"A. S.!" cried my uncle. "You see, I was right. Arne Saknussemm, always Arne Saknussemm!"
CHAPTER 38
NO OUTLET—BLASTING THE ROCK
Ever since the commencement of our marvelous journey, I had experienced many surprises, had suffered from many illusions. I thought that I was case-hardened against all surprises and could neither see nor hear anything to amaze me again.
I was like a many who, having been round the world, finds himself wholly blase and proof against the marvelous.
When, however, I saw these two letters, which had been engraven three hundred years before, I stood fixed in an attitude of mute surprise.
Not only was there the signature of the learned and enterprising alchemist written in the rock, but I held in my hand the very identical instrument with which he had laboriously engraved it.
It was impossible, without showing an amount of incredulity scarcely becoming a sane man, to deny the existence of the traveler, and the reality of that voyage which I believed all along to have been a myth—the mystification of some fertile brain.
While these reflections were passing through my mind, my uncle, the Professor, gave way to an access of feverish and poetical excitement.