals known,
for in none of these cases would the earth weigh what it does."

"Oh,
with figures you may prove anything!"
"But is it the same
with facts! Is it not known that the number of volcanoes has diminished since the first days of creation?

and if there is central heat may we not thence conclude that it is in process of diminution?"
"My good uncle,
if you will enter into the legion of speculation,
I can discuss the matter no longer."

"But I have
to tell you that the highest names have come
to the support of my views.

Do you remember a visit paid
to me by the celebrated chemist,
Humphry Davy,
in 1825?"
"Not at all,
for I was not born until nineteen years afterwards."

"Well,
Humphry Davy did call upon me on his way through Hamburg.

We were long engaged in discussing,
amongst other problems,
the hypothesis of the liquid structure of the terrestrial nucleus.

We were agreed that it could not be in a liquid state,
for a reason which science has never been able
to confute."

[1] The degrees of temperature are given by Jules Verne according
to the centigrade system,
for which we will in each case substitute the Fahrenheit measurement.

(Tr.)
"What is that reason?"
I said,
rather astonished.

"Because this liquid mass would be subject,
like the ocean,
to the lunar attraction,
and therefore twice every day there would be internal tides,
which,
upheaving the terrestrial crust,
would cause periodical earthquakes!"
"Yet it is evident that the surface of the globe has been subject
to the action of fire,"
I replied,
"and it is quite reasonable
to suppose that the external crust cooled down first,
whilst the heat took refuge down
to the centre."

"Quite a mistake,"
my uncle answered.

"The earth has been heated by combustion on its surface,
that is all.

Its surface was composed of a great number of metals,
such as potassium and sodium,
which have the peculiar property of igniting at the mere contact
with air and water;
these metals kindled when the atmospheric vapours fell in rain upon the soil;
and by and by,
when the waters penetrated into the fissures of the crust of the earth,
they broke out into fresh combustion
with explosions and eruptions.

Such was the cause of the numerous volcanoes at the origin of the earth."

"Upon my word,
this is a very clever hypothesis,"
I exclaimed,
in spite rather of myself.

"And which Humphry Davy demonstrated
to me by a simple experiment.

He formed a small ball of the metals which I have named,
and which was a very fair representation of our globe;
whenever he caused a fine dew of rain
to fall upon its surface,
it heaved up into little monticules,
it became oxydized and formed miniature mountains;
a crater broke open at one of its summits;
the eruption took place,
and communicated
to the whole of the ball such a heat that it could not be held in the hand."

In truth,
I was beginning
to be shaken by the Professor's arguments,
besides which he gave additional weight
to them by his usual ardour and fervent enthusiasm.

"You see,
Axel,"
he added,
"the condition of the terrestrial nucleus has given rise
to various hypotheses among geologists;
there is no proof at all
for this internal heat;
my opinion is that there is no such thing,
it cannot be;
besides we shall see
for ourselves,
and,
like Arne Saknussemm,
we shall know exactly what
to hold as truth concerning this grand question."

"Very well,
we shall see,"
I replied,
feeling myself carried off by his contagious enthusiasm.

"Yes,
we shall see;
that is,
if it is possible
to see anything there."

"And why not?

May we not depend upon electric phenomena
to give us light?

May we not even expect light from the atmosphere,
the pressure of which may render it luminous as we approach the centre?"
"Yes,
yes,"
said I;
"that is possible,
too."

"It is certain,"
exclaimed my uncle in a tone of triumph.

"But silence,
do you hear me?

silence upon the whole subject;
and let no one get before us in this design of discovering the centre of the earth."

CHAPTER VII.

A WOMAN'S COURAGE Thus ended this memorable seance.

That conversation threw me into a fever.

I came out of my uncle's study as if I had been stunned,
and as if there was not air enough in all the streets of Hamburg
to put me right again.

I therefore made
for the banks of the Elbe,
where the steamer lands her passengers,
which forms the communication between the city and the Hamburg railway.

Was I convinced of the truth of what I had heard?

Had I not bent under the iron rule of the Professor Liedenbrock?

Was I
to believe him in earnest in his intention
to penetrate
to the centre of this massive globe?

Had I been listening
to the mad speculations of a lunatic,
or
to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius?

