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?
THE END
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