Chapter II.
With the morning my friend's nerves were rebraced, and he was notless excited by curiosity than myself. Perhaps more; for he evidentlybelieved in his own story, and I felt considerable doubt of it; not thathe would have wilfully told an untruth, but that I thought he must havebeen under one of those hallucinations which seize on our fancy or ournerves in solitary, unaccustomed places, and in which we give shape tothe formless and sound to the dumb.
We selected six veteran miners to watch our descent; and as the cageheld only one at a time, the engineer descended first; and when he hadgained the ledge at which he had before halted, the cage rearose for me.I soon gained his side. We had provided ourselves with a strong coil ofrope.
The light struck on my sight as it had done the day before on myfriend's. The hollow through which it came sloped diagonally: it seemedto me a diffused atmospheric light, not like that from fire, but softand silvery, as from a northern star. Quitting the cage, we descended,one after the other, easily enough, owing to the juts in the side, tillwe reached the place at which my friend had previously halted, and whichwas a projection just spacious enough to allow us to stand abreast. Fromthis spot the chasm widened rapidly like the lower end of a vast funnel,and I saw distinctly the valley, the road, the lamps which my companionhad described. He had exaggerated nothing. I heard the sounds he hadheard--a mingled indescribable hum as of voices and a dull tramp as offeet. Straining my eye farther down, I clearly beheld at a distance theoutline of some large building. It could not be mere natural rock, itwas too symmetrical, with huge heavy Egyptian-like columns, and thewhole lighted as from within. I had about me a small pocket-telescope,and by the aid of this, I could distinguish, near the building Imention, two forms which seemed human, though I could not be sure. Atleast they were living, for they moved, and both vanished within thebuilding. We now proceeded to attach the end of the rope we had broughtwith us to the ledge on which we stood, by the aid of clamps andgrappling hooks, with which, as well as with necessary tools, we wereprovided.
We were almost silent in our work. We toiled like men afraid to speak toeach other. One end of the rope being thus apparently made firm to theledge, the other, to which we fastened a fragment of the rock, rested onthe ground below, a distance of some fifty feet. I was a younger man anda more active man than my companion, and having served on board ship inmy boyhood, this mode of transit was more familiar to me than to him. Ina whisper I claimed the precedence, so that when I gained the ground Imight serve to hold the rope more steady for his descent. I got safelyto the ground beneath, and the engineer now began to lower himself.But he had scarcely accomplished ten feet of the descent, when thefastenings, which we had fancied so secure, gave way, or rather therock itself proved treacherous and crumbled beneath the strain; and theunhappy man was precipitated to the bottom, falling just at my feet,and bringing down with his fall splinters of the rock, one of which,fortunately but a small one, struck and for the time stunned me. When Irecovered my senses I saw my companion an inanimate mass beside me,life utterly extinct. While I was bending over his corpse in grief andhorror, I heard close at hand a strange sound between a snort and ahiss; and turning instinctively to the quarter from which it came, I sawemerging from a dark fissure in the rock a vast and terrible head,with open jaws and dull, ghastly, hungry eyes--the head of a monstrousreptile resembling that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitelylarger than the largest creature of that kind I had ever beheld in mytravels. I started to my feet and fled down the valley at my utmostspeed. I stopped at last, ashamed of my panic and my flight, andreturned to the spot on which I had left the body of my friend. Itwas gone; doubtless the monster had already drawn it into its den anddevoured it. The rope and the grappling-hooks still lay where they hadfallen, but they afforded me no chance of return; it was impossible tore-attach them to the rock above, and the sides of the rock were toosheer and smooth for human steps to clamber. I was alone in this strangeworld, amidst the bowels of the earth.
The Coming Race Page 2