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When I have added, to complete my portrait, that my uncle walked by mathematical strides of a yard and a half, and that in walking he kept his fists firmly closed, a sure sign of an irritable temperament, I think I shall have said enough to disenchant anyone who should by mistake have coveted his company.
In vain did I try to detect a smile upon their lips; sometimes by a spasmodic and involuntary contraction of the muscles they seemed to laugh, but they never smiled.
“Et quacumque viam dedent fortuna sequamur.” “Therever fortune clears a way, Thither our ready footsteps stray.”
I perfectly understood the necessity of abiding a particular moment of the tide to undertake the crossing of the fjord, when, the sea having reached its greatest height, it should be slack water. Then the ebb and flow have no sensible effect, and the boat does not risk being carried either to the bottom or out to sea.
At our entrance the host, as if he had never seen us, greeted us with the word “Saellvertu,” which means “be happy,” and came and kissed us on the cheek.
I had heard of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, and Fingal’s Cave in Staffa, one of the Hebrides; but I had never yet seen a basaltic formation. At Stapi I beheld this phenomenon in all its beauty.
“No more; that is sufficient. When science has uttered her voice, let babblers hold their peace.”
My uncle paid without a remark: a man who is starting for the center of the earth need not be particular about a few rixdollars.
By an optical law that obtains at all great heights, the shores seemed raised and the center depressed.
If I looked westward, there the ocean lay spread out in all its magnificence, like a mere continuation of those flock-like summits. The eye could hardly tell where the snowy ridges ended and the foaming waves began.
My dazzled eyes were bathed in the bright flood of the solar rays. I was forgetting where and who I was, to live the life of elves and sylphs, the fanciful creation of Scandinavian superstitions.
As I had foretold, the water failed entirely by the end of the first day’s retrograde march. Our fluid aliment was now nothing but gin; but this infernal fluid burned my throat, and I could not even endure the sight of it.
Gin would dehydrate them faster.
If in a single day I have not met with the water that we want, I swear to you we will return to the surface of the earth.”
Except, in that single day the lack of water would have greatly diminished their ability to climb out. the best argument for the professor's determination would be that they are already to weak to climb out.
“When our flasks are empty, where shall we fill them again? Can we tell that?” No; there was no certainty. “Well, let us allow the water to run on. It will flow down, and will both guide and refresh us.”
Local Minimum Trap: As you pointed out, the water could be flowing towards a local minimum, like a small pool underground. This wouldn't necessarily lead them to the center of the Earth, just the lowest point in that particular area.
From Gemini, Google AI
The commonest prudence would counsel immediate flight; but we did not come so far to be prudent.
“Just listen to me,” I said firmly. “Ambition must have a limit somewhere; we cannot perform impossibilities;
