The Shadow Of Scartaris

: A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth

Our supper was eaten with ease and rapidity, after which everybody did

the best he could for himself within the hollow of the crater. The bed

was hard, the shelter unsatisfactory, the situation painful lying in

the open air, five thousand feet above the level of the sea!



Nevertheless, it has seldom happened to me to sleep so well as I did on

that particular night. I did not even dream. So much for the effects of

what my uncle called "wholesome fatigue."



Next day, when we awoke under the rays of a bright and glorious sun, we

were nearly frozen by the keen air. I left my granite couch and made one

of the party to enjoy a view of the magnificent spectacle which

developed itself, panorama-like, at our feet.



I stood upon the lofty summit of Mount Sneffels' southern peak. Thence I

was able to obtain a view of the greater part of the island. The optical

delusion, common to all lofty heights, raised the shores of the island,

while the central portions appeared depressed. It was by no means too

great a flight of fancy to believe that a giant picture was stretched

out before me. I could see the deep valleys that crossed each other in

every direction. I could see precipices looking like sides of wells,

lakes that seemed to be changed into ponds, ponds that looked like

puddles, and rivers that were transformed into petty brooks. To my right

were glaciers upon glaciers, and multiplied peaks, topped with light

clouds of smoke.



The undulation of these infinite numbers of mountains, whose snowy

summits make them look as if covered by foam, recalled to my remembrance

the surface of a storm-beaten ocean. If I looked towards the west, the

ocean lay before me in all its majestic grandeur, a continuation as it

were, of these fleecy hilltops.



Where the earth ended and the sea began it was impossible for the eye to

distinguish.



I soon felt that strange and mysterious sensation which is awakened in

the mind when looking down from lofty hilltops, and now I was able to do

so without any feeling of nervousness, having fortunately hardened

myself to that kind of sublime contemplation.



I wholly forgot who I was, and where I was. I became intoxicated with a

sense of lofty sublimity, without thought of the abysses into which my

daring was soon about to plunge me. I was presently, however, brought

back to the realities of life by the arrival of the Professor and Hans,

who joined me upon the lofty summit of the peak.



My uncle, turning in a westerly direction, pointed out to me a light

cloud of vapor, a kind of haze, with a faint outline of land rising out

of the waters.



"Greenland!" said he.



"Greenland?" cried I in reply.



"Yes," continued my uncle, who always when explaining anything spoke as

if he were in a professor's chair; "we are not more than thirty-five

leagues distant from that wonderful land. When the great annual breakup

of the ice takes place, white bears come over to Iceland, carried by the

floating masses of ice from the north. This, however, is a matter of

little consequence. We are now on the summit of the great, the

transcendent Sneffels, and here are its two peaks, north and south. Hans

will tell you the name by which the people of Iceland call that on which

we stand."



My uncle turned to the imperturbable guide, who nodded, and spoke as

usual one word.



"Scartaris."



My uncle looked at me with a proud and triumphant glance.



"A crater," he said, "you hear?"



I did hear, but I was totally unable to make reply.



The crater of Mount Sneffels represented an inverted cone, the gaping

orifice apparently half a mile across; the depth indefinite feet.

Conceive what this hole must have been like when full of flame and

thunder and lightning. The bottom of the funnel-shaped hollow was about

five hundred feet in circumference, by which it will be seen that the

slope from the summit to the bottom was very gradual, and we were

therefore clearly able to get there without much fatigue or difficulty.

Involuntarily, I compared this crater to an enormous loaded cannon; and

the comparison completely terrified me.



"To descend into the interior of a cannon," I thought to myself, "when

perhaps it is loaded, and will go off at the least shock, is the act of

a madman."



But there was no longer any opportunity for me to hesitate. Hans, with a

perfectly calm and indifferent air, took his usual post at the head of

the adventurous little band. I followed without uttering a syllable.



I felt like the lamb led to the slaughter.



In order to render the descent less difficult, Hans took his way down

the interior of the cone in rather a zigzag fashion, making, as the

sailors say, long tracks to the eastward, followed by equally long ones

to the west. It was necessary to walk through the midst of eruptive

rocks, some of which, shaken in their balance, went rolling down with

thundering clamor to the bottom of the abyss. These continual falls

awoke echoes of singular power and effect.



Many portions of the cone consisted of inferior glaciers. Hans, whenever

he met with one of these obstacles, advanced with a great show of

precaution, sounding the soil with his long iron pole in order to

discover fissures and layers of deep soft snow. In many doubtful or

dangerous places, it became necessary for us to be tied together by a

long rope in order that should any one of us be unfortunate enough to

slip, he would be supported by his companions. This connecting link was

doubtless a prudent precaution, but not by any means unattended with

danger.



Nevertheless, and despite all the manifold difficulties of the descent,

along slopes with which our guide was wholly unacquainted, we made

considerable progress without accident. One of our great parcels of rope

slipped from one of the Iceland porters, and rushed by a short cut to

the bottom of the abyss.



By midday we were at the end of our journey. I looked upwards, and saw

only the upper orifice of the cone, which served as a circular frame to

a very small portion of the sky a portion which seemed to me singularly

beautiful. Should I ever again gaze on that lovely sunlit sky!



The only exception to this extraordinary landscape, was the Peak of

Scartaris, which seemed lost in the great void of the heavens.



The bottom of the crater was composed of three separate shafts, through

which, during periods of eruption, when Sneffels was in action, the

great central furnace sent forth its burning lava and poisonous vapors.

Each of these chimneys or shafts gaped open-mouthed in our path. I kept

as far away from them as possible, not even venturing to take the

faintest peep downwards.



As for the Professor, after a rapid examination of their disposition and

characteristics, he became breathless and panting. He ran from one to

the other like a delighted schoolboy, gesticulating wildly, and uttering

incomprehensible and disjointed phrases in all sorts of languages.



