XVI

XVI

DINNER WAS RAPIDLY CONSUMED, and the little company housed itself as best it could. The bed was hard, the shelter insubstantial, and our situation uncomfortable at five thousand feet above sea level. Yet I slept particularly well; it was one of the best nights I had ever had, and I did not even dream.

Next morning we awoke half frozen by the sharp keen air, but in the light of a splendid sun. I rose from my granite bed and went out to enjoy the magnificent spectacle that spread out before my eyes.

I stood on the summit of the southernmost of Snaefells’ peaks. From there, my view extended over the greatest part of the island. By an optical law which obtains at all great heights, the shores seemed raised and the center depressed. It seemed as if one of Helbesmer’s relief maps lay at my feet. I could see deep valleys intersecting each other in every direction, precipices like wells, lakes reduced to ponds, rivers shortened to creeks. On my right innumerable glaciers and multiple peaks succeeded each other, some plumed with feathery clouds of smoke. The undulations of these endless mountains, whose layers of snow made them look foamy, reminded me of the surface of a stormy sea. When I turned westward, the ocean lay spread out majestically, like a continuation of these sheep-like summits. The eye could hardly tell where the earth ended and the waves began.

I plunged into the famous ecstasy that high summits create in the mind, and this time without vertigo, for I was finally getting used to these sublime contemplations. My dazzled eyes were bathed in the bright flood of the solar rays. I was forgetting who I was, where I was, and lived instead the life of elves and sylphs, imaginary inhabitants of Scandinavian mythology. I felt intoxicated by the pleasure of the heights without thinking of the abysses into which fate would soon plunge me. But I was brought back to reality by the arrival of Hans and the professor, who joined me on the summit.

My uncle, turning west, pointed out to me a light steam, a mist, a semblance of land that dominated the horizon line.

“Greenland,” he said.

“Greenland?” I exclaimed.

“Yes; we’re only thirty-five leagues from it; and during thaws the polar bears come all the way to Iceland, carried atop icebergs. But that doesn’t matter. Here we are at the top of Snaefells, and there are two peaks, one north and one south. Hans will tell us the name of the one on which we’re standing.”

The question being put, Hans replied:

“Scartaris.”

My uncle shot a triumphant glance at me.

“To the crater!” he exclaimed.

The crater of Snaefells resembled an inverted cone, whose opening might have been half a league in diameter. Its depth appeared to be about two thousand feet. Imagine the aspect of such a container when it filled with thunder and flames. The bottom of the funnel was about 250 feet in circumference, so that its rather gentle slopes allowed its lower brim to be reached without difficulty. Involuntarily I compared the whole crater to an enormous hollow grenade launcher, and the comparison frightened me.

“What madness,” I thought, “to go down into a grenade launcher when it’s perhaps loaded and can go off at the slightest impact!”

But there was no way out. Hans resumed the lead with an air of indifference. I followed him without a word.

In order to make the descent easier, Hans wound his way down the cone on a spiral path. We had to walk amidst eruptive rocks, some of which, shaken out of their sockets, fell bouncing down into the abyss. Their fall gave rise to surprisingly loud echoes.

In certain parts of the cone there were glaciers. Here Hans advanced only with extreme caution, sounding his way with his iron-tipped walking stick, to discover any crevasses in it. At particularly dubious passages it was necessary to tie ourselves to each other with a long cord, so that anyone who unexpectedly lost his foothold could be held up by his companions. This solidarity was prudent, but did not eliminate all danger.

Yet, notwithstanding the difficulties of the descent, on slopes unknown to the guide, the journey was accomplished without accidents, except the loss of a coil of rope, which escaped from the hands of an Icelander, and took the shortest way to the bottom of the abyss.

At mid-day we had arrived. I raised my head and saw straight above me the upper aperture of the cone, framing a bit of sky of very small circumference, but almost perfectly round. Just on the edge appeared the snowy peak of Scartaris reaching into infinity.

