A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER XLV.

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

Such is the con­clu­sion of a his­to­ry which I can­not ex­pect ev­ery­body to be­lieve, for some peo­ple will be­lieve noth­ing against the tes­ti­mo­ny of their own ex­pe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, I am in­dif­fer­ent to their in­creduli­ty, and they may be­lieve as much or as lit­tle as they please.

The Strom­bo­liotes re­ceived us kind­ly as ship­wrecked mariners. They gave us food and cloth­ing. Af­ter wait­ing forty-​eight hours, on the 31 st of Au­gust, a small craft took us to Messi­na, where a few days’ rest com­plete­ly re­moved the ef­fect of our fa­tigues.

On Fri­day, Septem­ber the 4th, we em­barked on the steam­er Volturno, em­ployed by the French Mes­sageries Im­pe­ri­ales, and in three days more we were at Mar­seilles, hav­ing no care on our minds ex­cept that abom­inable de­ceit­ful com­pass, which we had mis­laid some­where and could not now ex­am­ine; but its in­ex­pli­ca­ble be­haviour ex­er­cised my mind fear­ful­ly. On the 9th of Septem­ber, in the evening, we ar­rived at Ham­burg.

I can­not de­scribe to you the as­ton­ish­ment of Martha or the joy of Gräuben.

“Now you are a hero, Ax­el,” said to me my blush­ing _fi­ancée,_ my be­trothed, “you will not leave me again!”

I looked ten­der­ly up­on her, and she smiled through her tears.

How can I de­scribe the ex­traor­di­nary sen­sa­tion pro­duced by the re­turn of Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock? Thanks to Martha’s in­erad­ica­ble tat­tling, the news that the Pro­fes­sor had gone to dis­cov­er a way to the cen­tre of the earth had spread over the whole civilised world. Peo­ple re­fused to be­lieve it, and when they saw him they would not be­lieve him any the more. Still, the ap­pear­ance of Hans, and sundry pieces of in­tel­li­gence de­rived from Ice­land, tend­ed to shake the con­fi­dence of the un­be­liev­ers.

Then my un­cle be­came a great man, and I was now the nephew of a great man -which is not a priv­ilege to be de­spised.

Ham­burg gave a grand fete in our hon­our. A pub­lic au­di­ence was giv­en to the Pro­fes­sor at the Jo­han­næum, at which he told all about our ex­pe­di­tion, with on­ly one omis­sion, the un­ex­plained and in­ex­pli­ca­ble be­haviour of our com­pass. On the same day, with much state, he de­posit­ed in the archives of the city the now fa­mous doc­ument of Saknussemm, and ex­pressed his re­gret that cir­cum­stances over which he had no con­trol had pre­vent­ed him from fol­low­ing to the very cen­tre of the earth the track of the learned Ice­lander. He was mod­est notwith­stand­ing his glo­ry, and he was all the more fa­mous for his hu­mil­ity.

So much hon­our could not but ex­cite en­vy. There were those who en­vied him his fame; and as his the­ories, rest­ing up­on known facts, were in op­po­si­tion to the sys­tems of sci­ence up­on the ques­tion of the cen­tral fire, he sus­tained with his pen and by his voice re­mark­able dis­cus­sions with the learned of ev­ery coun­try.

For my part I can­not agree with his the­ory of grad­ual cool­ing: in spite of what I have seen and felt, I be­lieve, and al­ways shall be­lieve, in the cen­tral heat. But I ad­mit that cer­tain cir­cum­stances not yet suf­fi­cient­ly un­der­stood may tend to mod­ify in places the ac­tion of nat­ural phe­nom­ena.

While these ques­tions were be­ing de­bat­ed with great an­ima­tion, my un­cle met with a re­al sor­row. Our faith­ful Hans, in spite of our en­treaties, had left Ham­burg; the man to whom we owed all our suc­cess and our lives too would not suf­fer us to re­ward him as we could have wished. He was seized with the mal de pays, a com­plaint for which we have not even a name in En­glish.

