Our real journey had finally begun.
Until now, we had managed to overcome every difficulty through courage and determination. We had been tired, of course, but nothing truly terrible had happened.
That was about to change.
We were now facing dangers that none of us had ever experienced before.
I still had not dared to look down into the terrible hole beneath us. But the moment had come. I could still choose to turn back and refuse to take part in this crazy adventure.
Yet I was ashamed to show more fear than Hans.
The Icelandic guide seemed completely calm. He accepted every danger as if it were nothing. His quiet courage made me feel embarrassed about my own fear.
If I had been alone with my uncle, I would probably have argued with him and tried to convince him to abandon the plan.
But Hans was there.
So I said nothing.
I thought briefly of my lovely cousin, took a deep breath, and walked toward the mouth of the central shaft.
The opening was about one hundred feet across.
I carefully leaned over a rock at the edge and looked down.
My hair seemed to rise on my head.
My teeth began to chatter.
My legs trembled.
My head spun, and I felt as though I had suddenly lost all sense of balance.
There is something strangely powerful about the pull of a deep abyss.
For one terrifying moment, I felt myself falling forward.
Then a strong hand grabbed me and pulled me back.
It was Hans.
Clearly, my climbing lessons at the Church of Our Saviour in Copenhagen had not prepared me well enough for looking down from such a height!
Still, during those few moments when I looked into the shaft, I saw enough to understand its shape.
The walls were almost vertical, like the inside of a gigantic well.
But they were not perfectly smooth.
All kinds of rocks and ledges stuck out from the sides. Those natural projections might actually help us climb down.
It looked like a wild staircase made by nature, without rails or protection.
A rope attached near the top could support us as we descended.
But there was an obvious problem.
Once we reached the bottom, how could we get the rope back?
My uncle, however, always seemed to have an answer.
He quickly came up with a simple solution.
He took out a rope about as thick as my thumb and at least four hundred feet long.
He lowered half of it into the shaft and tied it securely around a huge block of lava near the edge.
Then he threw the other half down after it.
Now each of us could climb down while holding both ends of the rope in one hand.
After descending about two hundred feet, we could release one end and pull the other.
The loose end would then fall down to us.
We could repeat the same process and continue descending.
It was an excellent plan.
Going down now seemed easy enough.
But I could not stop thinking about one thing.
How were we going to get back up?
My uncle had other matters on his mind.
“Now let’s deal with the luggage,” he said. “We’ll divide it into three packs. Each of us will carry one. I’m talking about the important and delicate equipment.”
Apparently, he did not consider us important or delicate enough to worry about.
“Hans, you take the tools and some of the food.”
“Harry, you carry another portion of the food and the weapons.”
“I’ll carry the rest of the food and the more delicate instruments.”
I stared at him.
“But what about our clothes, all this rope, and the ladders? Who is going to carry those down?”
“They’ll go down by themselves.”
I frowned.
“How?”
“You’ll see.”
My uncle had no patience for hesitation.
He ordered Hans to tie all the less fragile things into one large bundle.
Then, without another word, he threw the entire bundle over the edge.
I heard the air rushing as the heavy package dropped.
Rocks broke loose and fell with it.
My uncle leaned over the edge and watched the luggage disappear into the darkness with complete satisfaction.
Only when it had vanished from sight did he stand up.
“Now it’s our turn!”
I challenge any sensible person to hear those words without feeling a shiver.
My uncle strapped his instrument case onto his back.
Hans took the tools.
I carried the weapons.
Then we began our descent.
Hans went first.
My uncle followed.
I came last.
We climbed down in complete silence.
The only sounds came from pieces of rock breaking loose from the rough walls and crashing into the depths below.
I slid downward slowly, gripping the two ropes desperately with one hand.
With my other hand, I used my iron-tipped pole to push myself away from the rock walls.
One thought kept troubling me.
What if the rope at the top gave way?
It seemed far too weak to support three men and all our luggage.
So I tried not to depend on it too much.
Instead, I trusted my own balance and strength.
I climbed from one rocky ledge to another, gripping the projections in the lava with my hands and feet.
Sometimes my feet seemed to hold onto the rock almost as firmly as my hands.
