No Outlet Blasting The Rock

: A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth

Ever since the commencement of our marvelous journey, I had experienced

many surprises, had suffered from many illusions. I thought that I was

case-hardened against all surprises and could neither see nor hear

anything to amaze me again.



I was like a many who, having been round the world, finds himself wholly

blase and proof against the marvelous.



When, however, I saw these two letters, whic had been engraven three

hundred years before, I stood fixed in an attitude of mute surprise.



Not only was there the signature of the learned and enterprising

alchemist written in the rock, but I held in my hand the very identical

instrument with which he had laboriously engraved it.



It was impossible, without showing an amount of incredulity scarcely

becoming a sane man, to deny the existence of the traveler, and the

reality of that voyage which I believed all along to have been a

myth the mystification of some fertile brain.



While these reflections were passing through my mind, my uncle, the

Professor, gave way to an access of feverish and poetical excitement.



"Wonderful and glorious genius, great Saknussemm," he cried, "you have

left no stone unturned, no resource omitted, to show to other mortals

the way into the interior of our mighty globe, and your fellow creatures

can find the trail left by your illustrious footsteps, three hundred

years ago, at the bottom of these obscure subterranean abodes. You have

been careful to secure for others the contemplation of these wonders and

marvels of creation. Your name engraved at every important stage of your

glorious journey leads the hopeful traveler direct to the great and

mighty discovery to which you devoted such energy and courage. The

audacious traveler, who shall follow your footsteps to the last, will

doubtless find your initials engraved with your own hand upon the centre

of the earth. I will be that audacious traveler I, too, will sign my

name upon the very same spot, upon the central granite stone of this



wondrous work of the Creator. But in justice to your devotion, to your

courage, and to your being the first to indicate the road, let this

cape, seen by you upon the shores of this sea discovered by you, be

called, of all time, Cape Saknussemm."



This is what I heard, and I began to be roused to the pitch of

enthusiasm indicated by those words. A fierce excitement roused me. I

forgot everything. The dangers of the voyage and the perils of the

return journey were now as nothing!



What another man had done in ages past could, I felt, be done again; I

was determined to do it myself, and now nothing that man had

accomplished appeared to me impossible.



"Forward forward," I cried in a burst of genuine and hearty enthusiasm.



I had already started in the direction of the somber and gloomy gallery

when the Professor stopped me; he, the man so rash and hasty, he, the

man so easily roused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, checked me, and

asked me to be patient and show more calm.



"Let us return to our good friend, Hans," he said; "we will then bring

the raft down to this place."



I must say that though I at once yielded to my uncle's request, it was

not without dissatisfaction, and I hastened along the rocks of that

wonderful coast.



"Do you know, my dear uncle," I said, as we walked along, "that we have

been singularly helped by a concurrence of circumstances, right up to

this very moment."



"So you begin to see it, do you, Harry?" said the Professor with a

smile.



"Doubtless," I responded, "and strangely enough, even the tempest has

been the means of putting us on the right road. Blessings on the

tempest! It brought us safely back to the very spot from which fine

weather would have driven us forever. Supposing we had succeeded in

reaching the southern and distant shores of this extraordinary sea, what

would have become of us? The name of Saknussemm would never have

appeared to us, and at this moment we should have been cast away upon an

inhospitable coast, probably without an outlet."



"Yes, Harry, my boy, there is certainly something providential in that

wandering at the mercy of wind and waves towards the south: we have come

back exactly north; and what is better still, we fall upon this great

discovery of Cape Saknussemm. I mean to say, that it is more than

surprising; there is something in it which is far beyond my

comprehension. The coincidence is unheard of, marvelous!"



"What matter! It is not our duty to explain facts, but to make the best

possible use of them."



"Doubtless, my boy; but if you will allow me " said the really

delighted Professor.



"Excuse me, sir, but I see exactly how it will be; we shall take the

northern route; we shall pass under the northern regions of Europe,

under Sweden, under Russia, under Siberia, and who knows where instead

of burying ourselves under the burning plains and deserts of Africa, or

beneath the mighty waves of the ocean; and that is all, at this stage of

our journey, that I care to know. Let us advance, and Heaven will be our

guide!"



"Yes, Harry, you are right, quite right; all is for the best. Let us

abandon this horizontal sea, which could never have led to anything

satisfactory. We shall descend, descend, and everlastingly descend. Do

you know, my dear boy, that to reach the interior of the earth we have

only five thousand miles to travel!"



"Bah!" I cried, carried away by a burst of enthusiasm, "the distance is

scarcely worth speaking about. The thing is to make a start."



My wild, mad, and incoherent speeches continued until we rejoined our

patient and phlegmatic guide. All was, we found, prepared for an

immediate departure. There was not a single parcel but what was in its

proper place. We all took up our posts on the raft, and the sail being

hoisted, Hans received his directions, and guided the frail bark towards

Cape Saknussemm, as we had definitely named it.



The wind was very unfavorable to a craft that was unable to sail close

to the wind. It was constructed to go before the blast. We were

continually reduced to pushing ourselves forward by means of poles. On

several occasions the rocks ran far out into deep water and we were

compelled to make a long round. At last, after three long and weary

hours of navigation, that is to say, about six o'clock in the evening,

we found a place at which we could land.



