Stapi was a tiny town of only about thirty huts. It stood on a wide field of black lava at the end of a small fjord, with a strange wall of basalt rising around it.
I had never seen anything like that basalt wall.
The rock formed itself into tall, perfectly shaped columns. They looked as if some master architect had measured every stone with a ruler and compass.
Nature seemed to have built a giant temple there.
“I have heard a great deal about the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland,” I said, “and about Fingal’s Cave in the Hebrides. But I have never seen anything like this.”
“Then you should take a good look, Harry,” my uncle replied. “This is one of Nature’s finest examples of geometric order.”
The sides of the fjord were made almost entirely of these upright columns, each about thirty feet high. Above them were horizontal columns that formed a kind of natural roof over the sea.
In several places, there were large oval openings beneath the rocks. Through them, the waves rushed in with enormous crashes, throwing clouds of white foam into the air.
Huge pieces of basalt had been torn loose by the waves and scattered across the ground. They looked like the ruins of some ancient temple.
Yet these ruins never seemed to grow old. Storms had battered them for centuries without changing their strange beauty.
This was the final stop on our journey.
Hans had guided us with great skill and loyalty, and I felt somewhat relieved to know that he would continue with us.
We stopped outside the Rector’s house. It was a small, uncomfortable cabin that looked no better than the homes around it.
A man was standing outside, shoeing a horse. He held a hammer in one hand and wore a leather apron.
“Be happy,” Hans greeted him in Icelandic.
“God dag—good day!” the man replied in excellent Danish.
“Kyrkoherde,” Hans said, turning toward my uncle.
“The Rector,” my uncle repeated. “So this is the Rector. Apparently, he does not think his position is too important to stop him from working with his own hands.”
Hans explained our situation to the Rector.
The man stopped hammering and called out.
A very tall woman came out of the hut.
She was at least six feet tall, which was enormous for that part of Iceland.
My first reaction was horror.
I thought she had come to give us the traditional Icelandic kiss of welcome.
Fortunately, I was mistaken.
She did not seem particularly interested in welcoming us at all.
The room given to us was easily the worst room in the entire house. It was narrow, dirty, and smelled terrible.
Still, we had nowhere else to go.
The Rector had no interest in showing us the warm hospitality we had heard so much about.
Before the day was over, I realized that our host was more like a blacksmith, fisherman, hunter, or carpenter than a clergyman.
Perhaps I should be fair to him. We had arrived on a weekday. Maybe he was a completely different man on Sundays.
The poor Icelandic priests were paid almost nothing by the Danish government. They also received only a quarter of the local tithe, which came to no more than about sixty marks a year.
They had to work with their hands simply to survive.
Our host certainly did not seem to consider politeness one of the important virtues of life.
My uncle quickly understood what kind of man he was dealing with.
Instead of finding a learned and respectable scholar, he had found a rough and rather unpleasant peasant.
So he decided that we should leave as soon as possible.
He did not care about the fatigue. He was determined to spend several days in the mountains.
The next day, our preparations began.
Hans hired three Icelanders to replace the horses, which were no longer strong enough to carry all our supplies.
There was one condition.
The three men would carry our equipment only as far as the bottom of the crater. After that, they would turn back and leave us alone.
They refused to come unless we agreed to this beforehand.
My uncle also took Hans aside and explained that he intended to explore the volcano as far as possible.
Hans listened without showing any surprise.
Then he simply nodded.
To him, it made no difference whether he traveled across the mountains or went deep into the earth.
As for me, I had been so distracted by the excitement of the journey that I had almost forgotten what lay ahead.
Now the reality came rushing back.
What could I do?
Run away?
If I had really intended to abandon Professor Hardwigg, I should have done it in Hamburg—not here at the foot of Sneffels.
One terrible thought kept coming back to me.
“We are going to climb Sneffels,” I told myself. “All right. There is nothing especially dangerous about climbing a mountain.”
“We are also going to the bottom of its crater. That is still possible. Other people have done it and survived.”
“But that is not the real problem.”
“If there really is a passage leading down into the earth, and if Saknussemm was telling the truth, we could become trapped in a huge underground maze of tunnels.”
“Worse still, how do we know Sneffels is truly extinct?”
“It has been silent since 1219. But does that mean it can never erupt again?”
“What if the volcano wakes up while we are inside it?”
“What will happen to us then?”
These questions frightened me more and more.
