Chapter 5 - Page 2

fearedlest extreme tension should give rise to an explosion sooner or later.

I might with a word have loosened the screw of the steel vice thatwas crushing his brain; but that word I would not speak.

Yet I was not an ill-natured fellow. Why was I dumb at such a crisis?Why so insensible to my uncle's interests?

"No, no," I repeated, "I shall not speak. He would insist upon going;nothing on earth could stop him. His imagination is a volcano, and todo that which other geologists have never done he would risk hislife. I will preserve silence. I will keep the secret which merechance has revealed to me. To discover it, would be to kill ProfessorLiedenbrock! Let him find it out himself if he can. I will never haveit laid to my door that I led him to his destruction."

Having formed this resolution, I folded my arms and waited. But I hadnot reckoned upon one little incident which turned up a few hoursafter.

When our good Martha wanted to go to Market, she found the doorlocked. The big key was gone. Who could have taken it out? Assuredly,it was my uncle, when he returned the night before from his hurriedwalk.

Was this done on purpose? Or was it a mistake? Did he want to reduceus by famine? This seemed like going rather too far! What! shouldMartha and I be victims of a position of things in which we had notthe smallest interest? It was a fact that a few years before this,whilst my uncle was working at his great classification of minerals,he was forty-eight hours without eating, and all his household wereobliged to share in this scientific fast. As for me, what I rememberis, that I got severe cramps in my stomach, which hardly suited theconstitution of a hungry, growing lad.

Now it appeared to me as if breakfast was going to be wanting, justas supper had been the night before. Yet I resolved to be a hero, andnot to be conquered by the pangs of hunger. Martha took it veryseriously, and, poor woman, was very much distressed. As for me, theimpossibility of leaving the house distressed me a good deal more,and for a very good reason. A caged lover's feelings may easily beimagined.

My uncle went on working, his imagination went off rambling into theideal world of combinations; he was far away from earth, and reallyfar away from earthly wants.

About noon hunger began to stimulate me severely. Martha had, withoutthinking any harm, cleared out the larder the night before, so thatnow there was nothing left in the house. Still I held out; I made ita point of honour.

Two o'clock struck. This was becoming ridiculous; worse than that,unbearable. I began to say to myself that I was exaggerating theimportance of the document; that my uncle would surely not believe init, that he would set it down as a mere puzzle; that if it came tothe worst, we should lay violent hands on him and keep him at home ifhe thought on venturing on the expedition that, after all, he