I jumped on shore first. In my present state of excitement and

enthusiasm, I was always first. My uncle and the Icelander followed. The

voyage from the port to this point of the sea had by no means calmed me.

It had rather produced the opposite effect. I even proposed to burn our

vessel, that is, to destroy our raft, in order to completely cut off our

retreat. But my uncle sternly opposed this wild project. I began to

think him particularly lukewarm and unenthusiastic.



"At any rate, my dear uncle," I said, "let us start without delay."



"Yes, my boy, I am quite as eager to do so as you can be. But, in the

first place, let us examine this mysterious gallery, in order to find if

we shall need to prepare and mend our ladders."



My uncle now began to see to the efficiency of our Ruhmkorff coil, which

would doubtless soon be needed; the raft, securely fastened to a rock,

was left alone. Moreover, the opening into the new gallery was not

twenty paces distant from the spot. Our little troop, with myself at the

head, advanced.



The orifice, which was almost circular, presented a diameter of about

five feet; the somber tunnel was cut in the living rock, and coated on

the inside by the different material which had once passed through it in

a state of fusion. The lower part was about level with the water, so

that we were able to penetrate to the interior without difficulty.



We followed an almost horizontal direction; when, at the end of about a

dozen paces, our further advance was checked by the interposition of an

enormous block of granite rock.



"Accursed stone!" I cried furiously, on perceiving that we were stopped

by what seemed an insurmountable obstacle.



In vain we looked to the right, in vain we looked to the left; in vain

examined it above and below. There existed no passage, no sign of any

other tunnel. I experienced the most bitter and painful disappointment.

So enraged was I that I would not admit the reality of any obstacle. I

stooped to my knees; I looked under the mass of stone. No hole, no

interstice. I then looked above. The same barrier of granite! Hans, with

the lamp, examined the sides of the tunnel in every direction.



But all in vain! It was necessary to renounce all hope of passing

through.



I had seated myself upon the ground. My uncle walked angrily and

hopelessly up and down. He was evidently desperate.



"But," I cried, after some moments' thought, "what about Arne

Saknussemm?"



"You are right," replied my uncle, "he can never have been checked by a

lump of rock."



"No ten thousand times no," I cried, with extreme vivacity. "This huge

lump of rock, in consequence of some singular concussion, or process,

one of those magnetic phenomena which have so often shaken the

terrestrial crust, has in some unexpected way closed up the passage.

Many and many years have passed away since the return of Saknussemm, and

the fall of this huge block of granite. Is it not quite evident that

this gallery was formerly the outlet for the pent-up lava in the

interior of the earth, and that these eruptive matters then circulated

freely? Look at these recent fissures in the granite roof; it is

evidently formed of pieces of enormous stone, placed here as if by the

hand of a giant, who had worked to make a strong and substantial arch.

One day, after an unusually strong shock, the vast rock which stands in

our way, and which was doubtless the key of a kind of arch, fell through

to a level with the soil and has barred our further progress. We are

right, then, in thinking that this is an unexpected obstacle, with which

Saknussemm did not meet; and if we do not upset it in some way, we are

unworthy of following in the footsteps of the great discoverer; and

incapable of finding our way to the centre of the earth!"



In this wild way I addressed my uncle. The zeal of the Professor, his

earnest longing for success, had become part and parcel of my being. I

wholly forgot the past; I utterly despised the future. Nothing existed

for me upon the surface of this spheroid in the bosom of which I was

engulfed, no towns, no country, no Hamburg, no Koenigstrasse, not even

my poor Gretchen, who by this time would believe me utterly lost in the

interior of the earth!



"Well," cried my uncle, roused to enthusiasm by my words, "Let us go to

work with pickaxes, with crowbars, with anything that comes to hand but

down with these terrible walls."



"It is far too tough and too big to be destroyed by a pickax or

crowbar," I replied.



"What then?"



"As I said, it is useless to think of overcoming such a difficulty by

means of ordinary tools."



"What then?"



"What else but gunpowder, a subterranean mine? Let us blow up the

obstacle that stands in our way."



"Gunpowder!"



"Yes; all we have to do is to get rid of this paltry obstacle."



"To work, Hans, to work!" cried the Professor.



The Icelander went back to the raft, and soon returned with a huge

crowbar, with which he began to dig a hole in the rock, which was to

serve as a mine. It was by no means a slight task. It was necessary for

our purpose to make a cavity large enough to hold fifty pounds of

fulminating gun cotton, the expansive power of which is four times as

great as that of ordinary gunpowder.



I had now roused myself to an almost miraculous state of excitement.

While Hans was at work, I actively assisted my uncle to prepare a long

wick, made from damp gunpowder, the mass of which we finally enclosed in

a bag of linen.



"We are bound to go through," I cried, enthusiastically.



"We are bound to go through," responded the Professor, tapping me on the

back.



At midnight, our work as miners was completely finished; the charge of

fulminating cotton was thrust into the hollow, and the match, which we

had made of considerable length, was ready.



A spark was now sufficient to ignite this formidable engine, and to blow

the rock to atoms!



"We will now rest until tomorrow."



It was absolutely necessary to resign myself to my fate, and to consent

to wait for the explosion for six weary hours!