Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 8

  The director of this curious establishment, in which marvels are piled up from which the ancient history of the country might be reconstructed by means of its stone weapons, its cups and its jewels, was Professor Thomson, a scholar, friend of the Danish consul at Hamburg.

  My uncle had a cordial letter of introduction to him. As a general rule one scholar greets another with coolness. But here it was completely different. Mr. Thomson, a helpful man, extended a warm welcome to Professor Lidenbrock and the same to his nephew. It is hardly necessary to mention that the secret was preserved in the presence of the excellent museum director. We simply wanted to visit Iceland as disinterested amateurs.

  Mr. Thomson put himself at our disposal, and we visited the quays so as to look for a ship getting ready for departure.

  I still hoped that there would be absolutely no means of transportation; but no such luck. A small Danish schooner, the valkyrie, was to set sail for Reykjavik on the 2nd of June. The captain, Mr. Bjarne, was on board. His future passenger, full of joy, shook his hands so hard they almost broke. The good man was a little astonished at this grip. He found it quite simple to go to Iceland, since that was his profession. My uncle considered it sublime. The worthy captain took advantage of this enthusiasm to charge us double for the passage. But we did not trouble ourselves about such trifles.

  “Be on board on Tuesday, at seven in the morning,” said Captain Bjarne, after having pocketed a considerable number of dollars.

  We then thanked Mr. Thomson for his kindness, and returned to the Hotel Phoenix.

  “It’s going well! It’s going very well!” my uncle repeated. “What a fortunate coincidence that we’ve found this ship that’s ready to leave! Now let’s have breakfast and go visit the town.”

  We went first to Kongens Nytorv, an irregular square with a pedestal and two innocent cannons that aim at something but frighten no one. Close by, at No.5, there was a French “restaurant,” kept by a chef called Vincent; we had a sufficient breakfast for the moderate price of four marks each.r

  I then took a childish pleasure in exploring the city; my uncle let me take him with me, but he took notice of nothing, neither the insignificant royal palace, nor the pretty seventeenth-century bridge that spans the canal in front of the museum, nor that immense cenotaph of Thorvaldsen’s,s decorated with horrible murals, which contains a collection of the sculptor’s works, nor the toylike chateau of Rosenberg, nor the beautiful Renaissance building of the Stock Exchange, nor its spire composed of the twisted tails of four bronze dragons, nor the great windmill on the ramparts whose huge arms swelled in the sea breeze like the sails of a ship.

  What delicious walks we would have had together, my pretty Virland girl and I, along the harbor where the double-deckers and the frigate slept peaceably under their red roofing, by the green banks of the strait, through the deep shades of the trees amongst which the fort is half concealed, where the cannons thrust their black necks between the branches of alder and willow!

  But, alas! she was far away, my poor Graüben, and could I hope ever to see her again?

  Meanwhile, whereas my uncle saw none of these delightful places, he was very much struck by the sight of a certain clock tower on the island of Amager, which forms the southwestern part of Copenhagen.

  I was ordered to walk in that direction; I embarked on a small steamer which crosses the canals, and in a few minutes it landed at the quay of the dockyard.

  After crossing a few narrow streets where some convicts, in part yellow and part grey trousers, were at work under the orders of the wardens, we arrived at the Vor Frelsers Kirke. There was nothing remarkable about the church. But there was a reason why its tall spire had attracted the professor’s attention. Starting from the platform, an external staircase wound around the spire, the spirals circling up into the sky.

  “Let’s go up,” said my uncle.

  “But the vertigo?” I replied.

  “All the more reason, we must get used to it.”

  “But—”

  “Come, I tell you, let’s not waste time.”

  I had to obey. A guard who lived at the other end of the street handed us the key, and the ascent began.

  My uncle went ahead with a lively step. I followed him not without terror, because unfortunately my head turned dizzy very easily. I had neither an eagle’s balance nor his steely nerves.

  As long as we were enclosed on the interior staircase, everything went well; but after a hundred and fifty steps fresh air hit me in the face, and we were on the platform of the tower. There the aerial staircase began, only guarded by a thin rail, and the narrowing steps seemed to ascend into infinite space.