Where did truth stop?

Where did error begin?

I was all adrift amongst a thousand contradictory hypotheses,
but I could not lay hold of one.

Yet I remembered that I had been convinced,
although now my enthusiasm was beginning
to cool down;
but I felt a desire
to start at once,
and not
to lose time and courage by calm reflection.

I had at that moment quite courage enough
to strap my knapsack
to my shoulders and start.

But I must confess that in another hour this unnatural excitement abated,
my nerves became unstrung,
and from the depths of the abysses of this earth I ascended
to its surface again.

"It is quite absurd!"
I cried,
"there is no sense about it.

No sensible young man should
for a moment entertain such a proposal.

The whole thing is non-existent.

I have had a bad night,
I have been dreaming of horrors."

But I had followed the banks of the Elbe and passed the town.

After passing the port too,
I had reached the Altona road.

I was led by a presentiment,
soon
to be realised;
for shortly I espied my little Gräuben bravely returning
with her light step
to Hamburg.

"Gräuben!"
I cried from afar off.

The young girl stopped,
rather frightened perhaps
to hear her name called after her on the high road.

Ten yards more,
and I had joined her.

"Axel!"
she cried surprised.

"What! have you come
to meet me?

Is this why you are here,
sir?"
But when she had looked upon me,
Gräuben could not fail
to see the uneasiness and distress of my mind.

"What is the matter?"
she said,
holding out her hand.

"What is the matter,
Gräuben?"
I cried.

In a couple of minutes my pretty Virlandaise was fully informed of the position of affairs.

For a time she was silent.

Did her heart palpitate as mine did?

I don't know about that,
but I know that her hand did not tremble in mine.

We went on a hundred yards without speaking.

At last she said,
"Axel!"
"My dear Gräuben."

"That will be a splendid journey!"
I gave a bound at these words.

"Yes,
Axel,
a journey worthy of the nephew of a savant;
it is a good thing
for a man
to be distinguished by some great enterprise."

"What,
Gräuben,
won't you dissuade me from such an undertaking?"
"No,
my dear Axel,
and I would willingly go
with you,
but that a poor girl would only be in your way."

"Is that quite true?"
"It is true."

Ah! women and young girls,
how incomprehensible are your feminine hearts! When you are not the timidest,
you are the bravest of creatures.

Reason has nothing
to do
with your actions.

What! did this child encourage me in such an expedition! Would she not be afraid
to join it herself?

And she was driving me
to it,
one whom she loved! I was disconcerted,
and,
if I must tell the whole truth,
I was ashamed.

"Gräuben,
we will see whether you will say the same thing tomorrow."

"To-morrow,
dear Axel,
I will say what I say to-day."

Gräuben and I,
hand in hand,
but in silence,
pursued our way.

The emotions of that day were breaking my heart.

After all,
I thought,
the kalends of July are a long way off,
and between this and then many things may take place which will cure my uncle of his desire
to travel underground.

It was night when we arrived at the house in Königstrasse.

I expected
to find all quiet there,
my uncle in bed as was his custom,
and Martha giving her last touches
with the feather brush.

But I had not taken into account the Professor's impatience.

I found him shouting- and working himself up amidst a crowd of porters and messengers who were all depositing various loads in the passage.

Our old servant was at her wits'
end.

"Come,
Axel,
come,
you miserable wretch,"
my uncle cried from as far off as he could see me.

"Your boxes are not packed,
and my papers are not arranged;
where's the key of my carpet bag?

and what have you done
with my gaiters?"
I stood thunderstruck.

My voice failed.

Scarcely could my lips utter the words:

"Are we really going?"
"Of course,
you unhappy boy! Could I have dreamed that yon would have gone out
for a walk instead of hurrying your preparations forward?"
"Are we
to go?"
I asked again,
with sinking hopes.

"Yes;
the day after to-morrow,
early."

I could hear no more.

I fled
for refuge into my own little room.

All hope was now at an end.

My uncle had been all the morning making purchases of a part of the tools and apparatus required
for this desperate undertaking.

The passage was encumbered
with rope ladders,
knotted cords,
torches,
flasks,
grappling irons,
alpenstocks,
pickaxes,
iron shod sticks,
enough
to load ten men.

