Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (8 page)

“Oh, come!” I thought, “he is in a good mood. Now’s the time for discussing this glory.”

“Before anything else,” my uncle resumed, “I recommend that you keep absolute secrecy, you understand? There are not a few in the scientific world who envy my success, and many would be ready to undertake this enterprise who’ll only find out about it at our return.”

“Do you really think there are many people bold enough?”

“Certainly; who would hesitate to acquire such fame? If that document were divulged, a whole army of geologists would be ready to rush into the footsteps of Arne Saknussemm.”

“That’s something I’m not convinced of, Uncle, because we have no proof of the authenticity of this document.”

“What! And the book inside which we discovered it?”

“Granted. I admit that Saknussemm may have written these lines. But does it follow that he’s really carried out such a journey? Couldn’t this old parchment be misleading?”

I almost regretted uttering this last, somewhat daring word. The professor knitted his thick brows, and I feared I had seriously compromised my own safety. Happily no great harm came of it. A kind of smile sketched itself on the lips of my severe interlocutor, and he answered:

“That is what we’ll see.”

“Ah!” I said, a bit offended. “But allow me to exhaust all the possible objections against this document.”

“Speak, my boy, don’t be afraid. You’re quite at liberty to express your opinions. You’re no longer my nephew only, but my colleague. Go ahead.”

“Well, in the first place, I’d like to ask what are this Jökull, this Snaefells, and this Scartaris, names which I’ve never heard before?”

“Nothing’s easier. I received a map from my friend Augustus Petermann
^l
at Leipzig not long ago; it could not have come at a better time. Take down the third atlas on the second shelf in the large bookcase, series Z, plate 4.”

I rose, and with the help of such precise instructions could not fail to find the required atlas. My uncle opened it and said:

“Here’s one of the best maps of Iceland, that of Handerson, and it’ll solve all our difficulties.”

I bent over the map.

“Look at this volcanic island,” said the professor; “and observe that all of them are called Jökulls. This word which means ‘glacier’ in Icelandic, and because of Iceland’s high latitude, almost all the eruptions break through layers of ice. Hence this term of Jökull is applied to all the island’s volcanoes.”

“Very good;” I said; ”but what of Snaefells?”

I was hoping that this question would be unanswerable; but I was mistaken. My uncle replied:

“Follow my finger along the west coast of Iceland. Do you see Reykjavik, the capital? Yes. Good. Go up the innumerable fjords
^m
on those shores eaten away by the sea, and stop just under 65° latitude. What do you see there?”

“A kind of peninsula looking like a bare bone with an enormous knee cap at the end.”

“A fair comparison, my boy. Now do you see anything on that knee cap?”

“Yes; a mountain that seems to have grown out of the sea.”

“Right. That’s Snaefells.”

“Snaefells?”

“It is. It is a mountain of five thousand feet, one of the most remarkable ones on the island and certainly the most famous one in the whole world if its crater leads down to the center of the earth.”

“But that’s impossible!” I exclaimed, shrugging my shoulders, and put off by such a ridiculous assumption.

“Impossible?” replied the professor severely. “Why?” “Because this crater is obviously filled with lava and burning rocks, and therefore ...”

“But suppose it’s an extinct volcano?”

“Extinct?”

“Yes; the number of active volcanoes on the surface of the globe is currently only about three hundred. But there’s a much larger quantity of extinct ones. Now, Snaefells is one of these, and since historic times it’s had only one eruption, that of 1219; from that time on, it has quieted down more and more, and now it is no longer counted among active volcanoes.”

To such definitive statements I could make no reply. I therefore took refuge in other dark passages of the document.

“What’s the meaning of this word Scartaris, and what have the calends of July to do with it?”

