Boldly Down The Crater

: A Journey To The Interior Of The Earth

Supper was rapidly devoured, and the little company housed themselves

as best they could. The bed was hard, the shelter not very

substantial, and our position an anxious one, at five thousand feet

above the 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 with the

light of a splend d sun. I rose from my granite bed and went out to

enjoy the magnificent spectacle that lay unrolled before me.



I stood on the very summit of the southernmost of Snaefell's peaks.

The range of the eye extended over the whole island. By an optical

law which obtains at all great heights, the shores seemed raised and

the centre depressed. It seemed as if one of Helbesmer's raised maps

lay at my feet. I could see deep valleys intersecting each other in

every direction, precipices like low walls, lakes reduced to ponds,

rivers abbreviated into streams. On my right were numberless glaciers

and innumerable peaks, some plumed with feathery clouds of smoke. The

undulating surface of these endless mountains, crested with sheets of

snow, reminded one of a stormy sea. If I looked westward, there the

ocean lay spread out in all its magnificence, like a mere

continuation of those flock-like summits. The eye could hardly tell

where the snowy ridges ended and the foaming waves began.



I was thus steeped in the marvellous ecstasy which all high summits

develop in the mind; and now without giddiness, for I was beginning

to be accustomed to these sublime aspects of nature. My dazzled eyes

were bathed in the bright flood of the solar rays. I was forgetting

where and who I was, to live the life of elves and sylphs, the

fanciful creation of Scandinavian superstitions. I felt intoxicated

with the sublime pleasure of lofty elevations without thinking of the

profound abysses into which I was shortly to be plunged. But I was

brought back to the realities of things by the arrival of Hans and

the Professor, who joined me on the summit.



My uncle pointed out to me in the far west a light steam or mist, a

semblance of land, which bounded the distant horizon of waters.



"Greenland!" said he.



"Greenland?" I cried.



"Yes; we are only thirty-five leagues from it; and during thaws the

white bears, borne by the ice fields from the north, are carried even

into Iceland. But never mind that. Here we are at the top of Snaefell

and here are two peaks, one north and one south. Hans will tell us

the name of that on which we are now standing."



The question being put, Hans replied:



"Scartaris."



My uncle shot a triumphant glance at me.



"Now for the crater!" he cried.



The crater of Snaefell resembled an inverted cone, the openingof which

might be half a league in diameter. Its depth appeared to be about

two thousand feet. Imagine the aspect of such a reservoir, brim full

and running over with liquid fire amid the rolling thunder. The

bottom of the funnel was about 250 feet in circuit, so that the

gentle slope allowed its lower brim to be reached without much

difficulty. Involuntarily I compared the whole crater to an enormous

erected mortar, and the comparison put me in a terrible fright.



"What madness," I thought, "to go down into a mortar, perhaps a

loaded mortar, to be shot up into the air at a moment's notice!"



But I did not try to back out of it. Hans with perfect coolness

resumed the lead, and I followed him without a word.



In order to facilitate the descent, Hans wound his way down the cone

by a spiral path. Our route lay amidst eruptive rocks, some of which,

shaken out of their loosened beds, rushed bounding down the abyss,

and in their fall awoke echoes remarkable for their loud and

well-defined sharpness.



In certain parts of the cone there were glaciers. Here Hans advanced

only with extreme precaution, sounding his way with his iron-pointed

pole, to discover any crevasses in it. At particularly dubious

passages we were obliged to connect ourselves with each other by a

long cord, in order that any man who missed his footing might be held

up by his companions. This solid formation was prudent, but did not

remove all danger.



Yet, notwithstanding the difficulties of the descent, down steeps

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 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 upon the edge

appeared the snowy peak of Saris, standing out sharp and clear

against endless space.