I spent an awful night.

Next morning I was called early.

I had quite decided I would not open the door.

But how was I
to resist the sweet voice which was always music
to my ears,
saying,
"My dear Axel?"
I came out of my room.

I thought my pale countenance and my red and sleepless eyes would work upon Gräuben's sympathies and change her mind.

"Ah! my dear Axel,"
she said.

"I see you are better.

A night's rest has done you good."

"Done me good!"
I exclaimed.

I rushed
to the glass.

Well,
in fact I did look better than I had expected.

I could hardly believe my own eyes.

"Axel,"
she said,
"I have had a long talk
with my guardian.

He is a bold philosopher,
a man of immense courage,
and you must remember that his blood flows in your veins.

He has confided
to me his plans,
his hopes,
and why and how he hopes
to attain his object.

He will no doubt succeed.

My dear Axel,
it is a grand thing
to devote yourself
to science! What honour will fall upon Herr Liedenbrock,
and so be reflected upon his companion! When you return,
Axel,
you will be a man,
his equal,
free
to speak and
to act independently,
and free
to --"
The dear girl only finished this sentence by blushing.

Her words revived me.

Yet I refused
to believe we should start.

I drew Gräuben into the Professor's study.

"Uncle,
is it true that we are
to go?"
"Why do you doubt?"
"Well,
I don't doubt,"
I said,
not
to vex him;
"but,
I ask,
what need is there
to hurry?"
"Time,
time,
flying
with irreparable rapidity."

"But it is only the 16th May,
and until the end of June --"
"What,
you monument of ignorance! do you think you can get
to Iceland in a couple of days?

If you had not deserted me like a fool I should have taken you
to the Copenhagen office,
to Liffender & Co.,
and you would have learned then that there is only one trip every month from Copenhagen
to Rejkiavik,
on the 22nd."

"Well?"
"Well,
if we waited
for the 22nd June we should be too late
to see the shadow of Scartaris touch the crater of Sneffels.

Therefore we must get
to Copenhagen as fast as we can
to secure our passage.

Go and pack up."

There was no reply
to this.

I went up
to my room.

Gräuben followed me.

She undertook
to pack up all things necessary
for my voyage.

She was no more moved than if I had been starting
for a little trip
to Lübeck or Heligoland.

Her little hands moved without haste.

She talked quietly.

She supplied me
with sensible reasons
for our expedition.

She delighted me,
and yet I was angry
with her.

Now and then I felt I ought
to break out into a passion,
but she took no notice and went on her way as methodically as ever.

Finally the last strap was buckled;
I came downstairs.

All that day the philosophical instrument makers and the electricians kept coming and going.

Martha was distracted.

"Is master mad?"
she asked.

I nodded my head.

"And is he going
to take you
with him?"
I nodded again.

"Where to?"
I pointed
with my finger downward.

"Down into the cellar?"
cried the old servant.

"No,"
I said.

"Lower down than that."

Night came.

But I knew nothing about the lapse of time.

"To-morrow morning at six precisely,"
my uncle decreed
"we start."

At ten o'clock I fell upon my bed,
a dead lump of inert matter.

All through the night terror had hold of me.

I spent it dreaming of abysses.

I was a prey
to delirium.

I felt myself grasped by the Professor's sinewy hand,
dragged along,
hurled down,
shattered into little bits.

I dropped down unfathomable precipices
with the accelerating velocity of bodies falling through space.

My life had become an endless fall.

I awoke at five
with shattered nerves,
trembling and weary.

I came downstairs.

My uncle was at table,
devouring his breakfast.

I stared at him
with horror and disgust.

But dear Gräuben was there;
so I said nothing,
and could eat nothing.

At half-past five there was a rattle of wheels outside.

A large carriage was there
to take us
to the Altona railway station.

It was soon piled up
with my uncle's multifarious preparations.

"Where's your box?"
he cried.

"It is ready,"
I replied,
with faltering voice.

"Then make haste down,
or we shall lose the train."

It was now manifestly impossible
to maintain the struggle against destiny.

I went up again
to my room,
and rolling my portmanteaus downstairs I darted after him.

At that moment my uncle was solemnly investing Gräuben
with the reins of government.

My pretty Virlandaise was as calm and collected as was her wont.

