A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XLIV.

SUN­NY LANDS IN THE BLUE MEDITER­RANEAN

When I opened my eyes again I felt my­self grasped by the belt with the strong hand of our guide. With the oth­er arm he sup­port­ed my un­cle. I was not se­ri­ous­ly hurt, but I was shak­en and bruised and bat­tered all over. I found my­self ly­ing on the slop­ing side of a moun­tain on­ly two yards from a gap­ing gulf, which would have swal­lowed me up had I leaned at all that way. Hans had saved me from death whilst I lay rolling on the edge of the crater.

“Where are we?” asked my un­cle iras­ci­bly, as if he felt much in­jured by be­ing land­ed up­on the earth again.

The hunter shook his head in to­ken of com­plete ig­no­rance.

“Is it Ice­land?” I asked.

“_Nej,_” replied Hans.

“What! Not Ice­land?” cried the Pro­fes­sor.

“Hans must be mis­tak­en,” I said, rais­ing my­self up.

This was our fi­nal sur­prise af­ter all the as­ton­ish­ing events of our won­der­ful jour­ney. I ex­pect­ed to see a white cone cov­ered with the eter­nal snow of ages ris­ing from the midst of the bar­ren deserts of the icy north, faint­ly light­ed with the pale rays of the arc­tic sun, far away in the high­est lat­itudes known; but con­trary to all our ex­pec­ta­tions, my un­cle, the Ice­lander, and my­self were sit­ting half-​way down a moun­tain baked un­der the burn­ing rays of a south­ern sun, which was blis­ter­ing us with the heat, and blind­ing us with the fierce light of his near­ly ver­ti­cal rays.

I could not be­lieve my own eyes; but the heat­ed air and the sen­sa­tion of burn­ing left me no room for doubt. We had come out of the crater half naked, and the ra­di­ant orb to which we had been strangers for two months was lav­ish­ing up­on us out of his blaz­ing splen­dours more of his light and heat than we were able to re­ceive with com­fort.

When my eyes had be­come ac­cus­tomed to the bright light to which they had been so long strangers, I be­gan to use them to set my imag­ina­tion right. At least I would have it to be Spitzber­gen, and I was in no hu­mour to give up this no­tion.

The Pro­fes­sor was the first to speak, and said:

“Well, this is not much like Ice­land.”

“But is it Jan Mayen?” I asked.

“Nor that ei­ther,” he an­swered. “This is no north­ern moun­tain; here are no gran­ite peaks capped with snow. Look, Ax­el, look!”

Above our heads, at a height of five hun­dred feet or more, we saw the crater of a vol­cano, through. which, at in­ter­vals of fif­teen min­utes or so, there is­sued with loud ex­plo­sions lofty columns of fire, min­gled with pumice stones, ash­es, and flow­ing la­va. I could feel the heav­ing of the moun­tain, which seemed to breathe like a huge whale, and puff out fire and wind from its vast blow­holes. Be­neath, down a pret­ty steep de­cliv­ity, ran streams of la­va for eight or nine hun­dred feet, giv­ing the moun­tain a height of about 1,300 or 1,400 feet. But the base of the moun­tain was hid­den in a per­fect bow­er of rich ver­dure, amongst which I was able to dis­tin­guish the olive, the fig, and vines, cov­ered with their lus­cious pur­ple bunch­es.

I was forced to con­fess that there was noth­ing arc­tic here.

When the eye passed be­yond these green sur­round­ings it rest­ed on a wide, blue ex­panse of sea or lake, which ap­peared to en­close this en­chant­ing is­land, with­in a com­pass of on­ly a few leagues. East­ward lay a pret­ty lit­tle white sea­port town or vil­lage, with a few hous­es scat­tered around it, and in the har­bour of which a few ves­sels of pe­cu­liar rig were gen­tly swayed by the soft­ly swelling waves. Be­yond it, groups of islets rose from the smooth, blue wa­ters, but in such num­bers that they seemed to dot the sea like a shoal. To the west dis­tant coasts lined the dim hori­zon, on some rose blue moun­tains of smooth, un­du­lat­ing forms; on a more dis­tant coast arose a prodi­gious cone crowned on its sum­mit with a snowy plume of white cloud. To the north­ward lay spread a vast sheet of wa­ter, sparkling and danc­ing un­der the hot, bright rays, the uni­for­mi­ty bro­ken here and there by the top­mast of a gal­lant ship ap­pear­ing above the hori­zon, or a swelling sail mov­ing slow­ly be­fore the wind.

