A Journey to the Interior of the Earth

CHAPTER V.

FAMINE, THEN VIC­TO­RY, FOL­LOWED BY DIS­MAY

I had on­ly just time to re­place the un­for­tu­nate doc­ument up­on the ta­ble.

Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock seemed to be great­ly ab­stract­ed.

The rul­ing thought gave him no rest. Ev­ident­ly he had gone deeply in­to the mat­ter, an­alyt­ical­ly and with pro­found scruti­ny. He had brought all the re­sources of his mind to bear up­on it dur­ing his walk, and he had come back to ap­ply some new com­bi­na­tion.

He sat in his arm­chair, and pen in hand he be­gan what looked very much like al­ge­bra­ic for­mu­la: I fol­lowed with my eyes his trem­bling hands, I took count of ev­ery move­ment. Might not some un­hoped-​for re­sult come of it? I trem­bled, too, very un­nec­es­sar­ily, since the true key was in my hands, and no oth­er would open the se­cret.

For three long hours my un­cle worked on with­out a word, with­out lift­ing his head; rub­bing out, be­gin­ning again, then rub­bing out again, and so on a hun­dred times.

I knew very well that if he suc­ceed­ed in set­ting down these let­ters in ev­ery pos­si­ble rel­ative po­si­tion, the sen­tence would come out. But I knew al­so that twen­ty let­ters alone could form two quin­til­lions, four hun­dred and thir­ty-​two quadrillions, nine hun­dred and two tril­lions, eight bil­lions, a hun­dred and sev­en­ty-​six mil­lions, six hun­dred and forty thou­sand com­bi­na­tions. Now, here were a hun­dred and thir­ty-​two let­ters in this sen­tence, and these hun­dred and thir­ty-​two let­ters would give a num­ber of dif­fer­ent sen­tences, each made up of at least a hun­dred and thir­ty-​three fig­ures, a num­ber which passed far be­yond all cal­cu­la­tion or con­cep­tion.

So I felt re­as­sured as far as re­gard­ed this hero­ic method of solv­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty.

But time was pass­ing away; night came on; the street nois­es ceased; my un­cle, bend­ing over his task, no­ticed noth­ing, not even Martha half open­ing the door; he heard not a sound, not even that ex­cel­lent wom­an say­ing:

“Will not mon­sieur take any sup­per to-​night?”

And poor Martha had to go away unan­swered. As for me, af­ter long re­sis­tance, I was over­come by sleep, and fell off at the end of the so­fa, while un­cle Lieden­brock went on cal­cu­lat­ing and rub­bing out his cal­cu­la­tions.

When I awoke next morn­ing that in­de­fati­ga­ble work­er was still at his post. His red eyes, his pale com­plex­ion, his hair tan­gled be­tween his fever­ish fin­gers, the red spots on his cheeks, re­vealed his des­per­ate strug­gle with im­pos­si­bil­ities, and the weari­ness of spir­it, the men­tal wrestlings he must have un­der­gone all through that un­hap­py night.

To tell the plain truth, I pitied him. In spite of the re­proach­es which I con­sid­ered I had a right to lay up­on him, a cer­tain feel­ing of com­pas­sion was be­gin­ning to gain up­on me. The poor man was so en­tire­ly tak­en up with his one idea that he had even for­got­ten how to get an­gry. All the strength of his feel­ings was con­cen­trat­ed up­on one point alone; and as their usu­al vent was closed, it was to be feared lest ex­treme ten­sion should give rise to an ex­plo­sion soon­er or lat­er.

I might with a word have loos­ened the screw of the steel vice that was crush­ing his brain; but that word I would not speak.

Yet I was not an ill-​na­tured fel­low. Why was I dumb at such a cri­sis? Why so in­sen­si­ble to my un­cle’s in­ter­ests?

“No, no,” I re­peat­ed, “I shall not speak. He would in­sist up­on go­ing; noth­ing on earth could stop him. His imag­ina­tion is a vol­cano, and to do that which oth­er ge­ol­ogists have nev­er done he would risk his life. I will pre­serve si­lence. I will keep the se­cret which mere chance has re­vealed to me. To dis­cov­er it, would be to kill Pro­fes­sor Lieden­brock! Let him find it out him­self if he can. I will nev­er have it laid to my door that I led him to his de­struc­tion.”

Hav­ing formed this res­olu­tion, I fold­ed my arms and wait­ed. But I had not reck­oned up­on one lit­tle in­ci­dent which turned up a few hours af­ter.

When our good Martha want­ed to go to Mar­ket, she found the door locked. The big key was gone. Who could have tak­en it out? As­sured­ly, it was my un­cle, when he re­turned the night be­fore from his hur­ried walk.

Was this done on pur­pose? Or was it a mis­take? Did he want to re­duce us by famine? This seemed like go­ing rather too far! What! should Martha and I be vic­tims of a po­si­tion of things in which we had not the small­est in­ter­est? It was a fact that a few years be­fore this, whilst my un­cle was work­ing at his great clas­si­fi­ca­tion of min­er­als, he was forty-​eight hours with­out eat­ing, and all his house­hold were obliged to share in this sci­en­tif­ic fast. As for me, what I re­mem­ber is, that I got se­vere cramps in my stom­ach, which hard­ly suit­ed the con­sti­tu­tion of a hun­gry, grow­ing lad.

Now it ap­peared to me as if break­fast was go­ing to be want­ing, just as sup­per had been the night be­fore. Yet I re­solved to be a hero, and not to be con­quered by the pangs of hunger. Martha took it very se­ri­ous­ly, and, poor wom­an, was very much dis­tressed. As for me, the im­pos­si­bil­ity of leav­ing the house dis­tressed me a good deal more, and for a very good rea­son. A caged lover’s feel­ings may eas­ily be imag­ined.