Hans continued downward ahead of us.
Suddenly, one of the slippery pieces of rock beneath his foot broke away.
As usual, he spoke only a few words.
“Gif akt!”
“Watch out!” my uncle immediately translated.
About half an hour later, we reached a small rocky platform sticking out from the wall of the shaft.
It was just large enough for us to rest.
Hans began pulling on one side of the rope.
The other side slowly rose upward.
A moment later, the rope came crashing down beside us.
It brought a shower of small stones, pieces of lava, and dust.
It was like being caught in a miserable rainstorm made of rocks.
We sat on our strange little platform.
I looked down again.
With a heavy sigh, I realized that I still could not see the bottom.
Were we really going all the way into the center of the Earth?
We started moving again.
Another fifteen minutes later, we had descended another two hundred feet.
I doubt that even the most serious geologist could have carefully studied the layers of rock during such a descent.
I certainly did not.
I had no idea whether we were passing through carbon-bearing rock, Silurian layers, or some ancient primitive formation.
And frankly, I did not care.
My uncle was completely different.
He was still thinking about geology.
During one of our rests, he began explaining his theory.
“The deeper we go, the more confident I become,” he said. “These volcanic layers strongly support Sir Humphry Davy’s ideas.”
“We are still passing through the original ancient rock. This is where metals may have reacted chemically when they came into contact with air and water.”
“This makes me reject the old theory that the Earth contains a central fire.”
“Before long, we’ll know the truth.”
That was always how my uncle ended his arguments.
As for me, I had no desire to discuss geology.
I had more immediate problems to worry about.
My silence was apparently taken as agreement.
So we continued downward.
Three hours passed.
Yet the bottom of the shaft still seemed impossibly far away.
When I looked upward, however, I could see that the opening above us was becoming smaller and smaller.
The walls were closing in.
We were entering a world of permanent darkness.
And still we descended.
After a while, I noticed something strange.
When rocks broke loose from the walls and fell into the darkness, they no longer made such a loud noise.
The sound reached us more quickly.
That could only mean one thing.
We were getting close to the bottom.
I had carefully kept track of every time we moved the rope.
Because of that, I could calculate exactly how far we had descended and how long the journey had taken.
We had moved the rope twenty-eight times.
Each descent took fifteen minutes.
That meant seven hours of climbing.
We had also stopped twenty-eight times to rest.
Altogether, we had been underground for about ten and a half hours.
We had started at one in the afternoon.
It was now around eleven at night.
The mathematics was simple.
Twenty-eight descents of two hundred feet each meant we had traveled 5,600 feet downward.
That was more than a mile.
As I was working this out in my head, Hans suddenly shouted.
“Stop!”
I stopped so quickly that I nearly kicked my uncle in the head.
My uncle looked pleased.
“We’ve reached the end of our journey.”
“The center of the Earth?” I asked as I slid down beside him.
“No, you fool! We’ve reached the bottom of the shaft.”
I almost laughed with relief.
“So there’s nowhere else to go?”
My uncle pointed into the darkness.
“Oh, yes. I can just make out a kind of tunnel leading away to the right.”
“We’ll examine it tomorrow.”
“For now, let’s eat and get some sleep.”
That sounded like an excellent idea to me.
But I kept my opinion to myself.
There was no turning back now.
I had already entered this dangerous adventure.
All I could do was keep moving forward and hope for the best.
It was not completely dark yet.
A strange amount of light still filtered down from above.
We opened our food bag and ate a simple supper.
Then each of us searched for somewhere to sleep among the rocks, dirt, and lava that had collected at the bottom of the shaft over countless years.
I found the bundle of ropes, ladders, and clothes we had thrown down earlier.
I spread myself across them.
After such a long and exhausting day, that rough pile felt as soft as a bed of feathers.
For a while, I simply lay there in a peaceful daze.
Then, after several quiet minutes, I opened my eyes and looked upward.
Far above me, at the end of that enormous natural tunnel, I could see a tiny bright point.
It looked like a star.
There was no flickering around it.
According to my calculations, it must have been Beta in the constellation of the Little Bear.
That small sight of the heavens was enough to calm me.
A moment later, I fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.