A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER IV.

THE EN­EMY TO BE STARVED IN­TO SUB­MIS­SION

“He is gone!” cried Martha, run­ning out of her kitchen at the noise of the vi­olent slam­ming of doors.

“Yes,” I replied, “com­plete­ly gone.”

“Well; and how about his din­ner?” said the old ser­vant.

“He won’t have any.”

“And his sup­per?”

“He won’t have any.”

“What?” cried Martha, with clasped hands.

“No, my dear Martha, he will eat no more. No one in the house is to eat any­thing at all. Un­cle Lieden­brock is go­ing to make us all fast un­til he has suc­ceed­ed in de­ci­pher­ing an un­de­ci­pher­able scrawl.”

“Oh, my dear! must we then all die of hunger?”

I hard­ly dared to con­fess that, with so ab­so­lute a ruler as my un­cle, this fate was in­evitable.

The old ser­vant, vis­ibly moved, re­turned to the kitchen, moan­ing piteous­ly.

When I was alone, I thought I would go and tell Gräuben all about it. But how should I be able to es­cape from the house? The Pro­fes­sor might re­turn at any mo­ment. And sup­pose he called me? And sup­pose he tack­led me again with this lo­go­machy, which might vain­ly have been set be­fore an­cient Oedi­pus. And if I did not obey his call, who could an­swer for what might hap­pen?

The wis­est course was to re­main where I was. A min­er­al­ogist at Be­sançon had just sent us a col­lec­tion of siliceous nod­ules, which I had to clas­si­fy: so I set to work; I sort­ed, la­belled, and ar­ranged in their own glass case all these hol­low spec­imens, in the cav­ity of each of which was a nest of lit­tle crys­tals.

But this work did not suc­ceed in ab­sorb­ing all my at­ten­tion. That old doc­ument kept work­ing in my brain. My head throbbed with ex­cite­ment, and I felt an un­de­fined un­easi­ness. I was pos­sessed with a pre­sen­ti­ment of com­ing evil.

In an hour my nod­ules were all ar­ranged up­on suc­ces­sive shelves. Then I dropped down in­to the old vel­vet arm-​chair, my head thrown back and my hands joined over it. I light­ed my long crooked pipe, with a paint­ing on it of an idle-​look­ing na­iad; then I amused my­self watch­ing the pro­cess of the con­ver­sion of the to­bac­co in­to car­bon, which was by slow de­grees mak­ing my na­iad in­to a negress. Now and then I lis­tened to hear whether a well-​known step was on the stairs. No. Where could my un­cle be at that mo­ment? I fan­cied him run­ning un­der the no­ble trees which line the road to Al­tona, ges­tic­ulat­ing, mak­ing shots with his cane, thrash­ing the long grass, cut­ting the heads off the this­tles, and dis­turb­ing the con­tem­pla­tive storks in their peace­ful soli­tude.

Would he re­turn in tri­umph or in dis­cour­age­ment? Which would get the up­per hand, he or the se­cret? I was thus ask­ing my­self ques­tions, and me­chan­ical­ly tak­ing be­tween my fin­gers the sheet of pa­per mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­fig­ured with the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble suc­ces­sion of let­ters I had writ­ten down; and I re­peat­ed to my­self “What does it all mean?”

I sought to group the let­ters so as to form words. Quite im­pos­si­ble! When I put them to­geth­er by twos, threes, fives or six­es, noth­ing came of it but non­sense. To be sure the four­teenth, fif­teenth and six­teenth let­ters made the En­glish word ‘ice’; the eighty-​third and two fol­low­ing made ’sir’; and in the midst of the doc­ument, in the sec­ond and third lines, I ob­served the words, “rots,” “mu­ta­bile,” “ira,” “net,” “atra.”

