A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
By Jules Verne
CHAPTER 38
NO OUTLET--BLASTING THE ROCK
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, which 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!
