At Altona, a suburb of Hamburg, we boarded the train for Kiel, where we would continue our journey by sea. Twenty minutes after leaving, we crossed into Holstein. Our heavy luggage was unloaded, weighed, labeled, and packed into a large van.
At exactly seven o’clock, my uncle and I settled into a first-class carriage, sitting opposite each other.
My uncle said nothing. He was completely absorbed in his papers. Naturally, the famous parchment was among them, along with letters of introduction from the Danish consul. These letters were supposed to help us meet the Governor of Iceland.
As for me, I had nothing to do except look out of the window.
Unfortunately, the countryside was flat and fertile, and after a while there was very little to see.
Three hours later, we arrived in Kiel, and our luggage was immediately transferred to the steamer.
We now had nearly ten hours to wait.
My uncle was furious.
“What are we supposed to do for an entire day?” he complained.
“There’s nothing we can do except walk around the town,” I said.
So we walked around Kiel and admired the town and its beautiful bay.
Eventually, we boarded the steamer. At half past ten, we were sailing down the Great Belt.
It was a dark night. A strong wind was blowing, and the sea was rough. We could see almost nothing except occasional fires along the shore and, here and there, the light of a lighthouse.
At seven the next morning, we left Korsor, a small town on the western side of Zealand.
From there, we took another train. Three hours later, we arrived in Copenhagen.
My uncle barely stopped to eat. As soon as we arrived, he hurried off to use one of his letters of introduction.
The letter was addressed to the director of the Museum of Antiquities. After learning that we were travelers on our way to Iceland, the director did everything he could to help us.
I still had one small hope.
“Perhaps,” I thought, “there won’t be a ship going all the way to Iceland.”
Unfortunately, my hope was crushed.
A small Danish schooner called the Valkyrie was scheduled to leave for Reykjavik on June second.
The captain, M. Bjarne, was on board when we went to see him.
My uncle grabbed his hand and shook it enthusiastically.
“Captain Bjarne! What wonderful news! We are extremely grateful!”
The captain looked rather surprised.
To him, a voyage to Iceland was nothing unusual.
To my uncle, however, it was the most important event imaginable.
The honest sailor quickly realized how eager my uncle was and promptly doubled the fare.
“Be on board Tuesday morning at seven o’clock,” Captain Bjarne said as he handed us our receipts.
“Excellent! Wonderful! Glorious!” my uncle exclaimed when we sat down for a late breakfast.
“Eat your fill, Henry. Then we’ll go and see the town.”
After breakfast, we visited Kongens-Nye-Torw, the king’s magnificent palace, the beautiful bridge over the canal near the museum, Thorwaldsen’s enormous monument with its strange naval sculptures, Rosenberg Castle, and all the other famous sights of Copenhagen.
I saw them all.
My uncle saw practically none of them.
His mind was already filled with thoughts of the discoveries he expected to make in Iceland.
One thing, however, caught his attention.
It was a strange-looking church tower on the island of Amak, in the southeastern part of Copenhagen.
“Henry, come,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To that tower.”
We took a steam ferry across the canal and soon reached the famous dockyard quay.
We passed through several narrow streets. Along the way, we saw groups of galley slaves wearing striped gray and yellow trousers. They were working under the harsh orders and constant blows of their overseers.
At last, we reached the Vor-Frelser’s-Kirk.
There was nothing especially remarkable about the church itself.
My uncle was interested in only one thing: its tall steeple.
The tower rose from a circular platform, and an outdoor staircase wound around the outside all the way to the top.
My uncle looked up at it.
“Let’s climb.”
I stared at him.
“Climb that? I can’t climb church towers! I get terribly dizzy.”
“That is exactly why you must go up. I intend to cure you of that weakness.”
“But, Uncle—”
“Come. Why waste all this valuable time?”
There was no arguing with my uncle when he used that tone.
With a miserable groan, I followed him.
We paid a small fee, and a church attendant gave us the key.
The man clearly had no love for the climb himself.
My uncle, however, ran up the first steps like a schoolboy.
I followed as best I could.
The moment I stepped outside the tower, my head began to spin.
I was certainly no eagle.
I was perfectly happy with my feet on the ground. I had absolutely no desire to fly toward the sky.
Still, I managed reasonably well at first.
Then I climbed about one hundred and fifty steps and reached the platform.
A blast of cold air hit me.
I could hardly stand.
Gripping the railing, I looked upward.
The railing beside me seemed terribly weak. And yet it was nothing compared with the railing around the frightening spiral staircase above me.
From where I stood, that staircase seemed to rise all the way into the sky.
My uncle called down to me.
“Come on, Henry!”
“I can’t do it!” I cried desperately.
“Are you really going to be a coward?” he asked coldly. “Up you go!”
I had no answer.
The freezing wind was making my nerves even worse.
The sky and the ground seemed to spin around me. The tower itself appeared to sway like a ship on the ocean.
My legs became useless.
I dropped to my hands and knees.
Slowly, I dragged myself upward.
I crawled like a snake, pulling myself from one step to the next.
Soon I could no longer bear to look.
I closed my eyes and let my uncle pull me upward.
“Look around you,” he ordered sternly. “Who knows what deep abysses you may have to face later? This is excellent training.”
Shivering with cold, I slowly opened my eyes.
What I saw almost made me forget my fear.
First, I looked upward.
Above us were soft, white clouds. They seemed strangely motionless, as if they were standing still in the sky while the tower, the weathercock, and the two of us were racing past them.
Far away on one side stretched a green grassy plain.
On the other side was the sea, glowing in the clear light.
Beyond Elsinore, I could see the Sund, crowded with white sails.
At that distance, the sails looked like the wings of seagulls.
Farther east, I could just make out the distant coast of Sweden.
The whole scene looked like some magical painting.
But I was still dizzy and terrified.
There was no escape.
I had to stand up.
Despite my protests and suffering, my first climbing lesson lasted for nearly an hour.
Almost two hours after we had started, I finally reached the safety of solid ground again.
I looked like a rheumatic old man bent almost double with pain.
My uncle, meanwhile, rubbed his hands together cheerfully.
“That’s enough for today. We’ll start again tomorrow.”
There was nothing I could do.
For the next five days, my uncle continued my lessons.
By the end of those five days, something remarkable had happened.
I could climb the tower quite happily.
I could even look straight down into the dizzying depths below without blinking.
And, to my own surprise, I had begun to enjoy it.