I had seated myself upon the ground. My uncle walked angrily and hopelessly up and down. He was evidently desperate.
“But,” I cried, after some moments’ thought, “what about Arne Saknussemm?”
“You are right,” replied my uncle, “he can never have been checked by a lump of rock.”
“No—ten thousand times no,” I cried, with extreme vivacity. “This huge lump of rock, in consequence of some singular concussion, or process, one of those magnetic phenomena which have so often shaken the terrestrial crust, has in some unexpected way closed up the passage. Many and many years have passed away since the return of Saknussemm, and the fall of this huge block of granite. Is it not quite evident that this gallery was formerly the outlet for the pent-up lava in the interior of the earth, and that these eruptive matters then circulated freely? Look at these recent fissures in the granite roof; it is evidently formed of pieces of enormous stone, placed here as if by the hand of a giant, who had worked to make a strong and substantial arch. One day, after an unusually strong shock, the vast rock which stands in our way, and which was doubtless the key of a kind of arch, fell through to a level with the soil and has barred our further progress. We are right, then, in thinking that this is an unexpected obstacle, with which Saknussemm did not meet; and if we do not upset it in some way, we are unworthy of following in the footsteps of the great discoverer; and incapable of finding our way to the center of the earth!”
In this wild way I addressed my uncle. The zeal of the Professor, his earnest longing for success, had become part and parcel of my being. I wholly forgot the past; I utterly despised the future. Nothing existed for me upon the surface of this spheroid in the bosom of which I was engulfed, no towns, no country, no Hamburg, no Königstrasse, not even my poor Gretchen, who by this time would believe me utterly lost in the interior of the earth!
“Well,” cried my uncle, roused to enthusiasm by my words, “let us go to work with pickaxes, with crowbars, with anything that comes to hand—but down with these terrible walls.”
“It is far too tough and too big to be destroyed by a pickax or crowbar,” I replied.
“What then?”
“As I said, it is useless to think of overcoming such a difficulty by means of ordinary tools.”
“What then?”
“What else but gunpowder, a subterranean mine? Let us blow up the obstacle that stands in our way.”
“Gunpowder!”
“Yes; all we have to do is get rid of this paltry obstacle.”
“To work, Hans, to work!” cried the Professor.
The Icelander went back to the raft, and soon returned with a huge crowbar, with which he began to dig a hole in the rock, which was to serve as a mine. It was by no means a slight task. It was necessary for our purpose to make a cavity large enough to hold fifty pounds of fulminating gun cotton, the expansive power of which is four times as great as that of ordinary gunpowder.
I had roused myself to an almost miraculous state of excitement. While Hans was at work, I actively assisted my uncle to prepare a long wick, made from damp gunpowder, the mass of which we finally enclosed in a bag of linen.
“We are bound to go through,” I cried, enthusiastically.
“We are bound to go through,” responded the Professor, tapping me on the back.
At midnight, our work as miners was completely finished; the charge of fulminating cotton was thrust into the hollow, and the match, which we had made of considerable length, was ready.
A spark was now sufficient to ignite this formidable engine, and to blow the rock to atoms!
“We will now rest until tomorrow.”
It was absolutely necessary to resign myself to my fate, and to consent to wait for the explosion for six weary hours!
XXXIX
The Explosion and Its Results
The next day, which was the twenty-seventh of August, was a day celebrated in our wondrous, subterranean journey.