My uncle stopped to think for a few moments. I had a minute of hope, but only one, because he soon answered me as follows:

“What is darkness to you is light to me. This proves the ingenious care with which Saknussemm wanted to indicate his discovery. Snaefells has several craters. So it was necessary to point out which one of these leads to the center of the globe. What did the Icelandic scholar do? He observed that at the approach of the calends of July, that’s to say in the last days of June, one of the peaks, called Scartaris, throws its shadow down the mouth of that particular crater, and he committed that fact to his document. Could there possibly have been a more exact guide? As soon as we arrive at the summit of Snaefells we’ll have no hesitation as to the proper road to take.”

Decidedly, my uncle had answered every one of my objections. I saw that his position on the old parchment was impregnable. I therefore ceased to press him on that part of the subject, and as above all things he had to be convinced, I passed on to scientific objections, which in my opinion were far more serious.

“Well, then,” I said, “I’m forced to agree that Saknussemm’s sentence is clear, and leaves no room for doubt. I even admit that the document looks perfectly authentic. That learned scholar did go to the bottom of Snaefells; he saw the shadow of Scartaris touch the edge of the crater before the calends of July; he even heard the legendary stories of his time about that crater leading to the center of the world; but as reaching it himself, as for carrying out the journey and returning, if he ever went, no, a hundred times no!”

“And your reason?” said my uncle in an especially mocking tone of voice.

“It’s that all the theories of science demonstrate that such a feat is impossible!”

“All the theories say that, do they?” replied the professor in a jovial tone. “Oh! evil theories! How they will bother us, those poor theories!”

I saw that he was mocking me, but I continued all the same.

“Yes; it’s perfectly well known that the interior temperature rises one degree for every 70 feet in depth; now if this proportion to be constant and the radius of the earth is fifteen hundred leagues, the temperature at the core must be more than 200,000°C. Therefore all the substances in the interior of the earth are in a state of incandescent gas, because the metals, gold, platinum, the hardest rocks, can’t resist such heat. So I have the right to ask whether it’s possible to enter into such an environment!”

“So, Axel, it’s the heat that troubles you?”

“Of course it is. If we reach a depth of only ten leagues we’ll have arrived at the limit of the terrestrial crust, for there the temperature will be more than 1,300°C.”

“And are you afraid of melting?”

“I’ll leave it up to you to decide that question,” I answered rather sullenly.

“This is my decision,” replied Professor Lidenbrock, putting on one of his grandest airs. “Neither you nor anybody else knows with any certainty what’s going on in the interior of this globe, since not the twelve thousandth part of its radius is known; science is eminently perfectible, and every theory is constantly put in question by a newer one. Wasn’t it believed until Fourier
ⁿ
that the temperature of the interplanetary spaces was constantly decreasing? And don’t we know today that the greatest cold of the ethereal regions never goes beyond 40 or 50°C below zero? Why wouldn’t it be the same with the interior heat? Why wouldn’t it, at a certain depth, reach an upper limit instead of rising to the point where it melts the most resistant metals?”

Since my uncle was now moving the question to the terrain of theories, I had no answer.

“Well, I’ll tell you that true scholars, amongst them Poisson,
^o
have demonstrated that if a heat of 200,000°C existed in the interior of the globe, the white-hot gases from the molten matter would expand so much that the crust of the earth could not resist, and it would explode like the sides of a boiler under steam.”

“That’s Poisson’s opinion, Uncle, nothing more.”

“Granted, but other distinguished geologists also hold the opinion that the interior of the globe is neither gas nor water, nor any of the heaviest minerals known, for in that case, the earth would weigh less than it does.”

“Oh, with numbers you can prove anything!”

“But is it the same with facts, my boy? Is it not known that the number of volcanoes has considerably diminished since the first days of creation? And if there is heat at the core, can we not therefore conclude that it’s decreasing?”

“Uncle, if you enter into the domain of speculations, I have nothing further to discuss.”

“But I have to tell you that my opinion is supported by those of very competent people. Do you remember a visit that the celebrated chemist Humphry Davy paid to me in 1825?”

