s as
shipwrecked travelers. They gave us clothes and food. After a delay of
forty-eight hours, on the 30th of September a little vessel took us to
Messina, where a few days of delightful and complete repose restored us
to ourselves.

On Friday, the 4th of October, we embarked in the Volturne, one of the
postal packets of the Imperial Messageries of France; and three days
later we landed at Marseilles, having no other care on our minds but
that of our precious but erratic compass. This inexplicable circumstance
tormented me terribly. On the 9th of October, in the evening, we reached
Hamburg.

What was the astonishment of Martha, what the joy of Gretchen! I will
not attempt to define it.

"Now then, Harry, that you really are a hero," she said, "there is no
reason why you should ever leave me again."

I looked at her. She was weeping tears of joy.

I leave it to be imagined if the return of Professor Hardwigg made or
did not make a sensation in Hamburg. Thanks to the indiscretion of
Martha, the news of his departure for the interior of the earth had been
spread over the whole world.

No one would believe it--and when they saw him come back in safety they
believed it all the less.

But the presence of Hans and many stray scraps of information by degrees
modified public opinion.

Then my uncle became a great man and I the nephew of a great man, which,
at all events, is something. Hamburg gave a festival in our honor. A
public meeting of the Johanneum Institution was held, at which the
Professor related the whole story of his adventures, omitting only the
facts in connection with the compass.

That same day he deposited in the archives of the town the document he
had found written by Saknussemm, and he expressed his great regret that
circumstances, stronger than his will, did not allow him to follow the
Icelandic traveler's track into the very centre of the earth. He was
modest in his glory, but his reputation only increased.

So much honor necessarily created for him many envious enemies. Of
course they existed, and as his theories, supported by certain facts,
contradicted the system of science upon the question of central heat, he
maintained his own views both with pen and speech against the learned of
every country. Although I still believe in the theory of central heat, I
confess that certain circumstances, hitherto very ill defined, may
modify the laws of such natural phenomena.

At the moment when these