“_Far­val,_” said he one day; and with that sim­ple word he left us and sailed for Re­jki­avik, which he reached in safe­ty.

We were strong­ly at­tached to our brave ei­der-​down hunter; though far away in the re­motest north, he will nev­er be for­got­ten by those whose lives he pro­tect­ed, and cer­tain­ly I shall not fail to en­deav­our to see him once more be­fore I die.

To con­clude, I have to add that this ‘Jour­ney in­to the In­te­ri­or of the Earth’ cre­at­ed a won­der­ful sen­sa­tion in the world. It was trans­lat­ed in­to all civilised lan­guages. The lead­ing news­pa­pers ex­tract­ed the most in­ter­est­ing pas­sages, which were com­ment­ed up­on, picked to pieces, dis­cussed, at­tacked, and de­fend­ed with equal en­thu­si­asm and de­ter­mi­na­tion, both by be­liev­ers and scep­tics. Rare priv­ilege! my un­cle en­joyed dur­ing his life­time the glo­ry he had de­served­ly won; and he may even boast the dis­tin­guished hon­our of an of­fer from Mr. Bar­num, to ex­hib­it him on most ad­van­ta­geous terms in all the prin­ci­pal cities in the Unit­ed States!

But there was one ‘dead fly’ amidst all this glo­ry and hon­our; one fact, one in­ci­dent, of the jour­ney re­mained a mys­tery. Now to a man em­inent for his learn­ing, an un­ex­plained phe­nomenon is an un­bear­able hard­ship. Well! it was yet re­served for my un­cle to be com­plete­ly hap­py.

One day, while ar­rang­ing a col­lec­tion of min­er­als in his cab­inet, I no­ticed in a cor­ner this un­hap­py com­pass, which we had long lost sight of; I opened it, and be­gan to watch it.

It had been in that cor­ner for six months, lit­tle mind­ful of the trou­ble it was giv­ing.

Sud­den­ly, to my in­tense as­ton­ish­ment, I no­ticed a strange fact, and I ut­tered a cry of sur­prise.

“What is the mat­ter?” my un­cle asked.

“That com­pass!”

“Well?”

“See, its poles are re­versed!”

“Re­versed?”

“Yes, they point the wrong way.”

My un­cle looked, he com­pared, and the house shook with his tri­umphant leap of ex­ul­ta­tion.

A light broke in up­on his spir­it and mine.

“See there,” he cried, as soon as he was able to speak. “Af­ter our ar­rival at Cape Saknussemm the north pole of the nee­dle of this con­found­ed com­pass be­gan to point south in­stead of north.”

“Ev­ident­ly!”

“Here, then, is the ex­pla­na­tion of our mis­take. But what phe­nomenon could have caused this re­ver­sal of the poles?”

“The rea­son is ev­ident, un­cle.”

“Tell me, then, Ax­el.”

“Dur­ing the elec­tric storm on the Lieden­brock sea, that ball of fire, which mag­ne­tised all the iron on board, re­versed the poles of our mag­net!”

“Aha! aha!” shout­ed the Pro­fes­sor with a loud laugh. “So it was just an elec­tric joke!”

From that day forth the Pro­fes­sor was the most glo­ri­ous of sa­vants, and I was the hap­pi­est of men; for my pret­ty Vir­landaise, re­sign­ing her place as ward, took her po­si­tion in the old house on the Königstrasse in the dou­ble ca­pac­ity of niece to my un­cle and wife to a cer­tain hap­py youth. What is the need of adding that the il­lus­tri­ous Ot­to Lieden­brock, cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber of all the sci­en­tif­ic, ge­ograph­ical, and min­er­alog­ical so­ci­eties of all the civilised world, was now her un­cle and mine?

End of The Project Guten­berg Etext of A Jour­ney to the In­te­ri­or of the Earth by Jules Verne