Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (33 page)

This did not have the appearance of an arctic region, admittedly.

When the eye moved beyond this green enclosure, it quickly lost itself on the waters of an admirable ocean or lake, which meant that this enchanted place was an island, scarcely a few leagues wide. To the east one could see a little harbor with a few houses scattered around it, where boats of a peculiar shape floated on the waves of the azure water. Beyond, groups of islets emerged from the watery plain, so numerous that they resembled a big anthill. To the west, distant coasts lined the horizon; on some, blue mountains were outlined in a harmonious arrangement; on others, more distant, there appeared an extremely tall mountain with a plume of smoke at its summit. In the north, an immense expanse of water glittered in the sunlight, with the top of masts or the convex shape of wind-blown sails showing here and there.

The unexpectedness of this spectacle increased its marvelous beauty a hundredfold.

“Where are we? Where are we?” I repeated in a low voice.

Hans closed his eyes with indifference, and my uncle stared without understanding.

“Whatever mountain this may be,” he said at last, “it’s very hot here. The explosions are still going on, and it really wouldn’t be worth escaping from an eruption only to be hit on the head by a piece of rock. Let’s go down, and we’ll find out what’s going on. Besides, I’m dying from hunger and thirst.”

The professor was definitely not of a contemplative disposition. I for my part would have stayed in this place for many hours still, forgetting need and exhaustion, but I had to follow my companions.

The side of the volcano had very steep slopes; we slid into real potholes full of ashes, and avoided the lava streams that flowed down like serpents of fire. While we climbed down, I chattered volubly, for my imagination was too full not to overflow into words.

“We’re in Asia,” I exclaimed, “on the coasts of India, on the islands of Malaysia, or in the middle of the Pacific Islands! We have passed through half the globe and ended up almost at the antipodes of Europe.”

“But the compass?” replied my uncle.

“Yes! The compass!” I said with a confused look. “According to the compass we’ve always gone north.”

“So has it lied?”

“Lied!”

“Unless this is the North Pole!”

“The Pole! No, but .. :”

This was a fact I could not explain. I did not know what to think.

But now we were approaching the greenery, which was a pleasure to look at. Hunger tormented me, and thirst as well. Fortunately, after two hours of walking, a pretty countryside appeared before our eyes, completely covered with olive trees, pomegranate trees, and vines that looked as if they belonged to everybody. At any rate, in our destitute state we were not likely to be particular. What pleasure it was to press these tasty fruits to our lips, and to eat grapes by the mouthful from the purple vines! Not far off, I discovered a spring of fresh water in the grass, under the delicious shade of the trees, into which we plunged our faces and hands voluptuously

While each of us surrendered to all the sweetness of rest, a child appeared between two clusters of olive trees.

“Ah!” I exclaimed, “an inhabitant of this happy land!”

It was a poor little wretch, miserably clothed, rather sickly, and apparently very frightened at our appearance; indeed, half naked, with unkempt beards, we looked very bad, and unless this was a land of thieves, we were likely to frighten its inhabitants.

Just as the child was about to run away, Hans went after him and brought him back, in spite of his cries and kicks.

 

My uncle began by reassuring him as well as he could, and asked in good German:

“What is this mountain called, my little friend?”

The child did not answer. “Well,” said my uncle. “We are not in Germany”

And he repeated the same question in English.

Again, the child did not answer. I was very curious.

“Is he mute?” exclaimed the professor who, proud of his polyglottism, now reiterated the same question in French.

The same silence.

“Now let us try Italian,” resumed my uncle, and he said in that language:

“Yes, where are we?” I impatiently repeated.

The child still did not answer.

“Now then! Will you speak?” shouted my uncle, who began to lose his temper, and shook the child by the ears.
“Come si noma questa isola?”

“Stromboli”
^ce
replied the little shepherd, who slipped out of Hans’ hands and headed for the plain through the olive trees.

We had not thought of that! Stromboli! What effect this unexpected name had on my imagination! We were right in the Mediterranean, in the middle of the mythological Aeolian archipelago, on ancient Strongyle, where Aeolus‡ kept the winds and the storms chained up. And those blue mountains curving up in the east were the mountains of Calabria! And that volcano rising up on the southern horizon was Mt. Etna, the fierce Mt. Etna!

“Stromboli! Stromboli!” I repeated.

My uncle accompanied me with his gestures and words. We seemed to be singing like a choir!

Ah! What a journey! What a wonderful journey! Having entered through one volcano, we had exited through another, and that other one was more than twelve hundred leagues away from Snaefells, and from that barren landscape of Iceland at the edge of the world! The coincidences of the expedition had taken us into the heart of the most harmonious areas of the earth. We had exchanged the regions of perpetual snow for those of infinite green, and had left the grayish fog of the icy regions over our heads only to come back to the azure sky of Sicily!

After a delicious meal of fruits and fresh water, we set off again to reach the port of Stromboli. Revealing how we had arrived on the island did not seem advisable to us: Italians with their superstitious tendency would inevitably have cast us as demons vomited up from the pit of hell; so we had to resign ourselves to pretending we were only victims of a shipwreck. It was less glorious, but safer.

On the way I heard my uncle murmuring:

“But the compass! The compass that pointed due north! How to explain that?”