  “I’ll never be able to do it!” I exclaimed.

  “What kind of a coward are you? Up!” the professor replied mercilessly.

  I had to follow, clinging to every step. The keen air made me dizzy; I felt the spire rocking with every gust of wind; my legs began to fail; soon I crawled on my knees, then on my stomach; I closed my eyes; I had space sickness.

  At last, my uncle dragging me by the collar, I reached the ball.

  “Look down!” he exclaimed. “Look down carefully! We must take lessons in abysses.”

  Ragged clouds drifted over my head.

  I opened my eyes. I saw the houses flattened as if they had been squashed by a fall, in the midst of a fog of smoke. Ragged clouds drifted over my head, and through an optical inversion they seemed stationary, while the steeple, the ball and I were all moving along with fantastic speed. Far away on one side was the green country, on the other the sea sparkled under beams of sunlight. The Sound stretched away to Elsinore,t dotted with a few white sails, like sea-gulls’ wings; and in the misty east and away to the northeast lay outstretched the faintly-shadowed shores of Sweden. All this immensity of space whirled before my eyes.

  Nevertheless I had to get up, stand straight, look. My first lesson in vertigo lasted an hour. When I finally got permission to go down and touch the solid street pavements with my feet, I was aching all over.

  “We’ll start over again tomorrow,” said the professor.

  And indeed, for five days, I repeated this vertiginous exercise, and willy-nilly, I made noticeable progress in the art of “lofty contemplations.”

  IX

  THE DAY OF OUR departure arrived. On the eve, the kind Mr. Thomson had brought us urgent letters of introduction to Count Trampe, the Governor of Iceland, Mr. Pictursson, the bishop’s suffragan, and Mr. Finsen, mayor of Reykjavik. By way of thanks, my uncle gave him his warmest handshake.

  On the 2nd, at six in the morning, all our precious luggage was put aboard the Valkyrie. The captain led us to rather narrow cabins under the deck.

  “Do we have favorable winds?” my uncle asked.

  “Excellent,” replied Captain Bjarne; “wind from the south-east. We’ll leave the Sound full speed, with all sails set.”

  A few moments later the schooner, under her mizzen, brigantine, topsail, and topgallant sails, loosed from her moorings and ran at full sail through the strait. An hour later, the capital of Denmark seemed to sink below the distant waves, and the Valkyrie skirted the coast of Elsinore. In my nervous state of mind, I expected to see the ghost of Hamlet wandering on the legendary castle terrace.

  “Sublime madman!” I said, “no doubt you would approve of us! Perhaps you’d accompany us to the center of the globe, to find the solution for your eternal doubts!”

  But nothing appeared on the ancient walls. The castle is, at any rate, much more recent than the heroic prince of Denmark. It now serves as a sumptuous lodge for the doorkeeper of the Sound’s straits, where fifteen thousand ships of all nations pass every year.

  Kronberg Castle soon disappeared in the mist, as did the tower of Helsingborg, built on the Swedish coast, and the schooner leaned slightly under the breezes of the Kattegat.u

  The Valkyrie was a fine sailboat, but you never know just what to expect from a ship under sail. She transported coal, household goods,
earthenware, woolen clothing, and a cargo of wheat to Reykjavik. Five crewmen, all Danes, were enough to navigate her.

  “How long will the passage take?” my uncle asked the captain.

  “About ten days,” the captain replied, “if we don’t run into too much north-west wind around the Faroes.”

  “But so you don’t expect to incur any considerable delay?”

  “No, Mr. Lidenbrock, don’t worry, we’ll get there.”

  Toward evening the schooner sailed around Cape Skagen at the northernmost point of Denmark, crossed the Skagerrak during the night, passed by the tip of Norway at Cape Lindesnes,v and entered the North Sea.

  Two days later, we sighted the coast of Scotland near Peterhead, and the Valkyrie turned toward the Faroe Islands, passing between the Orkneys and the Shetlands.

