We ate our supper quickly and easily. Then everyone found a place to lie down inside the crater.
The bed was hard. The shelter was poor. We were sleeping in the open air, nearly five thousand feet above sea level.
And yet, strangely enough, I had rarely slept better.
I did not even dream.
So much for what my uncle called “healthy exhaustion.”
The next morning, the brilliant sunlight woke us. The air was so cold that we were almost frozen.
I climbed off my granite bed and joined the others to admire the incredible view below us.
I was standing on the highest point of the southern peak of Mount Sneffels. From there, I could see almost the whole island.
From such a height, everything looked distorted. The coastline seemed to rise, while the middle of the island appeared to sink. It was almost as if someone had spread a gigantic painting beneath my feet.
Deep valleys crossed the land in every direction.
Cliffs looked like the sides of enormous wells.
Lakes looked like ponds.
Ponds looked like puddles.
Rivers had become tiny little streams.
To my right were endless glaciers and countless mountain peaks, some of them covered by thin clouds of smoke.
The mountains rolled across the landscape like waves on a stormy ocean. Their snow-covered peaks looked like white foam.
When I turned west, the real ocean stretched before me, majestic and endless. It seemed to continue the waves of the mountains.
I could not tell where the land ended and the sea began.
For a while, I completely forgot who I was and where I was.
Standing at such a height filled me with a strange feeling of greatness. Fortunately, I had become used to looking down from dangerous heights, so I felt no fear.
I was completely lost in the beauty of the scene.
Then my uncle and Hans joined me on the summit.
My uncle pointed west.
“Look over there.”
I looked carefully.
A faint cloud of vapor seemed to rise from the water, and beneath it I could just make out a distant piece of land.
“Greenland!” my uncle announced.
“Greenland?”
“Yes. We are only about thirty-five leagues from that remarkable country.”
“When the great ice breakup comes each year, polar bears sometimes reach Iceland on floating ice carried south from the north.”
“That is interesting, but it is not important right now.”
“We are standing on the great Sneffels. These are its two peaks, the northern and the southern.”
“Ask Hans what the people here call the peak we are standing on.”
My uncle turned to Hans.
The guide nodded.
“Scartaris.”
My uncle looked at me proudly.
“You hear that?”
I nodded.
“A crater,” he said.
I looked down.
The crater of Mount Sneffels was like an enormous upside-down cone. Its opening was perhaps half a mile wide, and its depth seemed impossible to measure.
I tried to imagine what this place must have looked like when the volcano was active, filled with fire, thunder, lightning, and boiling lava.
At the bottom, the funnel narrowed to a space about five hundred feet across. The slope was surprisingly gentle, so we could descend without too much difficulty.
But to me, the whole crater looked like a gigantic cannon.
And that thought terrified me.
“To climb inside a cannon,” I thought, “when there might still be something inside it capable of exploding, is pure madness.”
But there was no longer any chance to change my mind.
Hans calmly took the lead.
I followed him without saying a word.
I felt like a lamb being led to the slaughter.
To make the descent easier, Hans moved down the inside of the cone in a long zigzag.
He walked east for a while, then west, making broad turns across the slope.
The ground was covered with volcanic rocks. Some of them were unstable, and whenever we disturbed them, they rolled thunderously toward the bottom of the crater.
Their falls created enormous echoes.
Some parts of the slope were covered with ice.
Whenever Hans reached one of these areas, he became extremely careful. He used his long iron pole to test the ground, searching for cracks and hidden layers of soft snow.
In particularly dangerous places, we tied ourselves together with a long rope.
If one of us slipped, the others could hold him back.
It was certainly sensible.
But being tied together on such a dangerous slope also created its own risks.
Despite everything, we continued downward without serious trouble.
At one point, one of the Icelandic porters lost hold of a large bundle of rope. It slipped away and rolled almost directly to the bottom of the crater.
By noon, we had reached the bottom.
I looked back up.
The enormous crater opening had become a circular frame around a tiny patch of sky.
That little piece of blue sky looked unbelievably beautiful.
I wondered whether I would ever see such a beautiful sky again.
The only thing that seemed to rise above that enormous opening was the Peak of Scartaris, disappearing into the vast blue heavens.
At the bottom of the crater were three separate openings.
When Sneffels had been active, these shafts had served as vents for the great underground furnace, releasing burning lava and poisonous gases.
Now they stood open before us like enormous black mouths.
I kept as far away from them as possible.
I would not even look down into them.
My uncle, however, was fascinated.
He quickly examined all three openings, then became so excited that he could hardly breathe.
He ran from one to another like an excited schoolboy, waving his arms and shouting strange, broken sentences in several languages.
Hans and the other Icelanders simply sat on piles of lava and watched him.
They clearly thought my uncle was completely insane.
They were waiting to see what he would do next.
Suddenly, my uncle gave a terrible cry.
I thought he had slipped and fallen into one of the deep openings.
