VIII

VIII

ALTONA, A REAL SUBURB of Hamburg, is the terminus of the Kiel railway, which was supposed to carry us to the Belts. In twenty minutes we were in Holstein.q

At half-past six the carriage stopped at the station; my uncle’s numerous packages, his voluminous travel items were unloaded, transported, weighed, labeled, loaded into the luggage car, and at seven we sat facing each other in our compartment. The whistle sounded, the engine started to move. We were off.

Was I resigned? Not yet. Yet the cool morning air and the scenes on the road, rapidly changing due to the speed of the train, distracted me from my great worry.

As for the professor’s reflections, they obviously overtook this slow conveyance with his impatience. We were alone in the carriage, but we sat in silence. My uncle examined all his pockets and his traveling bag with the most minute care. I saw that indeed none of the items necessary for the realization of his project were missing.

Among other documents, a carefully folded sheet of paper bore the letterhead of the Danish consulate with the signature of Mr. Christiensen, consul in Hamburg and a friend of the professor’s. This should make it easy for us to obtain letters of reference for the Governor of Iceland in Copenhagen.

I also observed the famous document, carefully hidden in the most secret pocket of his portfolio. I cursed it from the bottom of my heart, and then studied the landscape again. It was a vast series of uninteresting, monotonous, loamy and fertile flats; a very favorable landscape for the construction of railways, suitable for the straight lines so beloved by railway companies.

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

As our luggage was checked through to Copenhagen, we did not have to look after it. Nevertheless, the professor kept a cautious eye on it while it was being transported to the steamer. There, it disappeared in the hold.

In his haste, my uncle had so well calculated the connection between the train and the steamer that we had a whole day to kill. The steamer Ellenora would not leave until night.

Hence a nine-hour fever during which the irascible traveler sent the steamboat and of railway administrators to the devil, as well as the governments which tolerated such abuses. I was forced to echo him when he approached the captain of the Ellenora with this subject. He wanted to force him to heat up the engines without wasting a moment. The captain disposed of him summarily.

In Kiel, as elsewhere, a day eventually passes. What with walking on the verdant shores of the bay at the extreme of which lies the little town, exploring the dense woods which make it look like a nest amongst thick foliage, admiring the villas, each with a little bath house, and moving about and grumbling, at last ten o’clock came.

The heavy coils of smoke from the Ellenora rose to the sky; the bridge shook with the shudders of the boiler; we were on board, and owners of two berths, one above the other, in the ship’s only cabin.

At a quarter past ten the moorings were loosed and the steamer glided rapidly over the dark waters of the Great Belt.

The night was dark; there was a sharp breeze and rough sea; a few lights appeared on shore through the thick darkness; later on, I cannot tell when, a dazzling light from some lighthouse glittered above the waves; and that is all I can remember of this first passage.

At seven in the morning we landed at Korsör, a small town on the west coast of Zealand. There we transferred from the boat to another train, which took us across just as flat a country as the plain of Holstein.

Three hours’ traveling 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 exclaimed.

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

“That’s a lunatic asylum,” said one of our traveling companions.

Very good! I thought, just the place where we should spend the rest of our days! And large though it is, that asylum is not big enough to contain all Professor Lidenbrock’s madness!

At ten in the morning, at last, we set foot in Copenhagen; the luggage was loaded on to a carriage and taken to the Hotel Phoenix in Bredgade along with ourselves. This took half an hour, for the station is outside of the town. Then my uncle, after refreshing himself quickly, dragged me along with 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 this individual directed him to the Museum of Northern Antiquities.

The director of this curious establishment, in which marvels are piled up from which the ancient history of the country might be reconstructed by means of its stone weapons, its cups and its jewels, was Professor Thomson, a scholar, friend of the Danish consul at Hamburg.

My uncle had a cordial letter of introduction to him. As a general rule one scholar greets another with coolness. But here it was completely different. Mr. Thomson, a helpful man, extended a warm welcome to Professor Lidenbrock and the same to his nephew. It is hardly necessary to mention that the secret was preserved in the presence of the excellent museum director. We simply wanted to visit Iceland as disinterested amateurs.

Mr. Thomson put himself at our disposal, and we visited the quays so as to look for a ship getting ready for departure.

