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uncle and th? Icelander followed. The voyage from the port to this point of the sea had by no means calmed me. It had rather produced the opposite effect. I even proposed to burn our vessel, that is to destroy our raft, in order to completely cut off our retreat. But my uncle sternly opposed this wild project- I began to think him particularly luke- warm and unenthusiastic. "At any rate, my dear uncle," I said, "let us start without delay." "Yes, my boy, I am quite as eager to do so as you can be. But, in the first place, let us examine this mysterious gallery, in' order to find if we shall need to prepare and mend our ladders." My uncle now began to see to the efficiency of our Ruhmkorf's coil, which would doubtless soon be needed; the raft, securely fastened to a rock, was left alone. The opening into the new gallery was not twenty paces distant from the spot. Our little troop, with myself at the head, advanced. Their Journey Blocked by a Great Hock "SHE orifice, which was almost circular, pre- sented a diameter of about five feet; the som- ber tunnel was cut in the living rock, and coated on the inside by the different material which had once passed through it in a state of fusion. The lower part was about level with the water, so that we were able to penetrate to the interior without difficulty. We followed an almost horizontal direc- tion ! when, at the end of about a dozen paces, our further advance was checked by the interposition of an enormous block of granite rock. "Accursed stone!" I cried, furiously, on perceiv- ing that we were stopped by what seemed an insur- mountable obstacle. In vain we looked to the right, in vain we looked to the left; in vain examined it above and below. There existed no passage, no sign of any other tun- nel. I experienced the most bitter and painful dis- appointment. So enraged was I that I would not admit the reality of-any obstacle, I stooped to my knees ; I looked under the mass of stone. No hole, no interstice. I then looked above. The same bar- rier of granite ! Hans, with the lamp, examined the sides of the tunnel in every direction. But all in vain ! It was necessary to renounce all hope of pass- ing through. I had seated myself upon the ground. My uncle walked angrily and hopelessly up and down. He was evidently desperate. "But," I cried, after some mo- ments' thought, "what about Ame Saknussem?" ■ "You are right," replied my uncle, "he can never have been checked by a lump of rock." "No — ten thousand times no," I cried, with ex- treme vivacity. "This huge lump of rock, in conse- quence of some concussion, has in some unexpected way closed up the passage. Many and many years have passed away since the return of Saknussem, and the fall of this huge block of granite. Is it not quite evident that this gallery was formerly the out- let for the pent-up lava in the interior of the earth, and that these eruptive matters then circulated freely? Look at these recent fissures in the granite roof; it is evidently formed of pieces of enormous stone, placed here as if by the hand of a giant, who had worked to make a strong and substantial arch. One day, after an unusually heavy shock, the vast rock which stands in our way, fell through to a level with the soil and has barred our further pro- gress. We are right, then, "in thinking that this is an unexpected obstacle, with which Saknussem did not meet; and if we do not upset it in some way, we are unworthy of following in the footsteps of the great discoverer, and incapable of finding our way to the Center of the Earth !" In this wild way I addressed my uncle. The zeal of the Professor, his earnest longing for success, had become part and parcel of my being. I wholly forgot the past; I utterly despised the future. Noth- ing existed for me upon the surface of this spheroid in'the bosom of which I was engulfed, no towns, no country, no Hamburg, no Konigstrasse, not even my poor Gretchen, who by this time would believe me utterly lost in the interior of the earth ! "Well," cried by uncle, roused to enthusiasm by my words, "let us go to work with pick-axes, with crowbars, with anything that comes to hand — but down with these terrible wails." "It is far too tough and too big to be destroyed by a pick-ax or crowbar," I replied. "What then ?". "As I said, it is useless to think of overcomiiii; such a difficulty by means of ordinary tools." "What then?" "What else but gunpowder, a subterranean mine? Let us blow up the obstacle that stands in our way." "Gunpowder I" "Yes; all we have to do is to get rid of this paltry obstacle." "To work, Hans, to work!" cried the Professor. The Icelander went back to the raft, and soon re- turned with a huge crowbar, with which he began to dig a hole in the rock, which was to serve as a mine. It was by no means a slight task. It was necessary for our purpose to make'a cavity large enough to hold fifty pounds of fulminating gun cot- ton, the expansive power of which is four times as great as that of ordinary gunpowder. I had now roused myself to an almost miraculous state of excitement. While Hans was at work, 1 ac- tively assisted my uncle to prepare a long w:ck, made from damp gunpowder, the mass of which we finally enclosed in a bag of linen. "We are bound t.n go through," I cried enthusiastically. "We are bound to go through," responded the Professor, tapping me on the back. At midnight, our work as miners was completely finished; the charge of fulminating cotton was thrust into the hollow, and the match, which we had made of considerable length, was ready. A spark wa3 now sufficient to ignite this formidable engine, and to blow the rock to atoms ! "We will now rest until to-morrow." It was absolutely necessary to resign myself to my fate, and to consent to wait for the explosion for six weary hours ! CHAPTER XXXIX The Explosion and Its Results THE next day, which was the twenty-seventh of August, was a date celebrated in our won- drous, subterranean journey. I never think of it even now, but I shudder with horror. My heart beats wildly at the very memory of that awful day. From this time forward, our;