Read Online Journey to the Center of the Earth (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Jules Verne - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jules Verne
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trillion, eight billion, a hundred and seventy-six million, six hundred and forty thousand combinations. Now there were a hundred and thirty-two letters in this sentence, and these hundred and thirty-two letters would yield a number of different sentences, each made up of at least a hundred and thirty-three figures, a number almost impossible to calculate or conceive.
So I felt reassured about this heroic method of solving the problem.
But time passed; night came on; the street noises ceased; my uncle, bending over his task, noticed nothing, not even Martha half opening the door; he heard not a sound, not even this noble servant saying:
“Will Professor Lidenbrock not have any dinner tonight?”
Poor Martha had to go away unanswered. As for me, after long resistance, I was overcome by sleep, and fell asleep at one end of the sofa, while Uncle Lidenbrock went on calculating and erasing his calculations.
When I awoke the next morning that indefatigable worker was still at his task. His red eyes, his pale complexion, his hair tangled in his feverish hand, the red spots on his cheeks, said enough about his desperate struggle with the impossible, and with what weariness of spirit and exhaustion of the brain the hours must have passed for him.
In truth, I felt sorry for him. In spite of the reproaches which I thought I had a right to make him, a certain feeling of compassion began to take hold of me. The poor man was so entirely taken up with his one idea that he had even forgotten how to get angry. All his vital forces were concentrated on a single point, and because their usual vent was closed, it was to be feared that their pent-up tension might lead to an explosion any moment.
I could have loosened the steel vice that was crushing his brain with one gesture, with just one word! But I did nothing.
Yet I was not an ill-natured fellow. Why did I remain silent in such a crisis? In my uncle’s own interest.
“No, no,” I repeated, “no, I won’t speak! He’d insist on going, I know him; nothing on earth could stop him. He has a volcanic imagination, and would risk his life to do what other geologists have never done. I’ll keep silent. I’ll keep the secret that chance has revealed to me. To reveal it would be to kill Professor Lidenbrock! Let him find it out himself if he can. I don’t want to have to reproach myself some day that I led him to his destruction.”
Having made this resolution, I folded my arms and waited. But I had not anticipated a little incident which occurred a few hours later.
When the maid Martha wanted to go to the market, she found the door locked. The big key was gone. Who could have taken it out? Assuredly, it was my uncle, when he returned the night before from his hurried walk.
Was this done on purpose? Or was it a mistake? Did he want to expose us to hunger? This seemed like going rather too far! What! should Martha and I be victims of a situation that did not concern us in the least? It was a fact that a few years before this, while my uncle was working on his great classification of minerals, he went for forty-eight hours without eating, and all his household was obliged to share in this scientific fast. As for me, what I remember is that I got severe stomach cramps, which hardly suited the constitution of a hungry, growing lad.
Now it seemed to me as if breakfast was going to be lacking, just as dinner had been the night before. Yet I resolved to be a hero, and not to be conquered by the pangs of hunger. Martha took it very seriously, and, poor woman, was very much distressed. As for me, the impossibility of leaving the house worried me even more, and for good reason. You understand me.
My uncle went on working, his imagination went off rambling into the ideal world of combinations; he lived far away from earth, and genuinely beyond earthly needs.
At about noon, hunger began to sting me severely Martha had, without thinking any harm, cleared out the larder the night before, so
So I felt reassured about this heroic method of solving the problem.
But time passed; night came on; the street noises ceased; my uncle, bending over his task, noticed nothing, not even Martha half opening the door; he heard not a sound, not even this noble servant saying:
“Will Professor Lidenbrock not have any dinner tonight?”
Poor Martha had to go away unanswered. As for me, after long resistance, I was overcome by sleep, and fell asleep at one end of the sofa, while Uncle Lidenbrock went on calculating and erasing his calculations.
When I awoke the next morning that indefatigable worker was still at his task. His red eyes, his pale complexion, his hair tangled in his feverish hand, the red spots on his cheeks, said enough about his desperate struggle with the impossible, and with what weariness of spirit and exhaustion of the brain the hours must have passed for him.
In truth, I felt sorry for him. In spite of the reproaches which I thought I had a right to make him, a certain feeling of compassion began to take hold of me. The poor man was so entirely taken up with his one idea that he had even forgotten how to get angry. All his vital forces were concentrated on a single point, and because their usual vent was closed, it was to be feared that their pent-up tension might lead to an explosion any moment.
I could have loosened the steel vice that was crushing his brain with one gesture, with just one word! But I did nothing.
Yet I was not an ill-natured fellow. Why did I remain silent in such a crisis? In my uncle’s own interest.
“No, no,” I repeated, “no, I won’t speak! He’d insist on going, I know him; nothing on earth could stop him. He has a volcanic imagination, and would risk his life to do what other geologists have never done. I’ll keep silent. I’ll keep the secret that chance has revealed to me. To reveal it would be to kill Professor Lidenbrock! Let him find it out himself if he can. I don’t want to have to reproach myself some day that I led him to his destruction.”
Having made this resolution, I folded my arms and waited. But I had not anticipated a little incident which occurred a few hours later.
When the maid Martha wanted to go to the market, she found the door locked. The big key was gone. Who could have taken it out? Assuredly, it was my uncle, when he returned the night before from his hurried walk.
Was this done on purpose? Or was it a mistake? Did he want to expose us to hunger? This seemed like going rather too far! What! should Martha and I be victims of a situation that did not concern us in the least? It was a fact that a few years before this, while my uncle was working on his great classification of minerals, he went for forty-eight hours without eating, and all his household was obliged to share in this scientific fast. As for me, what I remember is that I got severe stomach cramps, which hardly suited the constitution of a hungry, growing lad.
Now it seemed to me as if breakfast was going to be lacking, just as dinner had been the night before. Yet I resolved to be a hero, and not to be conquered by the pangs of hunger. Martha took it very seriously, and, poor woman, was very much distressed. As for me, the impossibility of leaving the house worried me even more, and for good reason. You understand me.
My uncle went on working, his imagination went off rambling into the ideal world of combinations; he lived far away from earth, and genuinely beyond earthly needs.
At about noon, hunger began to sting me severely Martha had, without thinking any harm, cleared out the larder the night before, so
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