At the bottom of the crater were three chimneys, through which, in

its eruptions, Snaefell had driven forth fire and lava from its

central furnace. Each of these chimneys was a hundred feet in

diameter. They gaped before us right in our path. I had not the

courage to look down either of them. But Professor Liedenbrock had

hastily surveyed all three; he was panting, running from one to the

other, gesticulating, and uttering incoherent expressions. Hans and

his comrades, seated upon loose lava rocks, looked at him with asmuch

wonder as they knew how to express, and perhaps taking him for an

escaped lunatic.



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,

with arms outstretched and legs straddling wide apart, erect before a

granite rock that stood in the centre of the crater, just like a

pedestal made ready to receive a statue of Pluto. He stood like a man

stupefied, but the stupefaction soon gave way to delirious rapture.



"Axel, Axel," he cried. "Come, come!"



I ran. Hans and the Icelanders never stirred.



"Look!" cried the Professor.



And, sharing his astonishment, but I think not his joy, I read on the

western face of the block, in Runic characters, half mouldered away

with lapse of ages, this thrice-accursed name:



[At this point a Runic text appears]



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



I made no answer; and I returned in silence to my lava seat in a

state of utter speechless consternation. Here was crushing evidence.



How long I remained plunged in agonizing reflections I cannot tell;

all that I know is, that on raising 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 Snaefell

to return to Stapi.



Hans slept peaceably at the foot of a rock, in a lava bed, where he

had found a suitable couch for himself; but my uncle was pacing

around the bottom of the crater like a wild beast in a cage. I had

neither the wish nor the strength to rise, and following the guide's

example I went off into an unhappy slumber, fancying I could hear

ominous noises or feel tremblings within the recesses of the mountain.



Thus the first night in the crater passed away.



The next morning, a grey, heavy, cloudy sky seemed to droop over the

summit of the cone. I did not know this first from the appearances of

nature, but I found it out by my uncle's impetuous wrath.



I soon found out the cause, and hope dawned again in my heart. For

this reason.



Of the three ways open before us, one had been taken by Saknussemm.

The indications of the learned Icelander hinted at in the cryptogram,

pointed to this fact that the shadow of Scartaris came to touch that

particular way during the latter days of the month of June.



That sharp peak might hence be considered as the gnomon of a vast sun

dial, the shadow projected from which on a certain day would point

out the road to the centre of the earth.



Now, no sun no shadow, and therefore no guide. Here was June 25. If

the sun was clouded for six days we must postpone our visit till next

year.



My limited powers of description would fail, were I to attempt a

picture of the Professor's angry impatience. The day wore on, and no

shadow came to lay itself along the bottom of the crater. Hans did

not move from the spot he had selected; yet he must be asking himself

what were we waiting for, if he asked himself anything at all. My

uncle spoke not a word to me. His gaze, ever directed upwards, was

lost in the grey and misty space beyond.



On the 26th nothing yet. Rain mingled with snow was falling all day

long. Hans built a but of pieces of lava. I felt a malicious pleasure

in watching the thousand rills and cascades that came tumbling down

the sides of the cone, and the deafening continuous din awaked by

every stone against which they bounded.



My uncle's rage knew no bounds. It was enough to irritate a meeker

man than he; for it was foundering almost within the port.



But Heaven never sends unmixed grief, and for Professor Liedenbrock

there was a satisfaction in store proportioned to his desperate

anxieties.



The next day the sky was again overcast; but on the 29th of June, the

last day but one of the month, with the change of the moon came a

change of weather. The sun poured a flood of light down the crater.

Every hillock, every rock and stone, every projecting surface, had

its share of the beaming torrent, and threw its shadow on the ground.

Amongst them all, Scartaris laid down his sharp-pointed angular

shadow which began to move slowly in the opposite direction to that

of the radiant orb.



My uncle turned too, and followed it.



At noon, being at its least extent, it came and softly fell upon the

edge of the middle chimney.





"There it is! there it is!" shouted the Professor.



"Now for the centre of the globe!" he added in Danish.



I looked at Hans, to hear what he would say.



"FORUT!" was his tranquil answer.



"Forward!" replied my uncle.



It was thirteen minutes past one.