Henry and Hans

Henry and Hans are joined by more than the practical partnership of traveler and guide: at the expedition’s most dangerous return, Hans saves Henry from falling into a crater, and after the journey he departs without accepting payment, leaving gratitude that Henry describes as lasting. Their relationship links bodily rescue in the underground adventure to the separation that follows its public success.

Guide and Companion

Hans is the Icelandic guide who accompanies Henry and Professor Hardwigg on their journey. The evidence presents the relationship most clearly at its two decisive edges: Hans’s physical care for Henry when the expedition reaches the surface, and Henry’s later account of the attachment formed among those whose lives the guide saved.

Rescue at the Crater

When Henry regains consciousness on the mountainside, Hans has one hand firmly gripping him by the belt and is supporting Professor Hardwigg with the other. Henry is bruised but not gravely injured; he lies less than two yards from a yawning gulf and realizes that a slight misstep could have sent him into it. The peril makes Hans’s action concrete: he has kept Henry from death while Henry was insensible on the crater’s flank.

Professor Hardwigg, also just returned to consciousness, asks where they are and seems displeased to have come back to the surface. Hans can offer no answer, shrugging to show that he does not know. The contrast is telling without making Hans’s rescue seem calculated: while the professor’s response registers disappointment at the return, the guide’s immediate place in the scene is as the one holding the survivors safe at the edge of the gulf.

Gratitude and Departure

After the expedition, Hans leaves Hamburg despite the party’s efforts to persuade him otherwise. Henry says that the man to whom they owed so much would not let them repay their deep debt of gratitude; Hans is instead overcome by longing for Iceland and for home. His departure therefore brings the companionship to an end without diminishing what it meant to the survivors.

Hans’s farewell is the single word “Farval,” after which he sets out for Reykjavik and soon arrives there safely. Henry says that he and the others were deeply attached to the brave eider-duck hunter, that his absence would never make him forgotten by those whose lives he had saved, and that he hoped to see him again. The relation closes not with repayment or a reunion, but with a remembered act of rescue, an unaccepted debt, and the possibility Henry still holds open of meeting Hans again.