“Not at all, for I wasn’t born until nineteen years later.”
⁵

“Well, Humphry Davy did call on me on his way through Hamburg. We discussed for a long time, among other problems, the theory of the liquidity of the earth’s inner core. We agreed that it couldn’t be liquid, for a reason which science has never been able to refute.”

“What reason?” I said, a bit astonished.

“Because this liquid mass would be subject, like the ocean, to the attraction of the moon, and therefore there would be interior tides twice a day that would push up the terrestrial crust and cause periodical earthquakes!”

“Yet it’s evident that the surface of the globe has been subject to combustion,” I replied, “and it’s quite reasonable to suppose that the external crust cooled down first, while the heat gathered at the center.”

“A mistake,” my uncle answered. “The earth has been heated by combustion on its surface, not the other way around. Its surface was composed of a great number of metals, such as potassium and sodium, which have the property of igniting at mere contact with air and water; these metals kindled when atmospheric steam fell on the soil as rain; and by and by, when the waters penetrated into the fissures of the earth’s crust, they caused more fires with explosions and eruptions. Hence the numerous volcanoes during the first ages of the earth.”

“What an ingenious theory!” I exclaimed, a little in spite of myself.

“Which Humphry Davy demonstrated to me by a simple experiment. He made a ball of the metals that I’ve mentioned, which was a very fair representation of our globe; whenever he made a fine dew fall on its surface, it swelled up, oxidized and formed a little hill; a crater opened at its summit; the eruption took place, and spread such heat to the entire ball that it became impossible to hold it in one’s hand.”

In truth, I was beginning to be shaken by the professor’s arguments; besides, he proposed them with his usual passion and enthusiasm.

“You see, Axel,” he added, “the condition of the nucleus has given rise to various theories among geologists; there’s no proof at all for this interior heat; my opinion is that there’s no such thing, there cannot be; at any rate, we’ll see for ourselves, and like Arne Saknussemm, we’ll know exactly what the fact of the matter is concerning this big question.”

“Very well, we’ll see,” I replied, warming to his enthusiasm. “Yes, we’ll see, that is, if it’s possible to see anything there.”

“And why not? Can we not depend on electric phenomena to give us light, and even on the atmosphere, which might become luminous due to its pressure as we approach the center?”

“Yes,” I said, “yes! That’s possible, after all.”

“It’s certain,” answered my uncle in a tone of triumph. “But silence, do you hear me? silence on the whole subject, so that no one gets the idea of discovering the center of the earth before us.”

THUS ENDED THIS MEMORABLE session. This conversation threw me into a fever. I left my uncle’s study as if I had been stunned, and as if there was not air enough in all the streets of Hamburg to put me right again. I therefore walked toward the banks of the Elbe, where the steamer connects the city with the Hamburg railway.

Was I convinced of the truth of what I had heard? Had I not bent under Professor Lidenbrock’s iron rule? Was I to believe him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the center of this massive globe? Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a great genius? In all this, where did truth stop? Where did error begin?

I was adrift amongst a thousand contradictory assumptions, without being able to grasp any of them firmly.

Yet I remembered that I had been convinced, although now my enthusiasm was beginning to cool down; but I felt a desire to leave at once, and not waste time in calm reflection. Yes, I would have had enough courage enough to pack my suitcase at that moment.

But I must confess that in another hour this unnatural excitement abated, my nerves became unstrung, and from the deep abysses of this earth I ascended to its surface again.

“This is absurd!” I exclaimed, “there’s no common sense in it. No sensible young man should entertain such a proposal for a moment. The whole thing is non-existent. I’ve had a bad night, I’ve had a nightmare.”

But I had followed the banks of the Elbe and passed the town. After going back up to the port, I had reached the Altona road. I was led by a presentiment, a justified presentiment, because soon I saw my little Graüben bravely returning with her light step to Hamburg.

“Graüben!” I called from afar off.

The girl stopped, a little disturbed perhaps to hear her name called after her in the street. With ten steps I had joined her.