I spent hours thinking about them.
Whenever I tried to sleep, I dreamed about volcanic eruptions.
The more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of being burned into ashes deep inside the earth.
At last, I could bear it no longer.
I decided to tell my uncle about my fears, but I tried to do it as carefully as possible.
I found him and explained everything.
Then I stepped back and waited for him to lose his temper.
Instead, he spoke very calmly.
“I have been thinking about the matter.”
What did he mean?
Was he finally going to listen to reason?
Was he actually considering giving up the expedition?
I was almost too happy to believe it.
I said nothing.
I did not want to interrupt him.
After thinking for a while, he continued.
“I have been thinking about the matter ever since we arrived at Stapi. Your concerns are serious. Nothing would be more foolish than to act recklessly.”
“I completely agree with you, Uncle,” I said hopefully.
“It has been six hundred years since Sneffels last erupted,” he said. “Of course, even a silent volcano can erupt again.”
I waited.
“But volcanic eruptions are preceded by certain well-known signs. I have questioned the local people. I have studied the ground carefully.”
He looked at me with complete confidence.
“And I can tell you, Harry, that Sneffels will not erupt anytime soon.”
I stared at him.
I could not believe what I was hearing.
“I can see that you doubt me,” he said. “Come with me.”
I followed him automatically.
We left the house and passed through an opening in the basalt wall.
The road took us away from the sea.
Soon we were in open country, although it was difficult to call it ordinary countryside. The ground was covered with enormous volcanic rocks.
There were pieces of basalt, granite, lava, and many other volcanic materials scattered everywhere.
Then I noticed something else.
Thin white columns of steam were rising into the sky.
“They are called reykir,” my uncle explained. “They come from hot springs.”
Their presence seemed to confirm my fears.
If the earth was producing all that steam, surely the volcano was still active.
I was therefore extremely surprised when my uncle said:
“You see all that smoke, Harry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“As long as you see it like that, you have nothing to fear from the volcano.”
“How can that possibly be?”
“Listen carefully,” he said. “When an eruption is approaching, these steam vents become much more active.”
“That sounds like exactly what we should be afraid of.”
“Not quite. Just before an eruption, the steam vents eventually stop altogether.”
“Why?”
“Because the gases inside the volcano lose the pressure they normally have. Instead of escaping through cracks in the ground, they retreat into the crater.”
“So the steam we see now is actually a good sign?”
“Exactly.”
He pointed toward the distant columns of vapor.
“As long as the steam remains at its normal level, without becoming stronger, there is no immediate danger.”
“And the weather?”
“That matters too. If the wind does not suddenly disappear and the air does not become unusually heavy and still, there is even less reason to worry.”
“But—”
“Enough, my boy. When science has spoken, we must listen.”
I returned to the house feeling completely defeated.
My uncle had destroyed all my arguments with his scientific reasoning.
Still, I had one final hope.
Once we reached the bottom of the crater, perhaps there would be no passage farther down.
No tunnel.
No underground road.
Nothing that could take us deeper into the earth.
Surely even Saknussemm could not change that.
That night, however, I had a terrible nightmare.
I dreamed that I had descended deep beneath the earth after suffering every possible misery.
Then suddenly I was shot out of the planet and into outer space like a piece of volcanic rock.
I woke in terror.
The next morning was June 23.
Hans was already waiting outside the Rector’s house with his three companions.
They were carrying food, tools, and scientific instruments.
My uncle and I each had an iron-tipped walking staff, a gun, and a large game bag.
Hans had thought of everything.
He had even added a large leather bag filled with water to our supplies.
Together with our smaller water flasks, it would give us enough water for eight days.
At nine o’clock in the morning, we were ready to leave.
The Rector and the enormous woman stood at the door to see us off.
For a moment, they looked as though they were about to give us the traditional Icelandic farewell kiss.
But we soon discovered that their idea of saying goodbye was very different.
Instead of a kiss, they presented us with a huge bill.
They had even charged us for staying in their miserable house.
That dirty little place was one of the worst lodgings I had ever seen, yet the couple charged us as though we had stayed at a luxurious hotel.
My uncle paid without arguing.
A man who had decided to travel into the very depths of the earth was certainly not going to waste time haggling over a few rix-dollars.
Once the bill was settled, Hans gave the signal.
A few moments later, we had left Stapi behind us and begun our climb toward Mount Sneffels.