This un­fore­seen spec­ta­cle was most charm­ing to eyes long used to un­der­ground dark­ness.

“Where are we? Where are we?” I asked faint­ly.

Hans closed his eyes with lazy in­dif­fer­ence. What did it mat­ter to him? My un­cle looked round with dumb sur­prise.

“Well, what­ev­er moun­tain this may be,” he said at last, “it is very hot here. The ex­plo­sions are go­ing on still, and I don’t think it would look well to have come out by an erup­tion, and then to get our heads bro­ken by bits of falling rock. Let us get down. Then we shall know bet­ter what we are about. Be­sides, I am starv­ing, and parch­ing with thirst.”

De­cid­ed­ly the Pro­fes­sor was not giv­en to con­tem­pla­tion. For my part, I could for an­oth­er hour or two have for­got­ten my hunger and my fa­tigue to en­joy the love­ly scene be­fore me; but I had to fol­low my com­pan­ions.

The slope of the vol­cano was in many places of great steep­ness. We slid down screes of ash­es, care­ful­ly avoid­ing the la­va streams which glid­ed slug­gish­ly by us like fiery ser­pents. As we went I chat­tered and asked all sorts of ques­tions as to our where­abouts, for L was too much ex­cit­ed not to talk a great deal.

“We are in Asia,” I cried, “on the coasts of In­dia, in the Malay Is­lands, or in Ocea­nia. We have passed through half the globe, and come out near­ly at the an­tipodes.”

“But the com­pass?” said my un­cle.

“Ay, the com­pass!” I said, great­ly puz­zled. “Ac­cord­ing to the com­pass we have gone north­ward.”

“Has it lied?”

“Sure­ly not. Could it lie?”

“Un­less, in­deed, this is the North Pole!”

“Oh, no, it is not the Pole; but -“

Well, here was some­thing that baf­fled us com­plete­ly. I could not tell what to say.

But now we were com­ing in­to that de­light­ful green­ery, and I was suf­fer­ing great­ly from hunger and thirst. Hap­pi­ly, af­ter two hours’ walk­ing, a charm­ing coun­try lay open be­fore us, cov­ered with olive trees, pomegranate trees, and de­li­cious vines, all of which seemed to be­long to any­body who pleased to claim them. Be­sides, in our state of des­ti­tu­tion and famine we were not like­ly to be par­tic­ular. Oh, the in­ex­press­ible plea­sure of press­ing those cool, sweet fruits to our lips, and eat­ing grapes by mouth­fuls off the rich, full bunch­es! Not far off, in the grass, un­der the de­li­cious shade of the trees, I dis­cov­ered a spring of fresh, cool wa­ter, in which we lux­uri­ous­ly bathed our faces, hands, and feet.

Whilst we were thus en­joy­ing the sweets of re­pose a child ap­peared out of a grove of olive trees.

“Ah!” I cried, “here is an in­hab­itant of this hap­py land!”

It was but a poor boy, mis­er­ably ill-​clad, a suf­fer­er from pover­ty, and our as­pect seemed to alarm him a great deal; in fact, on­ly half clothed, with ragged hair and beards, we were a sus­pi­cious-​look­ing par­ty; and if the peo­ple of the coun­try knew any­thing about thieves, we were very like­ly to fright­en them.

Just as the poor lit­tle wretch was go­ing to take to his heels, Hans caught hold of him, and brought him to us, kick­ing and strug­gling.

My un­cle be­gan to en­cour­age him as well as he could, and said to him in good Ger­man:

“_Was heiszt diesen Berg, mein Kn­ablein? Sage mir geschwind!_”

(”What is this moun­tain called, my lit­tle friend?”)