She kissed her guardian;
but could not restrain a tear in touching my cheek
with her gentle lips.

"Gräuben!"
I murmured.

"Go,
my dear Axel,
go! I am now your betrothed;
and when you come back I will be your wife."

I pressed her in my arms and took my place in the carriage.

Martha and the young girl,
standing at the door,
waved their last farewell.

Then the horses,
roused by the driver's whistling,
darted off at a gallop on the road
to Altona.

CHAPTER VIII.

SERIOUS PREPARATIONS
for VERTICAL DESCENT Altona,
which is but a suburb of Hamburg,
is the terminus of the Kiel railway,
which was
to carry us
to the Belts.

In twenty minutes we were in Holstein.

At half-past six the carriage stopped at the station;
my uncle's numerous packages,
his voluminous _impedimenta,_ were unloaded,
removed,
labelled,
weighed,
put into the luggage vans,
and at seven we were seated face
to face in our compartment.

The whistle sounded,
the engine started,
we were off.

Was I resigned?

No,
not yet.

Yet the cool morning air and the scenes on the road,
rapidly changed by the swiftness of the train,
drew me away somewhat from my sad reflections.

As
for the Professor's reflections,
they went far in advance of the swiftest express.

We were alone in the carriage,
but we sat in silence.

My uncle examined all his pockets and his travelling bag
with the minutest care.

I saw that he had not forgotten the smallest matter of detail.

Amongst other documents,
a sheet of paper,
carefully folded,
bore the heading of the Danish consulate
with the signature of W.

Christiensen,
consul at Hamburg and the Professor's friend.

With this we possessed the proper introductions
to the Governor of Iceland.

I also observed the famous document most carefully laid up in a secret pocket in his portfolio.

I bestowed a malediction upon it,
and then proceeded
to examine the country.

It was a very long succession of uninteresting loamy and fertile flats,
a very easy country
for the construction of railways,
and propitious
for the laying-down of these direct level lines so dear
to railway companies.

I had no time
to get tired of the monotony;
for in three hours we stopped at Kiel,
close
to the sea.

The luggage being labelled
for Copenhagen,
we had no occasion
to look after it.

Yet the Professor watched every article
with jealous vigilance,
until all were safe on board.

There they disappeared in the hold.

My uncle,
notwithstanding his hurry,
had so well calculated the relations between the train and the steamer that we had a whole day
to spare.

The steamer _Ellenora,_ did not start until night.

Thence sprang a feverish state of excitement in which the impatient irascible traveller devoted
to perdition the railway directors and the steamboat companies and the governments which allowed such intolerable slowness.

I was obliged
to act chorus
to him when he attacked the captain of the _Ellenora_ upon this subject.

The captain disposed of us summarily.

At Kiel,
as elsewhere,
we must do something
to while away the time.

What
with walking on the verdant shores of the bay within which nestles the little town,
exploring the thick woods which make it look like a nest embowered amongst thick foliage,
admiring the villas,
each provided
with a little bathing house,
and moving about and grumbling,
at last ten o'clock came.

The heavy coils of smoke from the _Ellenora's_ funnel unrolled in the sky,
the bridge shook
with the quivering of the struggling steam;
we were on board,
and owners
for the time of two berths,
one over the other,
in the only saloon cabin on board.

At a quarter past the moorings were loosed and the throbbing steamer pursued her way over the dark waters of the Great Belt.

The night was dark;
there was a sharp breeze and a rough sea,
a few lights appeared on shore through the thick darkness;
later on,
I cannot tell when,
a dazzling light from some lighthouse threw a bright stream of fire along the waves;
and this is all I can remember of this first portion of our sail.

At seven in the morning we landed at Korsor,
a small town on the west coast of Zealand.

There we were transferred from the boat
to another line of railway,
which took us by just as flat a country as the plain of Holstein.

Three hours'
travelling brought us
to the capital of Denmark.

My uncle had not shut his eyes all night.

In his impatience I believe he was trying
to accelerate the train
with his feet.

At last he discerned a stretch of sea.

"The Sound!"
he cried.

At our left was a huge building that looked like a hospital.

"That's a lunatic asylum,"
said one of or travelling companions.