  Soon the schooner was hit by the waves of the Atlantic; it had to tack against the north wind, and reached the Faroes not without some difficulty. On the 8th, the captain sighted Mykines, the easternmost of these islands,w and from that moment he took a straight course toward Cape Portland on the southern coast of Iceland.

  Nothing unusual occurred during the passage. I bore the troubles of the sea pretty well; my uncle, to his own intense disgust and his even greater shame, was sick all the way.

  He was therefore unable to converse with Captain Bjarne about the Snaefells issue, the connections and means of transportation; he had to put off these explanations until his arrival, and spent all his time lying down in his cabin, whose wooden paneling creaked under the onslaught of the waves. But it must be said that he deserved his fate a little.

  On the 11th we reached Cape Portland. The clear weather gave us a good view of Myrdals Jökull, which dominates it. The cape consists of a big hill with steep sides, planted on the beach all by itself.

  The Valkyrie kept at a reasonable distance from the coast, sailing along it on a westerly course amidst great shoals of whales and sharks. Soon an enormous perforated rock appeared, through which the sea dashed furiously. The Westmann islets seemed to rise out of the ocean like a sprinkling of rocks on a liquid plain. From that moment on, the schooner swung out to sea and sailed at a good distance round Cape Reykjanes, which forms the western point of Iceland.

  The rough sea prevented my uncle from coming on deck to admire these coasts, shattered and beaten by southwestern winds.

  Forty-eight hours later, at the end of a storm that forced the schooner to flee with the sails down, we sighted the beacon of point Skagenx in the east, whose dangerous rocks extend into the sea under the surface. An Icelandic pilot came on board, and in three hours the Valkyrie dropped her anchor before Reykjavik, in Faxa Bay.

  The professor emerged from his cabin at last, a bit pale, a bit downcast, but still full of enthusiasm, and with a look of satisfaction in his eyes.

  The population of the town, intensely interested in the arrival of a vessel from which every one expected something, gathered on the quay.

  My uncle was in a hurry to leave his floating prison, or rather hospital. But before stepping off the deck of the schooner he pulled me to the front, and pointed with his finger to the north of the bay at a tall mountain with two peaks, a double cone covered with perpetual snow.

  “The Snaefells!” he exclaimed. “The Snaefells!”

  Then, after having ordered me with a gesture to keep absolute silence, he climbed down into the boat which was waiting for him. I followed, and soon we set foot on the soil of Iceland.

  First of all, a good-looking man in a general’s uniform appeared. He was, however, nothing but a magistrate, the governor of the island, Baron Trampe himself. The professor realized whom he was facing. He handed him his letters from Copenhagen, and a short conversation in Danish ensued, to which I remained for good reason completely alien. But the result of this first conversation was that Baron Trampe placed himself entirely at the service of Professor Lidenbrock.

  My uncle was very cordially received by the mayor, Mr. Finsen, no less military in appearance than the governor, but just as peaceful in temperament and office.

  As for the bishop’s suffragan, Mr. Pictursson, he was at that moment carrying out an episcopal visit in the northern diocese; for the time being, we had to put off being introduced to him. But Mr. Fridriksson, professor of natural sciences at the school of Reykjavik, was a charming man whose assistance became very valuable to us. This modest scholar spoke only Danish and Latin; he offered his services to me in the language of Horace, and I felt that we were made to understand each other. He was, in fact, the only person with whom I could converse during our stay in Iceland.

  This excellent man put at our disposition two out of the three rooms of which his house consisted, and we were soon installed there with our luggage, the quantity of which astonished the inhabitants of Reykjavik a little.

  “Well, Axel,” my uncle said to me, “we’re making progress, and the worst is over.”

  “What do you mean, the worst!” I exclaimed.

  “Of course, now we have nothing left but going down.”

  “If you mean it like that, you’re right; but after all, after we go down, we’ll have to go up again, I imagine?”

  “Oh, that barely worries me! Come, there’s no time to lose! I’m going to the library. Perhaps it has some manuscript of Saknussemm’s that I’d like to take a look at.”