“Come now,” I thought, “these words seem to jus­ti­fy my un­cle’s view about the lan­guage of the doc­ument. In the fourth line ap­peared the word “lu­co”, which means a sa­cred wood. It is true that in the third line was the word “tabiled”, which looked like He­brew, and in the last the pure­ly French words “mer”, “arc”, “mere.” “

All this was enough to drive a poor fel­low crazy. Four dif­fer­ent lan­guages in this ridicu­lous sen­tence! What con­nec­tion could there pos­si­bly be be­tween such words as ice, sir, anger, cru­el, sa­cred wood, change­able, moth­er, bow, and sea? The first and the last might have some­thing to do with each oth­er; it was not at all sur­pris­ing that in a doc­ument writ­ten in Ice­land there should be men­tion of a sea of ice; but it was quite an­oth­er thing to get to the end of this cryp­togram with so small a clue. So I was strug­gling with an in­sur­mount­able dif­fi­cul­ty; my brain got heat­ed, my eyes wa­tered over that sheet of pa­per; its hun­dred and thir­ty-​two let­ters seemed to flut­ter and fly around me like those motes of min­gled light and dark­ness which float in the air around the head when the blood is rush­ing up­wards with un­due vi­olence. I was a prey to a kind of hal­lu­ci­na­tion; I was sti­fling; I want­ed air. Un­con­scious­ly I fanned my­self with the bit of pa­per, the back and front of which suc­ces­sive­ly came be­fore my eyes. What was my sur­prise when, in one of those rapid rev­olu­tions, at the mo­ment when the back was turned to me I thought I caught sight of the Latin words “craterem,” “ter­restre,” and oth­ers.

A sud­den light burst in up­on me; these hints alone gave me the first glimpse of the truth; I had dis­cov­ered the key to the ci­pher. To read the doc­ument, it would not even be nec­es­sary to read it through the pa­per. Such as it was, just such as it had been dic­tat­ed to me, so it might be spelt out with ease. All those in­ge­nious pro­fes­so­ri­al com­bi­na­tions were com­ing right. He was right as to the ar­range­ment of the let­ters; he was right as to the lan­guage. He had been with­in a hair’s breadth of read­ing this Latin doc­ument from end to end; but that hair’s breadth, chance had giv­en it to me!

You may be sure I felt stirred up. My eyes were dim, I could scarce­ly see. I had laid the pa­per up­on the ta­ble. At a glance I could tell the whole se­cret.

At last I be­came more calm. I made a wise re­solve to walk twice round the room qui­et­ly and set­tle my nerves, and then I re­turned in­to the deep gulf of the huge arm­chair.

“Now I’ll read it,” I cried, af­ter hav­ing well dis­tend­ed my lungs with air.

I leaned over the ta­ble; I laid my fin­ger suc­ces­sive­ly up­on ev­ery let­ter; and with­out a pause, with­out one mo­ment’s hes­ita­tion, I read off the whole sen­tence aloud.

Stu­pe­fac­tion! ter­ror! I sat over­whelmed as if with a sud­den dead­ly blow. What! that which I read had ac­tu­al­ly, re­al­ly been done! A mor­tal man had had the au­dac­ity to pen­etrate! . . .

“Ah!” I cried, spring­ing up. “But no! no! My un­cle shall nev­er know it. He would in­sist up­on do­ing it too. He would want to know all about it. Ropes could not hold him, such a de­ter­mined ge­ol­ogist as he is! He would start, he would, in spite of ev­ery­thing and ev­ery­body, and he would take me with him, and we should nev­er get back. No, nev­er! nev­er!”

My over-​ex­cite­ment was be­yond all de­scrip­tion.

“No! no! it shall not be,” I de­clared en­er­get­ical­ly; “and as it is in my pow­er to pre­vent the knowl­edge of it com­ing in­to the mind of my tyrant, I will do it. By dint of turn­ing this doc­ument round and round, he too might dis­cov­er the key. I will de­stroy it.”

There was a lit­tle fire left on the hearth. I seized not on­ly the pa­per but Saknussemm’s parch­ment; with a fever­ish hand I was about to fling it all up­on the coals and ut­ter­ly de­stroy and abol­ish this dan­ger­ous se­cret, when the, study door opened, and my un­cle ap­peared.