Very good! thought I,
just the place we want
to end our days in;
and great as it is,
that asylum is not big enough
to contain all Professor Liedenbrock's madness! At ten in the morning,
at last,
we set our feet in Copenhagen;
the luggage was put upon a carriage and taken
with ourselves
to the Phoenix Hotel in Breda Gate.

This took half an hour,
for the station is out of the town.

Then my uncle,
after a hasty toilet,
dragged me after him.

The porter at the hotel could speak German and English;
but the Professor,
as a polyglot,
questioned him in good Danish,
and it was in the same language that that personage directed him
to the Museum of Northern Antiquities.

The curator of this curious establishment,
in which wonders are gathered together out of which the ancient history of the country might be reconstructed by means of its stone weapons,
its cups and its jewels,
was a learned savant,
the friend of the Danish consul at Hamburg,
Professor Thomsen.

My uncle had a cordial letter of introduction
to him.

As a general rule one savant greets another
with coolness.

But here the case was different.

M.

Thomsen,
like a good friend,
gave the Professor Liedenbrock a cordial greeting,
and he even vouchsafed the same kindness
to his nephew.

It is hardly necessary
to say the secret was sacredly kept from the excellent curator;
we were simply disinterested travellers visiting Iceland out of harmless curiosity.

M.

Thomsen placed his services at our disposal,
and we visited the quays
with the object of finding out the next vessel
to sail.

I was yet in hopes that there would be no means of getting
to Iceland.

But there was no such luck.

A small Danish schooner,
the _Valkyria_,
was
to set sail
for Rejkiavik on the 2nd of June.

The captain,
M.

Bjarne,
was on board.

His intending passenger was so joyful that he almost squeezed his hands till they ached.

That good man was rather surprised at his energy.

To him it seemed a very simple thing
to go
to Iceland,
as that was his business;
but
to my uncle it was sublime.

The worthy captain took advantage of his enthusiasm
to charge double fares;
but we did not trouble ourselves about mere trifles.

.

"You must be on board on Tuesday,
at seven in the morning,"
said Captain Bjarne,
after having pocketed more dollars than were his due.

Then we thanked M.

Thomsen
for his kindness,
"and we returned
to the Phoenix Hotel.

"It's all right,
it's all right,"
my uncle repeated.

"How fortunate we are
to have found this boat ready
for sailing.

Now let us have some breakfast and go about the town."

We went first
to Kongens-nye-Torw,
an irregular square in which are two innocent-looking guns,
which need not alarm any one.

Close by,
at No.

5,
there was a French
"restaurant,"
kept by a cook of the name of Vincent,
where we had an ample breakfast
for four marks each
(2_s_.

4_d_.).

Then I took a childish pleasure in exploring the city;
my uncle let me take him
with me,
but he took notice of nothing,
neither the insignificant king's palace,
nor the pretty seventeenth century bridge,
which spans the canal before the museum,
nor that immense cenotaph of Thorwaldsen's,
adorned
with horrible mural painting,
and containing within it a collection of the sculptor's works,
nor in a fine park the toylike chateau of Rosenberg,
nor the beautiful renaissance edifice of the Exchange,
nor its spire composed of the twisted tails of four bronze dragons,
nor the great windmill on the ramparts,
whose huge arms dilated in the sea breeze like the sails of a ship.

What delicious walks we should have had together,
my pretty Virlandaise and I,
along the harbour where the two-deckers and the frigate slept peaceably by the red roofing of the warehouse,
by the green banks of the strait,
through the deep shades of the trees amongst which the fort is half concealed,
where the guns are thrusting out their black throats between branches of alder and willow.

But,
alas! Gräuben was far away;
and I never hoped
to see her again.

But if my uncle felt no attraction towards these romantic scenes he was very much struck
with the aspect of a certain church spire situated in the island of Amak,
which forms the south-west quarter of Copenhagen.

I was ordered
to direct my feet that way;
I embarked on a small steamer which plies on the canals,
and in a few minutes she touched the quay of the dockyard.

After crossing a few narrow streets where some convicts,
in trousers half yellow and half grey,
were at work under the orders of the gangers,
we arrived at the Vor Frelsers Kirk.

There was nothing remarkable about the church;
but there was a reason why its tall spire had attracted the Professor's attention.

