Free Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Jules Verne

merciless professor and entered into the dining-room.

VI
    AT THESE WORDS A cold shiver ran through me. Yet I controlled myself; I even decided to put a good face on it. Scientific arguments alone could have any weight with Professor Lidenbrock. Now there were good ones against the practicability of such a journey. Go to the center of the earth! What nonsense! But I kept my dialectics in reserve for a suitable opportunity, and focused on dinner.
    It is no use to tell of the rage and imprecations of my uncle before the empty table. Explanations were given, Martha was set at liberty, ran off to the market, and did her part so well that an hour afterwards my hunger was appeased, and I returned to the gravity of the situation.
    During the dinner, my uncle was almost merry; he indulged in some of those learned jokes which never do anybody any harm. Dessert over, he signaled to me to follow him to his study.
    I obeyed; he sat at one end of his table, I at the other.
    “Axel,” he said very mildly; “you’re a very ingenious lad, you’ve done me a splendid service, at a moment when I, tired of the struggle, was going to abandon the combinations. Where would I have lost myself? Impossible to know! Never, my lad, will I forget it; and you’ll have your share in the glory to which your discovery will lead.”
    “Oh, come!” I thought, “he is in a good mood. Now’s the time for discussing this glory.”
    “Before anything else,” my uncle resumed, “I recommend that you keep absolute secrecy, you understand? There are not a few in the scientific world who envy my success, and many would be ready to undertake this enterprise who’ll only find out about it at our return.”
    “Do you really think there are many people bold enough?”
    “Certainly; who would hesitate to acquire such fame? If that document were divulged, a whole army of geologists would be ready to rush into the footsteps of Arne Saknussemm.”
    “That’s something I’m not convinced of, Uncle, because we have no proof of the authenticity of this document.”
    “What! And the book inside which we discovered it?”
    “Granted. I admit that Saknussemm may have written these lines. But does it follow that he’s really carried out such a journey? Couldn’t this old parchment be misleading?”
    I almost regretted uttering this last, somewhat daring word. The professor knitted his thick brows, and I feared I had seriously compromised my own safety. Happily no great harm came of it. A kind of smile sketched itself on the lips of my severe interlocutor, and he answered:
    “That is what we’ll see.”
    “Ah!” I said, a bit offended. “But allow me to exhaust all the possible objections against this document.”
    “Speak, my boy, don’t be afraid. You’re quite at liberty to express your opinions. You’re no longer my nephew only, but my colleague. Go ahead.”
    “Well, in the first place, I’d like to ask what are this Jökull, this Snaefells, and this Scartaris, names which I’ve never heard before?”
    “Nothing’s easier. I received a map from my friend Augustus Petermann l at Leipzig not long ago; it could not have come at a better time. Take down the third atlas on the second shelf in the large bookcase, series Z, plate 4.”
    I rose, and with the help of such precise instructions could not fail to find the required atlas. My uncle opened it and said:
    “Here’s one of the best maps of Iceland, that of Handerson, and it’ll solve all our difficulties.”
    I bent over the map.
    “Look at this volcanic island,” said the professor; “and observe that all of them are called Jökulls. This word which means ‘glacier’ in Icelandic, and because of Iceland’s high latitude, almost all the eruptions break through layers of ice. Hence this term of Jökull is applied to all the island’s volcanoes.”
    “Very good;” I said; ”but what of Snaefells?”
    I was hoping that this question would be unanswerable; but I was mistaken. My uncle