Hans, the guide, and his humbler companions seated themselves on some

piles of lava and looked silently on. They clearly took my uncle for a

lunatic; and waited the result.



Suddenly the Professor uttered a wild, unearthly cry. At first I

imagined he had lost his footing, and was falling headlong into one of

the yawning gulfs. Nothing of the kind. I saw him, his arms spread out

to their widest extent, his legs stretched apart, standing upright

before an enormous pedestal, high enough and black enough to bear a

gigantic statue of Pluto. His attitude and mien were that of a man

utterly stupefied. But his stupefaction was speedily changed to the

wildest joy.



"Harry! Harry! come here!" he cried; "make haste wonderful wonderful!"



Unable to understand what he meant, I turned to obey his commands.

Neither Hans nor the other Icelanders moved a step.



"Look!" said the Professor, in something of the manner of the French

general, pointing out the pyramids to his army.



And fully partaking his stupefaction, if not his joy, I read on the

eastern side of the huge block of stone, the same characters, half eaten

away by the corrosive action of time, the name, to me a thousand times

accursed




"Arne Saknussemm!" cried my uncle, "now, unbeliever, do you begin to

have faith?"



It was totally impossible for me to answer a single word. I went back to

my pile of lava, in a state of silent awe. The evidence was

unanswerable, overwhelming!



In a few moments, however, my thoughts were far away, back in my German

home, with Gretchen and the old cook. What would I have given for one of

my cousin's smiles, for one of the ancient domestic's omelettes, and for

my own feather bed!



How long I remained in this state I know not. All I can say is, that

when at last I raised my head from between my hands, there remained at

the bottom of the crater only myself, my uncle and Hans. The Icelandic

porters had been dismissed and were now descending the exterior slopes

of Mount Sneffels, on their way to Stapi. How heartily did I wish myself

with them!



Hans slept tranquilly at the foot of a rock in a kind of rill of lava,

where he had made himself a rough and ready bed. MY uncle was walking

about the bottom of the crater like a wild beast in a cage. I had no

desire, neither had I the strength, to move from my recumbent position.

Taking example by the guide, I gave way to a kind of painful somnolency,

during which I seemed both to hear and feel continued heavings and

shudderings in the mountain.



In this way we passed our first night in the interior of a crater.



Next morning, a grey, cloudy, heavy sky hung like a funereal pall over

the summit of the volcanic cone. I did not notice it so much from the

obscurity that reigned around us, as from the rage with which my uncle

was devoured.



I fully understood the reason, and again a glimpse of hope made my heart

leap with joy. I will briefly explain the cause.



Of the three openings which yawned beneath our steps, only one could

have been followed by the adventurous Saknussemm. According to the words

of the learned Icelander, it was only to be known by that one particular

mentioned in the cryptograph, that the shadow of Scartaris fell upon it,

just touching its mouth in the last days of the month of June.



We were, in fact, to consider the pointed peak as the stylus of an

immense sun-dial, the shadow of which pointed on one given day, like the

inexorable finger of fate, to the yawning chasm which led into the

interior of the earth.



Now, as often happens in these regions, should the sun fail to burst

through the clouds, no shadow. Consequently, no chance of discovering

the right aperture. We had already reached the 25th June. If the kindly

heavens would only remain densely clouded for six more days, we should

have to put off our voyage of discovery for another year, when certainly

there would be one person fewer in the party. I already had sufficient

of the mad and monstrous enterprise.



It would be utterly impossible to depict the impotent rage of Professor

Hardwigg. The day passed away, and not the faintest outline of a shadow

could be seen at the bottom of the crater. Hans the guide never moved

from his place. He must have been curious to know what we were about, if

indeed he could believe we were about anything. As for my uncle, he

never addressed a word to me. He was nursing his wrath to keep it warm!

His eyes fixed on the black and foggy atmosphere, his complexion hideous

with suppressed passion. Never had his eyes appeared so fierce, his nose

so aquiline, his mouth so hard and firm.



On the 26th no change for the better. A mixture of rain and snow fell

during the whole day. Hans very quietly built himself a hut of lava into

which he retired like Diogenes into his tub. I took a malicious delight

in watching the thousand little cascades that flowed down the side of

the cone, carrying with them at times a stream of stones into the "vasty

deep" below.



My uncle was almost frantic: to be sure, it was enough to make even a

patient man angry. He had reached to a certain extent the goal of his

desires, and yet he was likely to be wrecked in port.



But if the heavens and the elements are capable of causing us much pain

and sorrow, there are two sides to a medal. And there was reserved for

Professor Hardwigg a brilliant and sudden surprise which was to

compensate him for all his sufferings.



Next day the sky was still overcast, but on Sunday, the 28th, the last

day but two of the month, with a sudden change of wind and a new moon

there came a change of weather. The sun poured its beaming rays to the

very bottom of the crater.



Each hillock, every rock, every stone, every asperity of the soil had

its share of the luminous effulgence, and its shadow fell heavily on the

soil. Among others, to his insane delight, the shadow of Scartaris was

marked and clear, and moved slowly with the radiant start of day.



My uncle moved with it in a state of mental ecstasy.



At twelve o'clock exactly, when the sun had attained its highest

altitude for the day, the shadow fell upon the edge of the central pit!



"Here it is," gasped the Professor in an agony of joy, "here it is we

have found it. Forward, my friends, into the Interior of the Earth."



I looked curiously at Hans to see what reply he would make to this

terrific announcement.



"Forut," said the guide tranquilly.



"Forward it is," answered my uncle, who was now in the seventh heaven of

delight.



When we were quite ready, our watches indicated thirteen minutes past

one!