Starting from the top of the tower,
an external staircase wound around the spire,
the spirals circling up into the sky.

"Let us get
to the top,"
said my uncle.

"I shall be dizzy,"
I said.

"The more reason why we should go up;
we must get used
to it."

"But -"
"Come,
I tell you;
don't waste our time."

I had
to obey.

A keeper who lived at the other end of the street handed us the key,
and the ascent began.

My uncle went ahead
with a light step.

I followed him not without alarm,
for my head was very apt
to feel dizzy;
I possessed neither the equilibrium of an eagle nor his fearless nature.

As long as we were protected on the inside of the winding staircase up the tower,
all was well enough;
but after toiling up a hundred and fifty steps the fresh air came
to salute my face,
and we were on the leads of the tower.

There the aerial staircase began its gyrations,
only guarded by a thin iron rail,
and the narrowing steps seemed
to ascend into infinite space!
"Never shall I be able
to do it,"
I said.

"Don't be a coward;
come up,
sir";
said my uncle
with the coldest cruelty.

I had
to follow,
clutching at every step.

The keen air made me giddy;
I felt the spire rocking
with every gust of wind;
my knees began
to fail;
soon I was crawling on my knees,
then creeping on my stomach;
I closed my eyes;
I seemed
to be lost in space.

At last I reached the apex,
with the assistance of my uncle dragging me up by the collar.

"Look down!"
he cried.

"Look down well! You must take a lesson in abysses."

I opened my eyes.

I saw houses squashed flat as if they had all fallen down from the skies;
a smoke fog seemed
to drown them.

Over my head ragged clouds were drifting past,
and by an optical inversion they seemed stationary,
while the steeple,
the ball and I were all spinning along
with fantastic speed.

Far away on one side was the green country,
on the other the sea sparkled,
bathed in sunlight.

The Sound stretched away
to Elsinore,
dotted
with a few white sails,
like sea-gulls'
wings;
and in the misty east and away
to the north-east lay outstretched the faintly-shadowed shores of Sweden.

All this immensity of space whirled and wavered,
fluctuating beneath my eyes.

But I was compelled
to rise,
to stand up,
to look.

My first lesson in dizziness lasted an hour.

When I got permission
to come down and feel the solid street pavements I was afflicted
with severe lumbago.

"To-morrow we will do it again,"
said the Professor.

And it was so;
for five days in succession,
I was obliged
to undergo this anti-vertiginous exercise;
and whether I would or not,
I made some improvement in the art of
"lofty contemplations."

CHAPTER IX.

ICELAND! BUT WHAT NEXT?

The day
for our departure arrived.

The day before it our kind friend M.

Thomsen brought us letters of introduction
to Count Trampe,
the Governor of Iceland,
M.

Picturssen,
the bishop's suffragan,
and M.

Finsen,
mayor of Rejkiavik.

My uncle expressed his gratitude by tremendous compressions of both his hands.

On the 2nd,
at six in the evening,
all our precious baggage being safely on board the _Valkyria,_ the captain took us into a very narrow cabin.

"Is the wind favourable?"
my uncle asked.

"Excellent,"
replied Captain Bjarne;
"a sou'-easter.

We shall pass down the Sound full speed,
with all sails set."

In a few minutes the schooner,
under her mizen,
brigantine,
topsail,
and topgallant sail,
loosed from her moorings and made full sail through the straits.

In an hour the capital of Denmark seemed
to sink below the distant waves,
and the _Valkyria_ was skirting the coast by Elsinore.

In my nervous frame of mind I expected
to see the ghost of Hamlet wandering on the legendary castle terrace.

"Sublime madman!"
I said,
"no doubt you would approve of our expedition.

Perhaps you would keep us company
to the centre of the globe,
to find the solution of your eternal doubts."

But there was no ghostly shape upon the ancient walls.

Indeed,
the castle is much younger than the heroic prince of Denmark.

It now answers the purpose of a sumptuous lodge
for the doorkeeper of the straits of the Sound,
before which every year there pass fifteen thousand ships of all nations.

The castle of Kronsberg soon disappeared in the mist,
as well as the tower of Helsingborg,
built on the Swedish coast,
and the schooner passed lightly on her way urged by the breezes of the Cattegat.

