A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XI.

A GUIDE FOUND TO THE CEN­TRE OF THE EARTH

In the evening I took a short walk on the beach and re­turned at night to my plank-​bed, where I slept sound­ly all night.

When I awoke I heard my un­cle talk­ing at a great rate in the next room. I im­me­di­ate­ly dressed and joined him.

He was con­vers­ing in the Dan­ish lan­guage with a tall man, of ro­bust build. This fine fel­low must have been pos­sessed of great strength. His eyes, set in a large and in­gen­uous face, seemed to me very in­tel­li­gent; they were of a dreamy sea-​blue. Long hair, which would have been called red even in Eng­land, fell in long mesh­es up­on his broad shoul­ders. The move­ments of this na­tive were lithe and sup­ple; but he made lit­tle use of his arms in speak­ing, like a man who knew noth­ing or cared noth­ing about the lan­guage of ges­tures. His whole ap­pear­ance be­spoke per­fect calm­ness and self-​pos­ses­sion, not in­do­lence but tran­quil­li­ty. It was felt at once that he would be be­hold­en to no­body, that he worked for his own con­ve­nience, and that noth­ing in this world could as­ton­ish or dis­turb his philo­soph­ic calm­ness.

I caught the shades of this Ice­lander’s char­ac­ter by the way in which he lis­tened to the im­pas­sioned flow of words which fell from the Pro­fes­sor. He stood with arms crossed, per­fect­ly un­moved by my un­cle’s in­ces­sant ges­tic­ula­tions. A neg­ative was ex­pressed by a slow move­ment of the head from left to right, an af­fir­ma­tive by a slight bend, so slight that his long hair scarce­ly moved. He car­ried econ­omy of mo­tion even to par­si­mo­ny.

Cer­tain­ly I should nev­er have dreamt in look­ing at this man that he was a hunter; he did not look like­ly to fright­en his game, nor did he seem as if he would even get near it. But the mys­tery was ex­plained when M. Fridrikssen in­formed me that this tran­quil per­son­age was on­ly a hunter of the ei­der duck, whose un­der plumage con­sti­tutes the chief wealth of the is­land. This is the cel­ebrat­ed ei­der down, and it re­quires no great ra­pid­ity of move­ment to get it.

Ear­ly in sum­mer the fe­male, a very pret­ty bird, goes to build her nest among the rocks of the fiords with which the coast is fringed. Af­ter build­ing the nest she feath­ers it with down plucked from her own breast. Im­me­di­ate­ly the hunter, or rather the trad­er, comes and robs the nest, and the fe­male recom­mences her work. This goes on as long as she has any down left. When she has stripped her­self bare the male takes his turn to pluck him­self. But as the coarse and hard plumage of the male has no com­mer­cial val­ue, the hunter does not take the trou­ble to rob the nest of this; the fe­male there­fore lays her eggs in the spoils of her mate, the young are hatched, and next year the har­vest be­gins again.

Now, as the ei­der duck does not se­lect steep cliffs for her nest, but rather the smooth ter­raced rocks which slope to the sea, the Ice­landic hunter might ex­er­cise his call­ing with­out any in­con­ve­nient ex­er­tion. He was a farmer who was not obliged ei­ther to sow or reap his har­vest, but mere­ly to gath­er it in.

This grave, phleg­mat­ic, and silent in­di­vid­ual was called Hans Bjelke; and he came rec­om­mend­ed by M. Fridrikssen. He was our fu­ture guide. His man­ners were a sin­gu­lar con­trast with my un­cle’s.

Nev­er­the­less, they soon came to un­der­stand each oth­er. Nei­ther looked at the amount of the pay­ment: the one was ready to ac­cept what­ev­er was of­fered; the oth­er was ready to give what­ev­er was de­mand­ed. Nev­er was bar­gain more read­ily con­clud­ed.

The re­sult of the treaty was, that Hans en­gaged on his part to con­duct us to the vil­lage of Stapi, on the south shore of the Snæfell penin­su­la, at the very foot of the vol­cano. By land this would be about twen­ty-​two miles, to be done, said my un­cle, in two days.

But when he learnt that the Dan­ish mile was 24,000 feet long, he was obliged to mod­ify his cal­cu­la­tions and al­low sev­en or eight days for the march.

Four hors­es were to be placed at our dis­pos­al - two to car­ry him and me, two for the bag­gage. Hams, as was his cus­tom, would go on foot. He knew all that part of the coast per­fect­ly, and promised to take us the short­est way.