At the bottom of the crater three chimneys opened up, through which Snaefells, during its eruptions, had evacuated lava and steam from its central furnace. Each of these chimneys was about a hundred feet in diameter. They gaped before us right in our path. I did not have the courage to look down into them. But Professor Lidenbrock had quickly examined all three; he was panting, running from one to the other, gesticulating, and uttering unintelligible words. Hans and his comrades, seated on pieces of lava, looked on; they clearly thought he was mad.

Suddenly my uncle uttered a cry. I thought his foot must have slipped and that he had fallen down one of the holes. But no. I saw him, arms outstretched, legs apart, standing in front of a granite rock that was placed in the center of the crater like a pedestal ready to receive a statue of Pluto.an He stood with the posture of a stunned man, but one whose amazement was rapidly giving way to irrational joy.

“Axel, Axel,” he exclaimed. “Come, come!”

I ran. Hans and the Icelanders never stirred.

“Look!” said the professor.

And, sharing his astonishment, though not his joy, I read on the western face of the block, in Runic characters half eaten away by time, this thousand times accursed name:

“Arne Saknussemm!” replied my uncle. “Do you yet doubt?”

I made no answer; and I returned to my lava seat in consternation. The evidence crushed me.

How long I remained plunged into my reflections I cannot tell. All I know is that when I raised my head again, I saw only my uncle and Hans at the bottom of the crater. The Icelanders had been dismissed, and they were now descending the outer slopes of Snaefells to return to Stapi.

Hans slept peaceably at the foot of a rock, in a lava bed, where he had made an improvised bed for himself; but my uncle was pacing around the bottom of the crater like a wild beast in a trapper’s pit. I had neither the wish nor the strength to rise, and following the guide’s example I went off into a painful slumber, thinking I could hear noises or feel tremors in the sides of the mountain.

Thus the first night at the bottom of the crater passed.

The next morning, a grey, heavy, cloudy sky hung over the summit of the cone. I did not realize this so much because of the darkness in the chasm as because of the rage that seized my uncle.

I understood the reason, and a glimmer of hope came back to my heart. Here is why.

Of the three routes open to us, only one had been taken by Saknussemm. According to the Icelandic scholar, one had to identify it by the detail mentioned in the cryptogram, that the shadow of Scartaris would touch its edges during the last days of the month of June.

That sharp peak might hence be considered the hand of a vast sun dial, whose shadow on a given day would indicate the path to the center of the earth.

But if there were to be no sun, no shadow. Consequently, no indicator. It was June 25. If the sky remained overcast for six days, we would have to postpone the observation to another year.

I decline to describe Professor Lidenbrock’s impotent rage. The day passed, and no shadow came to stretch along the bottom of the crater. Hans did not move from his spot; yet he must be asking himself what we were waiting for, if he asked himself anything at all. My uncle did not address a single word to me. His gaze, invariably turned to the sky, lost itself in its gray and misty hue.

On the 26th, nothing yet. Rain mingled with snow fell all day long. Hans built a hut with pieces of lava. I took a certain pleasure in watching the thousands of improvised waterfalls on the sides of the cone, where every stone increased the deafening murmur.

My uncle could no longer control himself. It was indeed enough to irritate a more patient man than him, because this was really shipwreck before leaving the port.

But Heaven always mixes great grief with great joy, and for Professor Lidenbrock there was satisfaction equal to his desperate troubles in store.

It softly brushed the edge of the middle chimney.

The next day the sky was again overcast; but on the 29th of June, the next-to-last day of the month, a change of weather came with the change of the moon. The sun poured a flood of light down the crater. Every hill, every stone, every roughness got its share of the luminous flow and instantly threw its shadow on the ground. Among them all, that of Scartaris was outlined with a sharp edge and began to move slowly in the opposite direction from that of the radiant star.

My uncle turned with it.

At noon, when it was shortest, it softly brushed the edge of the middle chimney.

“There it is! there it is!” shouted the professor. “To the center of the globe!” he added in Danish.

I looked at Hans.

“Forüt!” he said quietly.

“Forward!” replied my uncle.

It was thirteen minutes past one.