The child made no an­swer.

“Very well,” said my un­cle. “I in­fer that we are not in Ger­many.”

He put the same ques­tion in En­glish.

We got no for­warder. I was a good deal puz­zled.

“Is the child dumb?” cried the Pro­fes­sor, who, proud of his knowl­edge of many lan­guages, now tried French: “_Com­ment ap­pel­let-​on cette mon­tagne, mon en­fant?_”

Si­lence still.

“Now let us try Ital­ian,” said my un­cle; and he said:

“_Dove noi siamo?_”

“Yes, where are we?” I im­pa­tient­ly re­peat­ed.

But there was no an­swer still.

“Will you speak when you are told?” ex­claimed my un­cle, shak­ing the urchin by the ears. “_Come si no­ma ques­ta iso­la?_”

“STROM­BOLI,” replied the lit­tle herd­boy, slip­ping out of Hans’ hands, and scud­ding in­to the plain across the olive trees.

We were hard­ly think­ing of that. Strom­boli! What an ef­fect this un­ex­pect­ed name pro­duced up­on my mind! We were in the midst of the Mediter­ranean Sea, on an is­land of the Æo­lian archipela­go, in the an­cient Strongyle, where Æo­lus kept the winds and the storms chained up, to be let loose at his will. And those dis­tant blue moun­tains in the east were the moun­tains of Cal­abria. And that threat­en­ing vol­cano far away in the south was the fierce Et­na.

“Strom­boli, Strom­boli!” I re­peat­ed.

My un­cle kept time to my ex­cla­ma­tions with hands and feet, as well as with words. We seemed to be chant­ing in cho­rus!

What a jour­ney we had ac­com­plished! How mar­vel­lous! Hav­ing en­tered by one vol­cano, we had is­sued out of an­oth­er more than two thou­sand miles from Snæfell and from that bar­ren, far-​away Ice­land! The strange chances of our ex­pe­di­tion had car­ried us in­to the heart of the fairest re­gion in the world. We had ex­changed the bleak re­gions of per­pet­ual snow and of im­pen­etra­ble bar­ri­ers of ice for those of bright­ness and ‘the rich hues of all glo­ri­ous things.’ We had left over our heads the murky sky and cold fogs of the frigid zone to rev­el un­der the azure sky of Italy!

Af­ter our de­li­cious repast of fruits and cold, clear wa­ter we set off again to reach the port of Strom­boli. It would not have been wise to tell how we came there. The su­per­sti­tious Ital­ians would have set us down for fire-​dev­ils vom­it­ed out of hell; so we pre­sent­ed our­selves in the hum­ble guise of ship­wrecked mariners. It was not so glo­ri­ous, but it was safer.

On my way I could hear my un­cle mur­mur­ing: “But the com­pass! that com­pass! It point­ed due north. How are we to ex­plain that fact?”

“My opin­ion is,” I replied dis­dain­ful­ly, “that it is best not to ex­plain it. That is the eas­iest way to shelve the dif­fi­cul­ty.”

“In­deed, sir! The oc­cu­pant of a pro­fes­so­ri­al chair at the Jo­han­næum un­able to ex­plain the rea­son of a cos­mi­cal phe­nomenon! Why, it would be sim­ply dis­grace­ful!”

And as he spoke, my un­cle, half un­dressed, in rags, a per­fect scare­crow, with his leath­ern belt around him, set­tling his spec­ta­cles up­on his nose and look­ing learned and im­pos­ing, was him­self again, the ter­ri­ble Ger­man pro­fes­sor of min­er­al­ogy.

One hour af­ter we had left the grove of olives, we ar­rived at the lit­tle port of San Vi­cen­zo, where Hans claimed his thir­teen week’s wages, which was count­ed out to him with a hearty shak­ing of hands all round.

At that mo­ment, if he did not share our nat­ural emo­tion, at least his coun­te­nance ex­pand­ed in a man­ner very un­usu­al with him, and while with the ends of his fin­gers he light­ly pressed our hands, I be­lieve he smiled.