His en­gage­ment was not to ter­mi­nate with our ar­rival at Stapi; he was to con­tin­ue in my un­cle’s ser­vice for the whole pe­ri­od of his sci­en­tif­ic re­search­es, for the re­mu­ner­ation of three rix­dales a week (about twelve shillings), but it was an ex­press ar­ti­cle of the covenant that his wages should be count­ed out to him ev­ery Sat­ur­day at six o’clock in the evening, which, ac­cord­ing to him, was one in­dis­pens­able part of the en­gage­ment.

The start was fixed for the 16th of June. My un­cle want­ed to pay the hunter a por­tion in ad­vance, but he re­fused with one word:

“_Efter,_” said he.

“Af­ter,” said the Pro­fes­sor for my ed­ifi­ca­tion.

The treaty con­clud­ed, Hans silent­ly with­drew.

“A fa­mous fel­low,” cried my un­cle; “but he lit­tle thinks of the mar­vel­lous part he has to play in the fu­ture.”

“So he is to go with us as far as –“

“As far as the cen­tre of the earth, Ax­el.”

Forty-​eight hours were left be­fore our de­par­ture; to my great re­gret I had to em­ploy them in prepa­ra­tions; for all our in­ge­nu­ity was re­quired to pack ev­ery ar­ti­cle to the best ad­van­tage; in­stru­ments here, arms there, tools in this pack­age, pro­vi­sions in that: four sets of pack­ages in all.

The in­stru­ments were:

1. An Eigel’s centi­grade ther­mome­ter, grad­uat­ed up to 150 de­grees (302 de­grees Fahr.), which seemed to me too much or too lit­tle. Too much if the in­ter­nal heat was to rise so high, for in this case we should be baked, not enough to mea­sure the tem­per­ature of springs or any mat­ter in a state of fu­sion.

2. An aneroid barom­eter, to in­di­cate ex­treme pres­sures of the at­mo­sphere. An or­di­nary barom­eter would not have an­swered the pur­pose, as the pres­sure would in­crease dur­ing our de­scent to a point which the mer­cu­ri­al barom­eter [1] would not reg­is­ter.

3. A chronome­ter, made by Bois­son­nas, jun., of Gene­va, ac­cu­rate­ly set to the merid­ian of Ham­burg.

4. Two com­pass­es, viz., a com­mon com­pass and a dip­ping nee­dle.

5. A night glass.

6. Two of Ruhmko­rff’s ap­pa­ra­tus, which, by means of an elec­tric cur­rent, sup­plied a safe and handy portable light [2]

The arms con­sist­ed of two of Pur­dy’s ri­fles and two brace of pis­tols. But what did we want arms for? We had nei­ther sav­ages nor wild beasts to fear, I sup­posed. But my un­cle seemed to be­lieve in his ar­se­nal as in his in­stru­ments, and more es­pe­cial­ly in a con­sid­er­able quan­ti­ty of gun cot­ton, which is un­af­fect­ed by mois­ture, and the ex­plo­sive force of which ex­ceeds that of gun­pow­der.

[1] In M. Verne’s book a ‘manome­ter’ is the in­stru­ment used, of which very lit­tle is known. In a com­plete list of philo­soph­ical in­stru­ments the trans­la­tor can­not find the name. As he is as­sured by a first-​rate in­stru­ment mak­er, Chad­burn, of Liv­er­pool, that an aneroid can be con­struct­ed to mea­sure any depth, he has thought it best to fur­nish the ad­ven­tur­ous pro­fes­sor with this more fa­mil­iar in­stru­ment. The ‘manome­ter’ is gen­er­al­ly known as a pres­sure gauge. - TRANS.

[2] Ruhmko­rff’s ap­pa­ra­tus con­sists of a Bun­sen pile worked with bichro­mate of potash, which makes no smell; an in­duc­tion coil car­ries the elec­tric­ity gen­er­at­ed by the pile in­to com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a lantern of pe­cu­liar con­struc­tion; in this lantern there is a spi­ral glass tube from which the air has been ex­clud­ed, and in which re­mains on­ly a residu­um of car­bon­ic acid gas or of ni­tro­gen. When the ap­pa­ra­tus is put in ac­tion this gas be­comes lu­mi­nous, pro­duc­ing a white steady light. The pile and coil are placed in a leath­ern bag which the trav­eller car­ries over his shoul­ders; the lantern out­side of the bag throws suf­fi­cient light in­to deep dark­ness; it en­ables one to ven­ture with­out fear of ex­plo­sions in­to the midst of the most in­flammable gas­es, and is not ex­tin­guished even in the deep­est wa­ters. M. Ruhmko­rff is a learned and most in­ge­nious man of sci­ence; his great dis­cov­ery is his in­duc­tion coil, which pro­duces a pow­er­ful stream of elec­tric­ity. He ob­tained in 1864 the quin­quen­ni­al prize of 50,000 franc re­served by the French gov­ern­ment for the most in­ge­nious ap­pli­ca­tion of elec­tric­ity.