But that was not what had happened.
He was standing before a huge black stone block, his arms stretched wide and his legs apart.
For a moment, he looked completely stunned.
Then his expression suddenly changed.
He was filled with wild excitement.
“Harry! Harry! Come here!”
“Quick! You must see this!”
I had no idea what he meant, but I hurried over.
Hans and the other Icelanders did not move.
My uncle pointed dramatically toward the huge stone.
“Look!”
I stared at it.
Then I saw the marks carved into its eastern side.
They were old and partly destroyed by time, but they were still recognizable.
The name was unmistakable.
“Arne Saknussemm!” my uncle shouted.
Then he turned to me.
“Well, my unbelieving boy? Do you believe me now?”
I could not answer.
Not a single word came out.
I returned to my place on the lava and sat there in stunned silence.
The evidence was overwhelming.
My uncle had been right.
For a while, however, my thoughts wandered far away.
I imagined myself back home in Germany with Gretchen and the old cook.
How wonderful it would have been to see my cousin smile again.
How much I wanted one of the old cook’s omelets.
And how gladly I would have climbed into my own soft feather bed.
I have no idea how long I sat there.
When I finally lifted my head from my hands, only three of us remained at the bottom of the crater.
My uncle, Hans, and me.
The Icelandic porters had been dismissed. They were already making their way down the outside of Mount Sneffels toward Stapi.
I envied them with all my heart.
Hans had fallen peacefully asleep beside a rock, lying in a small channel of hardened lava that he had turned into a rough bed.
My uncle was pacing around the crater like a wild animal trapped in a cage.
I had neither the desire nor the strength to move.
Following Hans’s example, I eventually fell into an uncomfortable sleep.
During the night, I seemed to feel and hear the mountain shaking around us.
That was how we spent our first night inside the crater of Sneffels.
The next morning, a heavy gray sky hung over the volcano like a funeral cloth.
The darkness around us was not what worried me most.
It was my uncle’s fury.
I understood exactly why he was so angry.
And, strangely enough, I suddenly felt a little hopeful.
Let me explain.
Of the three openings at the bottom of the crater, only one could be the passage used by Arne Saknussemm.
According to the old Icelandic scholar’s interpretation of the cryptograph, there was only one way to identify it.
During the last days of June, the shadow of Scartaris had to fall directly across its opening.
The pointed peak of Scartaris was therefore like the pointer of an enormous sundial.
On the correct day, its shadow would indicate the entrance to the passage leading into the interior of the Earth.
But there was one serious problem.
If the clouds covered the sun, there would be no shadow.
And without the shadow, we could not identify the correct opening.
It was already June 25.
If the sky remained cloudy for six more days, we would have to wait another whole year.
And I was quite certain that next year there would be one less person willing to join this expedition.
I had already had enough of this insane adventure.
My uncle’s frustration was impossible to describe.
He had finally reached the very place he had spent so long searching for.
Yet now, when success seemed within reach, the weather threatened to ruin everything.
The entire day passed.
Not once did a shadow appear at the bottom of the crater.
Hans remained quietly in his place.
He must have wondered what exactly we were trying to accomplish.
My uncle did not speak to me.
He simply stared at the dark, cloudy sky and silently burned with anger.
His face looked terrible.
His eyes were fierce, his nose seemed sharper than ever, and his mouth was tightly pressed together.
June 26 brought no improvement.
Rain and snow fell all day.
Hans calmly built himself a little shelter out of lava and disappeared inside it like the philosopher Diogenes hiding in his barrel.
I actually enjoyed watching the little waterfalls race down the sides of the crater.
Sometimes they carried stones with them, sending the rocks tumbling into the enormous darkness below.
My uncle was nearly frantic.
And I could hardly blame him.
He had practically reached his goal, only to find himself stopped at the very last moment.
But nature can be cruel one moment and generous the next.
And my uncle was about to receive a sudden reward for all his suffering.
The next day was still cloudy.
Then, on Sunday, June 28, only two days remained before the end of the month.
The wind suddenly changed.
The new moon brought a change in the weather.
The clouds broke.
Sunlight poured all the way down into the crater.
Every hill, every rock, every stone, every uneven patch of ground was suddenly illuminated.
And every object cast a sharp shadow.
Then we saw it.
The shadow of Scartaris.
It was perfectly clear.
My uncle nearly lost his mind with excitement.
He followed the moving shadow as it slowly crossed the crater floor.
At exactly noon, when the sun reached its highest point, the shadow touched the edge of the central opening.
My uncle could barely speak.
“Here it is!”
“We found it!”
“Forward, my friends!”
“Into the Interior of the Earth!”
I looked at Hans.
I wanted to know what the calm guide thought about this terrifying announcement.
“Forut,” he said quietly.
“Forward it is!” my uncle replied.
He was happier than I had ever seen him.
We made our final preparations.
When everything was ready, we checked our watches.
It was thirteen minutes past one.