The _Valkyria_ was a splendid sailer,
but on a sailing vessel you can place no dependence.

She was taking
to Rejkiavik coal,
household goods,
earthenware,
woollen clothing,
and a cargo of wheat.

The crew consisted of five men,
all Danes.

"How long will the passage take?"
my uncle asked.

"Ten days,"
the captain replied,
"if we don't meet a nor'-wester in passing the Faroes."

"But are you not subject
to considerable delays?"
"No,
M.

Liedenbrock,
don't be uneasy,
we shall get there in very good time."

At evening the schooner doubled the Skaw at the northern point of Denmark,
in the night passed the Skager Rack,
skirted Norway by Cape Lindness,
and entered the North Sea.

In two days more we sighted the coast of Scotland near Peterhead,,and the _Valkyria_ turned her lead towards the Faroe Islands,
passing between the Orkneys and Shetlands.

Soon the schooner encountered the great Atlantic swell;
she had
to tack against the north wind,
and reached the Faroes only
with some difficulty.

On the 8th the captain made out Myganness,
the southernmost of these islands,
and from that moment took a straight course
for Cape Portland,
the most southerly point of Iceland.

The passage was marked by nothing unusual.

I bore the troubles of the sea pretty well;
my uncle,
to his own intense disgust,
and his greater shame,
was ill all through the voyage.

He therefore was unable
to converse
with the captain about Snæfell,
the way
to get
to it,
the facilities
for transport,
he was obliged
to put off these inquiries until his arrival,
and spent all his time at full length in his cabin,
of which the timbers creaked and shook
with every pitch she took.

It must be confessed he was not undeserving of his punishment.

On the 11th we reached Cape Portland.

The clear open weather gave us a good view of Myrdals jokul,
which overhangs it.

The cape is merely a low hill
with steep sides,
standing lonely by the beach.

The _Valkyria_ kept at some distance from the coast,
taking a westerly course amidst great shoals of whales and sharks.

Soon we came in sight of an enormous perforated rock,
through which the sea dashed furiously.

The Westman islets seemed
to rise out of the ocean like a group of rocks in a liquid plain.

From that time the schooner took a wide berth and swept at a great distance round Cape Rejkianess,
which forms the western point of Iceland.

The rough sea prevented my uncle from coming on deck
to admire these shattered and surf-beaten coasts.

Forty-eight hours after,
coming out of a storm which forced the schooner
to scud under bare poles,
we sighted east of us the beacon on Cape Skagen,
where dangerous rocks extend far away seaward.

An Icelandic pilot came on board,
and in three hours the _Valkyria_ dropped her anchor before Rejkiavik,
in Faxa Bay.

The Professor at last emerged from his cabin,
rather pale and wretched-looking,
but still full of enthusiasm,
and
with ardent satisfaction shining in his eyes.

The population of the town,
wonderfully interested in the arrival of a vessel from which every one expected something,
formed in groups upon the quay.

My uncle left in haste his floating prison,
or rather hospital.

But before quitting the deck of the schooner he dragged me forward,
and pointing
with outstretched finger north of the bay at a distant mountain terminating in a double peak,
a pair of cones covered
with perpetual snow,
he cried:

"Snæfell! Snæfell!"
Then recommending me,
by an impressive gesture,
to keep silence,
he went into the boat which awaited him.

I followed,
and presently we were treading the soil of Iceland.

The first man we saw was a good-looking fellow enough,
in a general's uniform.

Yet he was not a general but a magistrate,
the Governor of the island,
M.

le Baron Trampe himself.

The Professor was soon aware of the presence he was in.

He delivered him his letters from Copenhagen,
and then followed a short conversation in the Danish language,
the purport of which I was quite ignorant of,
and
for a very good reason.

But the result of this first conversation was,
that Baron Trampe placed himself entirely at the service of Professor Liedenbrock.

My uncle was just as courteously received by the mayor,
M.

Finsen,
whose appearance was as military,
and disposition and office as pacific,
as the Governor's.

As
for the bishop's suffragan,
M.

Picturssen,
he was at that moment engaged on an episcopal visitation in the north.

For the time we must be resigned
to wait
for the honour of being presented
to him.