I still hoped that there would be absolutely no means of transportation; but no such luck. A small Danish schooner, the valkyrie, was to set sail for Reykjavik on the 2nd of June. The captain, Mr. Bjarne, was on board. His future passenger, full of joy, shook his hands so hard they almost broke. The good man was a little astonished at this grip. He found it quite simple to go to Iceland, since that was his profession. My uncle considered it sublime. The worthy captain took advantage of this enthusiasm to charge us double for the passage. But we did not trouble ourselves about such trifles.

“Be on board on Tuesday, at seven in the morning,” said Captain Bjarne, after having pocketed a considerable number of dollars.

We then thanked Mr. Thomson for his kindness, and returned to the Hotel Phoenix.

“It’s going well! It’s going very well!” my uncle repeated. “What a fortunate coincidence that we’ve found this ship that’s ready to leave! Now let’s have breakfast and go visit the town.”

We went first to Kongens Nytorv, an irregular square with a pedestal and two innocent cannons that aim at something but frighten no one. Close by, at No.5, there was a French “restaurant,” kept by a chef called Vincent; we had a sufficient breakfast for the moderate price of four marks each.r

I then 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 royal palace, nor the pretty seventeenth-century bridge that spans the canal in front of the museum, nor that immense cenotaph of Thorvaldsen’s,s decorated with horrible murals, which contains a collection of the sculptor’s works, nor the toylike chateau of Rosenberg, nor the beautiful Renaissance building of the Stock Exchange, nor its spire composed of the twisted tails of four bronze dragons, nor the great windmill on the ramparts whose huge arms swelled in the sea breeze like the sails of a ship.

What delicious walks we would have had together, my pretty Virland girl and I, along the harbor where the double-deckers and the frigate slept peaceably under their red roofing, by the green banks of the strait, through the deep shades of the trees amongst which the fort is half concealed, where the cannons thrust their black necks between the branches of alder and willow!

But, alas! she was far away, my poor Graüben, and could I hope ever to see her again?

Meanwhile, whereas my uncle saw none of these delightful places, he was very much struck by the sight of a certain clock tower on the island of Amager, which forms the southwestern part of Copenhagen.

I was ordered to walk in that direction; I embarked on a small steamer which crosses the canals, and in a few minutes it landed at the quay of the dockyard.

After crossing a few narrow streets where some convicts, in part yellow and part grey trousers, were at work under the orders of the wardens, we arrived at the Vor Frelsers Kirke. 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 platform, an external staircase wound around the spire, the spirals circling up into the sky.

“Let’s go up,” said my uncle.

“But the vertigo?” I replied.

“All the more reason, we must get used to it.”

“But—”

“Come, I tell you, let’s not waste time.”

I had to obey. A guard who lived at the other end of the street handed us the key, and the ascent began.

My uncle went ahead with a lively step. I followed him not without terror, because unfortunately my head turned dizzy very easily. I had neither an eagle’s balance nor his steely nerves.

As long as we were enclosed on the interior staircase, everything went well; but after a hundred and fifty steps fresh air hit me in the face, and we were on the platform of the tower. There the aerial staircase began, only guarded by a thin rail, and the narrowing steps seemed to ascend into infinite space.

“I’ll never be able to do it!” I exclaimed.

“What kind of a coward are you? Up!” the professor replied mercilessly.

I had to follow, clinging to every step. The keen air made me dizzy; I felt the spire rocking with every gust of wind; my legs began to fail; soon I crawled on my knees, then on my stomach; I closed my eyes; I had space sickness.

At last, my uncle dragging me by the collar, I reached the ball.

“Look down!” he exclaimed. “Look down carefully! We must take lessons in abysses.”

Ragged clouds drifted over my head.

I opened my eyes. I saw the houses flattened as if they had been squashed by a fall, in the midst of a fog of smoke. Ragged clouds drifted over my head, and through an optical inversion they seemed stationary, while the steeple, the ball and I were all moving along with fantastic speed. Far away on one side was the green country, on the other the sea sparkled under beams of sunlight. The Sound stretched away to Elsinore,t dotted with a few white sails, like sea-gulls’ wings; and in the misty east and away to the northeast lay outstretched the faintly-shadowed shores of Sweden. All this immensity of space whirled before my eyes.

Nevertheless I had to get up, stand straight, look. My first lesson in vertigo lasted an hour. When I finally got permission to go down and touch the solid street pavements with my feet, I was aching all over.

“We’ll start over again tomorrow,” said the professor.

And indeed, for five days, I repeated this vertiginous exercise, and willy-nilly, I made noticeable progress in the art of “lofty contemplations.”