My un­cle went on work­ing, his imag­ina­tion went off ram­bling in­to the ide­al world of com­bi­na­tions; he was far away from earth, and re­al­ly far away from earth­ly wants.

About noon hunger be­gan to stim­ulate me severe­ly. Martha had, with­out think­ing any harm, cleared out the larder the night be­fore, so that now there was noth­ing left in the house. Still I held out; I made it a point of hon­our.

Two o’clock struck. This was be­com­ing ridicu­lous; worse than that, un­bear­able. I be­gan to say to my­self that I was ex­ag­ger­at­ing the im­por­tance of the doc­ument; that my un­cle would sure­ly not be­lieve in it, that he would set it down as a mere puz­zle; that if it came to the worst, we should lay vi­olent hands on him and keep him at home if he thought on ven­tur­ing on the ex­pe­di­tion that, af­ter all, he might him­self dis­cov­er the key of the ci­pher, and that then I should be clear at the mere ex­pense of my in­vol­un­tary ab­sti­nence.

These rea­sons seemed ex­cel­lent to me, though on the night be­fore I should have re­ject­ed them with in­dig­na­tion; I even went so far as to con­demn my­self for my ab­sur­di­ty in hav­ing wait­ed so long, and I fi­nal­ly re­solved to let it all out.

I was there­fore med­itat­ing a prop­er in­tro­duc­tion to the mat­ter, so as not to seem too abrupt, when the Pro­fes­sor jumped up, clapped on his hat, and pre­pared to go out.

Sure­ly he was not go­ing out, to shut us in again! no, nev­er!

“Un­cle!” I cried.

He seemed not to hear me.

“Un­cle Lieden­brock!” I cried, lift­ing up my voice.

“Ay,” he an­swered like a man sud­den­ly wak­ing.

“Un­cle, that key!”

“What key? The door key?”

“No, no!” I cried. “The key of the doc­ument.”

The Pro­fes­sor stared at me over his spec­ta­cles; no doubt he saw some­thing un­usu­al in the ex­pres­sion of my coun­te­nance; for he laid hold of my arm, and speech­less­ly ques­tioned me with his eyes. Yes, nev­er was a ques­tion more forcibly put.

I nod­ded my head up and down.

He shook his pity­ing­ly, as if he was deal­ing with a lu­natic. I gave a more af­fir­ma­tive ges­ture.

His eyes glis­tened and sparkled with live fire, his hand was shak­en threat­en­ing­ly.

This mute con­ver­sa­tion at such a mo­men­tous cri­sis would have riv­et­ed the at­ten­tion of the most in­dif­fer­ent. And the fact re­al­ly was that I dared not speak now, so in­tense was the ex­cite­ment for fear lest my un­cle should smoth­er me in his first joy­ful em­braces. But he be­came so ur­gent that I was at last com­pelled to an­swer.

“Yes, that key, chance -“

“What is that you are say­ing?” he shout­ed with in­de­scrib­able emo­tion.

“There, read that!” I said, pre­sent­ing a sheet of pa­per on which I had writ­ten.

“But there is noth­ing in this,” he an­swered, crum­pling up the pa­per.

“No, noth­ing un­til you pro­ceed to read from the end to the be­gin­ning.”

I had not fin­ished my sen­tence when the Pro­fes­sor broke out in­to a cry, nay, a roar. A new rev­ela­tion burst in up­on him. He was trans­formed!

“Aha, clever Saknussemm!” he cried. “You had first writ­ten out your sen­tence the wrong way.”

And dart­ing up­on the pa­per, with eyes be­dimmed, and voice choked with emo­tion, he read the whole doc­ument from the last let­ter to the first.

It was con­ceived in the fol­low­ing terms:

In Snef­fels Jo­culis craterem quem deli­bat Um­bra Scar­taris Julii in­tra cal­en­das de­scende, Au­dax vi­ator, et ter­restre cen­trum at­tinges. Quod fe­ci, Arne Saknussemm. [1]

Which bad Latin may be trans­lat­ed thus:

“De­scend, bold trav­eller, in­to the crater of the jokul of Snef­fels, which the shad­ow of Scar­taris touch­es be­fore the kalends of Ju­ly, and you will at­tain the cen­tre of the earth; which I have done, Arne Saknussemm.”

In read­ing this, my un­cle gave a spring as if he had touched a Ley­den jar. His au­dac­ity, his joy, and his con­vic­tions were mag­nif­icent to be­hold. He came and he went; he seized his head be­tween both his hands; he pushed the chairs out of their places, he piled up his books; in­cred­ible as it may seem, he rat­tled his pre­cious nod­ules of flints to­geth­er; he sent a kick here, a thump there. At last his nerves calmed down, and like a man ex­haust­ed by too lav­ish an ex­pen­di­ture of vi­tal pow­er, he sank back ex­haust­ed in­to his arm­chair.

“What o’clock is it?” he asked af­ter a few mo­ments of si­lence.

“Three o’clock,” I replied.

“Is it re­al­ly? The din­ner-​hour is past, and I did not know it. I am half dead with hunger. Come on, and af­ter din­ner -“

[1] In the ci­pher, _au­dax_ is writ­ten _av­das,_ and _quod_ and _quem,_ _hod_ and _ken_. (Tr.)

“Well?”

“Af­ter din­ner, pack up my trunk.”

“What?” I cried.

“And yours!” replied the in­de­fati­ga­ble Pro­fes­sor, en­ter­ing the din­ing-​room.