The tools com­prised two pick­ax­es, two spades, a silk ro­pelad­der, three iron-​tipped sticks, a hatch­et, a ham­mer, a dozen wedges and iron spikes, and a long knot­ted rope. Now this was a large load, for the lad­der was 300 feet long.

And there were pro­vi­sions too: this was not a large par­cel, but it was com­fort­ing to know that of essence of beef and bis­cuits there were six months’ con­sump­tion. Spir­its were the on­ly liq­uid, and of wa­ter we took none; but we had flasks, and my un­cle de­pend­ed on springs from which to fill them. What­ev­er ob­jec­tions I haz­ard­ed as to their qual­ity, tem­per­ature, and even ab­sence, re­mained in­ef­fec­tu­al.

To com­plete the ex­act in­ven­to­ry of all our trav­el­ling ac­com­pa­ni­ments, I must not for­get a pock­et medicine chest, con­tain­ing blunt scis­sors, splints for bro­ken limbs, a piece of tape of un­bleached linen, ban­dages and com­press­es, lint, a lancet for bleed­ing, all dread­ful ar­ti­cles to take with one. Then there was a row of phials con­tain­ing dex­trine, al­co­holic ether, liq­uid ac­etate of lead, vine­gar, and am­mo­nia drugs which af­ford­ed me no com­fort. Fi­nal­ly, all the ar­ti­cles need­ful to sup­ply Ruhmko­rff’s ap­pa­ra­tus.

My un­cle did not for­get- a sup­ply of to­bac­co, coarse grained pow­der, and amadou, nor a leath­ern belt in which he car­ried a suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ty of gold, sil­ver, and pa­per mon­ey. Six pairs of boots and shoes, made wa­ter­proof with a com­po­si­tion of in­di­arub­ber and naph­tha, were packed amongst the tools.

“Clothed, shod, and equipped like this,” said my un­cle, “there is no telling how far we may go.”

The 14th was whol­ly spent in ar­rang­ing all our dif­fer­ent ar­ti­cles. In the evening we dined with Baron Tramps; the may­or of Re­jki­avik, and Dr. Hyal­tal­in, the first med­ical man of the place, be­ing of the par­ty. M. Fridrikssen was not there. I learned af­ter­wards that he and the Gov­er­nor dis­agreed up­on some ques­tion of ad­min­is­tra­tion, and did not speak to each oth­er. I there­fore knew not a sin­gle word of all that was said at this se­mi-​of­fi­cial din­ner; but I could not help notic­ing that my un­cle talked the whole time.

On the 15th our prepa­ra­tions were all made. Our host gave the Pro­fes­sor very great plea­sure by pre­sent­ing him with a map of Ice­land far more com­plete than that of Hen­der­sen. It was the map of M. Olaf Niko­las Olsen, in the pro­por­tion of 1 to 480,000 of the ac­tu­al size of the is­land, and pub­lished by the Ice­landic Lit­er­ary So­ci­ety. It was a pre­cious doc­ument for a min­er­al­ogist.

Our last evening was spent in in­ti­mate con­ver­sa­tion with M. Fridrikssen, with whom I felt the liveli­est sym­pa­thy; then, af­ter the talk, suc­ceed­ed, for me, at any rate, a dis­turbed and rest­less night.

At five in the morn­ing I was awoke by the neigh­ing and paw­ing of four hors­es un­der my win­dow. I dressed hasti­ly and came down in­to the street. Hans was fin­ish­ing our pack­ing, al­most as it were with­out mov­ing a limb; and yet he did his work clev­er­ly. My un­cle made more noise than ex­ecu­tion, and the guide seemed to pay very lit­tle at­ten­tion to his en­er­get­ic di­rec­tions.

At six o’clock our prepa­ra­tions were over. M. Fridrikssen shook hands with us. My un­cle thanked him hearti­ly for his ex­treme kind­ness. I con­struct­ed a few fine Latin sen­tences to ex­press my cor­dial farewell. Then we be­strode our steeds and with his last adieu M. Fridrikssen treat­ed me to a line of Vir­gil em­inent­ly ap­pli­ca­ble to such un­cer­tain wan­der­ers as we were like­ly to be:

“Et quacumque vi­am de­dent for­tu­na se­qua­mur.”

“Ther­ev­er for­tune clears a way,

Thith­er our ready foot­steps stray.”