A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
By Jules Verne
CHAPTER 13
THE SHADOW OF SCARTARIS
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--
[Illustration: Runic Glyphs]
"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!