“Indeed!” I said with an air of great disdain, “it’s easier not to explain!”

“Absolutely not! A professor of the Johanneum unable to find the reason for a cosmic phenomenon, that would be a disgrace!”

As he spoke these words, my uncle, half-naked, with his leather purse around his waist and adjusting his glasses on his nose, became once more the fearsome professor of mineralogy.

One hour after we had left the olive grove, we arrived at the port of San Vicenzo, where Hans claimed the price of his thirteenth week of service, which was paid out to him with warm handshakes.

At that moment, even if he did not share our natural emotion, he at least allowed himself an unusual expression of feeling.

He lightly squeezed our hands with the tips of his fingers, and began to smile.

THIS IS THE END of a story that even people who are not usually amazed at anything may refuse to believe. But I am armed in advance against human incredulity.

The Stromboli fishermen received us with the care that is due to victims of shipwreck. They gave us clothing and food. After forty-eight hours of waiting, a small rowboat took us to Messina
^cf
on August 31, where a few days of rest helped us recover from all our exhaustion.

On Friday, September 4, we embarked on the steamer
Volturne,
one of the steamships used by the imperial French postal services, and three days later we landed in Marseilles, with only one worry left on our minds, that of the accursed compass. This inexplicable fact kept bothering me very seriously. On the evening of September 9, we arrived in Hamburg.

Martha’s amazement and Graüben’s joy I will not even try to describe.

“Now that you’re a hero, Axel,” said my dear fiancee to me, “you won’t need to leave me ever again!”

I looked at her. She cried and smiled at the same time.

I will leave it to you to guess whether Professor Lidenbrock’s return to Hamburg caused a sensation. Thanks to Martha’s indiscretion, the news of his departure for the center of the earth had spread around the whole world. People refused to believe it, and when they saw him again, they refused to believe even more.

But Hans’ presence and various pieces of information that had come from Iceland gradually changed public opinion.

Then my uncle became a great man, and myself the nephew of a great man, which is at least something. Hamburg gave a party in our honor. A public lecture took place at the Johanneum, where the professor told the story of his expedition and omitted only the facts relating to the compass. On the same day, he deposited Saknussemm’s document in the municipal archives and expressed his deep regret that circumstances more powerful than his will had prevented him from following the traces of the Icelandic traveler to the center of the earth. He was humble in his glory, and his reputation increased even more.

So much honor inevitably had to create envy. It did, and since his theories, supported by solid facts, contradicted existing scientific theories on the question of core heat, he had remarkable discussions with scholars of all countries, in writing and in person.

For my part, I cannot agree with his theory of cooling: in spite of what I have seen, I believe and will always believe in core heat; but I admit that certain as yet ill-defined circumstances can modify this law under the impact of natural phenomena.

At the moment when these questions were most exciting, my uncle experienced a real distress. Hans, in spite of his entreaties, had left Hamburg; the man to whom we owed everything did not want to let us pay him our debt. He was overcome by nostalgia for Iceland.

“Farval,” he said one day, and with that simple word of farewell he left for Reykjavik, where he arrived safely.

We were extremely attached to our brave eider-down hunter; in spite of his absence, he will never be forgotten by those whose lives he has saved, and certainly I will not die before I have seen him again one last time.

To conclude, I should add that this Journey to the Center of the Earth caused an enormous sensation in the world. It was printed and translated into all languages; the leading newspapers snatched the main episodes from each other, which were commented on, debated, attacked and defended with equal conviction in the camp of the believers as in that of the skeptics. A rare thing! My uncle was able to enjoy in his lifetime all the fame he had attained, and even Mr. Barnum himself proposed to “exhibit” him in the States of the Union for a very high price.

But one concern, one might even say a torment, remained in the middle of this glory One fact remained inexplicable, the one involving the compass; now, for a scholar, such an unexplained phenomenon becomes torture for the intelligence. Well! Heaven had destined my uncle to become completely happy

One day, when I was arranging a collection of minerals in his study, I noticed that famous compass in a corner, and I began to examine it.

It had been there for six months, unaware of the trouble it was causing.

Suddenly, what amazement! I gave a shout. The professor came running.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“That compass!”

“Well?”

“But its needle is pointing south and not north!”

“What are you saying?”

“Look! Its poles are reversed.”

“Reversed!”

My uncle looked, compared, and made the house shake with a gigantic leap.

What light broke in on his spirit and mine at the same time!

“So then,” he exclaimed, as soon as he was able to speak again, “after we arrived at Cape Saknussemm, the needle of this damned compass pointed south instead of north?”

“Obviously.”

“That’s the explanation for our mistake. But what phenomenon could have caused this reversal of the poles?”

“Nothing easier.”

“Tell me, Axel.”

“During the storm on the Lidenbrock Sea, that ball of fire which magnetized the iron on the raft had very simply disoriented our compass!”

“Ah!” shouted the professor and broke out in laughter. “So it was an electric trick?”

From that day on, the professor was the happiest of scholars, and I was the happiest of men, for my pretty Virland girl, resigning her place as ward, took up position in the house on the Konigstrasse in the double capacity of niece and wife. No need to add that her uncle was the illustrious Otto Lidenbrock, corresponding member of all the scientific, geographical, and mineralogical societies on the five continents of the earth.