  “Well, in the meantime, I’ll go visit the city. Won’t you do that also?”

  “Oh, that doesn’t really interest me. What’s remarkable about Icelandic soil is not above but underneath.”

  I went out, and wandered wherever chance happened to lead me.

  It would not be easy to lose your way in Reykjavik. So I had no need to ask for directions, which leads to many mistakes in the language of gestures.

  The town extends over low and marshy ground between two hills. An immense bed of lava borders on it on one side, and falls gently towards the sea. On the other side lies the vast bay of Faxa, bounded in the north by the enormous glacier of the Snaefells, where the Valkyrie was at the moment the only ship at anchor. Usually the English and French fish-patrols anchor here, but just then they were cruising on the eastern coast of the island.

  The longer one of Reykjavik’s two streets runs parallel to the beach; here live the merchants and traders, in wooden cabins made of horizontal red boards; the other street, further west, leads to a little lake between the houses of the bishop and other non-commercial people.

  I had soon explored these bleak and sad streets. Here and there I caught a glimpse of a bit of faded lawn, looking like an old wool carpet worn out by use, or of some semblance of a kitchen garden whose sparse vegetables, potatoes, cabbages, and lettuce, would have seemed appropriate for a Lilliputian table. A few sickly wallflowers were also trying to look as if they were graced by sunshine.

  Toward the middle of the non-commercial street I found the public cemetery, enclosed by a mud wall, where it seemed plenty of room was left. Then, a few steps further, I arrived at the Governor’s house, a farmhouse compared to the town hall of Hamburg, a palace in comparison with the cabins of the Icelandic population.

  Between the little lake and the town stood the church, built in Protestant style with burnt stones taken from the volcanoes themselves; in strong western winds its red roof tiles would obviously be scattered in the air, endangering the faithful.

  From a neighboring hillside I saw the national school where, as I was informed later by our host, Hebrew, English, French, and Danish were taught, four languages of which, to my disgrace, I don’t know a single word.y I would have been last among the forty students at this little college, and unworthy of going to bed along with them in one of those closets with two compartments, where the more delicate would die of suffocation the very first night.

  In three hours I had visited not only the town but its surroundings. Their aspect was peculiarly melancholy. No trees, no vegetation worth mentioning. Everywhere the bare edges of volcanic rocks. The Icelanders’ hut
s are made of earth and peat, and the walls lean inward. They resemble roofs placed on the ground. But these roofs are relatively fertile meadows. Due to the heat of the house, the grass grows there almost perfectly, and is carefully mown in the hay season; otherwise domestic animals would come to pasture on top of these green abodes.

  During my excursion I met few people. When I returned to the commercial street I saw the greater part of the population busy drying, salting, and loading codfish, their main export item. The men seemed robust but heavy, blond Germans of sorts with pensive eyes, who feel a bit outside the rest of mankind, poor exiles relegated to this land of ice, whom nature should have created as Eskimos, since it had condemned them to live just outside the arctic circle! In vain did I try to detect a smile on their faces; they laughed sometimes with a kind of involuntary contraction of the muscles, but they never smiled.

  Their clothes consisted of a coarse jacket of black wool called ‘vadmel’ in Scandinavian countries, a hat with a very broad brim, trousers with a narrow edge of red, and a piece of leather folded up as a shoe.

  The women, with sad and resigned faces of a pleasant but expressionless type, wore a bodice and skirt of dark ‘vadmel’: unmarried women wore a little knitted brown cap over their braided hair; married women tied a colored handkerchief around their heads, topped with a peak of white linen.

  After a good walk I returned to Mr. Fridriksson’s house, where I found my uncle already in the company of his host.

  X

  DINNER WAS READY; IT was eagerly devoured by Professor Lidenbrock, whose compulsory fast on board had converted his stomach into a deep chasm. The meal, more Danish than Icelandic, was unremarkable in and of itself; but our host, more Icelandic than Danish, reminded me of the heroes of ancient hospitality. It seemed obvious that we were more at home than he was himself.