But M.

Fridrikssen,
professor of natural sciences at the school of Rejkiavik,
was a delightful man,
and his friendship became very precious
to me.

This modest philosopher spoke only Danish and Latin.

He came
to proffer me his good offices in the language of Horace,
and I felt that we were made
to understand each other.

In fact he was the only person in Iceland
with whom I could converse at all.

This good-natured gentleman made over
to us two of the three rooms which his house contained,
and we were soon installed in it
with all our luggage,
the abundance of which rather astonished the good people of Rejkiavik.

"Well,
Axel,"
said my uncle,
"we are getting on,
and now the worst is over."

"The worst!"
I said,
astonished.

"To be sure,
now we have nothing
to do but go down."

"Oh,
if that is all,
you are quite right;
but after all,
when we have gone down,
we shall have
to get up again,
I suppose?"
"Oh I don't trouble myself about that.

Come,
there's no time
to lose;
I am going
to the library.

Perhaps there is some manuscript of Saknussemm's there,
and I should be glad
to consult it."

"Well,
while you are there I will go into the town.

Won't you?"
"Oh,
that is very uninteresting
to me.

It is not what is upon this island,
but what is underneath,
that interests me."

I went out,
and wandered wherever chance took me.

It would not be easy
to lose your way in Rejkiavik.

I was therefore under no necessity
to inquire the road,
which exposes one
to mistakes when the only medium of intercourse is gesture.

The town extends along a low and marshy level,
between two hills.

An immense bed of lava bounds it on one side,
and falls gently towards the sea.

On the other extends the vast bay of Faxa,
shut in at the north by the enormous glacier of the Snæfell,
and of which the _Valkyria_ was
for the time the only occupant.

Usually the English and French conservators of fisheries moor in this bay,
but just then they were cruising about the western coasts of the island.

The longest of the only two streets that Rejkiavik possesses was parallel
with the beach.

Here live the merchants and traders,
in wooden cabins made of red planks set horizontally;
the other street,
running west,
ends at the little lake between the house of the bishop and other non-commercial people.

I had soon explored these melancholy ways;
here and there I got a glimpse of faded turf,
looking like a worn-out bit of carpet,
or some appearance of a kitchen garden,
the sparse vegetables of which
(potatoes,
cabbages,
and lettuces),
would have figured appropriately upon a Lilliputian table.

A few sickly wallflowers were trying
to enjoy the air and sunshine.

About the middle of the tin-commercial street I found the public cemetery,
inclosed
with a mud wall,
and where there seemed plenty of room.

Then a few steps brought me
to the Governor's house,
a but compared
with the town hall of Hamburg,
a palace in comparison
with the cabins of the Icelandic population.

Between the little lake and the town the church is built in the Protestant style,
of calcined stones extracted out of the volcanoes by their own labour and at their own expense;
in high westerly winds it was manifest that the red tiles of the roof would be scattered in the air,
to the great danger of the faithful worshippers.

On a neighbouring hill I perceived the national school,
where,
as I was informed later by our host,
were taught Hebrew,
English,
French,
and Danish,
four languages of which,
with shame I confess it,
I don't know a single word;
after an examination I should have had
to stand last of the forty scholars educated at this little college,
and I should have been held unworthy
to sleep along
with them in one of those little double closets,
where more delicate youths would have died of suffocation the very first night.

In three hours I had seen not only the town but its environs.

The general aspect was wonderfully dull.

No trees,
and scarcely any vegetation.

Everywhere bare rocks,
signs of volcanic action.

The Icelandic buts are made of earth and turf,
and the walls slope inward;
they rather resemble roofs placed on the ground.

But then these roofs are meadows of comparative fertility.

Thanks
to the internal heat,
the grass grows on them
to some degree of perfection.

It is carefully mown in the hay season;
if it were not,
the horses would come
to pasture on these green abodes.

In my excursion I met but few people.

On returning
to the main street I found the greater part of the population busied in drying,
salting,
and putting on board codfish,
their chief export.

The men looked like robust but heavy,
blond Germans
with pensive eyes,
conscious of being far removed from their fellow creatures,
poor exiles relegated
to this land of ice,
poor creatures who should have been Esquimaux,
since nature had condemned t