I WAS born in Connecticut
about thirty years ago. My name is, David Innes. My father was a
wealthy mine owner. When was to he mine when I had attained my
majority provided that I had devoted the nineteen he died. All his
was property two years intervening in close application to the
great business I was to inherit.
I did my best to fulfil the last wishes of my parent not
because of the inheritance, but because I loved and honored my
father. For six months I toiled in the mines and in the counting
rooms, for I wished to know every minute detail of the business.
Then Perry interested me his in . rnven tion. He was an old
fellow who had devoted the better part of a long life to the perfec
tion of a mechanical subterranean prospector. As relaxation he
studied paleontology. I looked over his plans, listened to his argu
ments, inspected his working model-and then, convinced, I advanced
the funds necessary to construct a full-sized, practical
prospector.
I shall not go into the details of its construction-it lies
out there in the desert now-about two miles from here. Tomorrow you
may care to ride out and see it. Roughly, it is a steel cylinder a
hundred feet long, and jointed so that it may turn and twist
through solid rock if need be. At one end is a mighty revolving
drill operated by an engine which Perry said generated more power
to the cubic inch than any other engine did to the cubic foot. I
remember that he used to claim that that invention alone would make
us fabulously wealthy-we were going to make the whole thing public
after the successful issue of our first secret trial-but Perry
never returned from that trial trip, and I only after ten years.
I recall as it were but yesterday the night of that
momentous occasion upon which we were to test the practicality of
that wondrous invention. It was near midnight when we repaired to
the lofty tower in which Perry had constructed his "iron mole" as
he was wont to call the thing. The great nose rested upon the bare
earth of the floor. We passed through the doors into the outer
jacket, secured them, and then passing on into the cabin, which
contained the controlling mechanism within the inner tube, switched
on the electric lights.
Perry looked to his generator; to the great tanks that held
the life-giving chemicals with which he was to manufacture fresh
air to replace that which we consumed in breathing; to his
instruments for recording temperatures, speed, distance, and for
examining the materials through which we were to pass.
He tested the steering device, and overlooked the mighty
cogs which transmitted its marvelous velocity to the giant drill at
the nose of his strange craft.
Our seats, into which we strapped ourselves, were so
arranged upon transverse bars that we would be upright whether the
craft were ploughing her way downward into the bowels of the earth,
or running horizontally along some great seam of coal, or rising
vertically toward the surface again.
At length all was ready. Perry bowed his head in prayer.
For a moment we were silent, and then the old man's hand grasped
the starting lever. There was a frightful roaring beneath us-the
giant frame trembled and vibrated-there was a rush of sound as the
loose earth passed up through the hollow space between the inner
and outer jackets to be deposited in our wake. We were off!
The noise was deafening. The sensation was frightful. For a
full minute neither of us could do aught but cling with the
proverbial desperation of the drowning man to the handrails of our
swinging seats. Then Perry glanced at the thermometer.
"Gad!" he cried, "it cannot be possible-quick! What does
the distance meter read?"
That and the speedometer were both on my side of the cabin,
and as I turned to take a reading from the former I could see Perry
muttering.
"Ten degrees rise-it cannot be possible!" and then I saw
him tug frantically upon the steering wheel.
As I finally found the tiny needle in the dim light I
translated Perry's evident excitement, and my heart sank within me.
But when I spoke I hid the fear which haunted me.
"It will be seven hundred feet, Perry," I said, "by the
time you can turn her into the horizontal."
"You'd better lend me a hand then, my boy," he replied,
"for I cannot budge her out of the vertical alone. God give that
our combined strength may be equal to the task, for else we are
lost."
I wormed my way to the old man's side with never a doubt
but that the great wheel would yield on the instant to the power of
my young and vigorous muscles. Nor was my belief mere vanity, for
always had my physique been the envy and despair of my fellows. And
for that very reason it had waxed even greater than nature had
intended, since my natural pride in my great strength had led me to
care for and develop my body and my muscles by every means within
my power. What with boxing, foot-ball, and base-ball, I had been in
training since childhood.
And so it was with the utmost confidence that I laid hold
of the huge iron rim; but though I threw every ounce of my strength
into it, my best effort was as unavailing as Perry's had been-the
thing would not budge-the grim, insensate, horrible thing that was
holding us upon the straight road to death!
At length I gave up the useless struggle, and without a
word returned to my seat. There was no need for words-at least none
that I could imagine, unless Perry desired to pray. And I was quite
sure that he would, for he never left an opportunity neglected
where he might sandwich in a prayer. He prayed when he arose in the
morning, he prayed before he ate, he prayed when he had finished
eating, and before he went to bed at night he prayed again. In
between he often found excuses to pray even when the provocation
seemed far-fetched to my worldly eyes-now that he was about to die
I felt positive that I should witness a perfect orgy of prayer-if
one may allude with such a simile to so solemn an act.
But to my astonishment I discovered that with death staring
him in the face Abner Perry was transformed into a new being. From
his lips there flowed-not prayer-but a clear and limpid stream of
undiluted profanity, and it was all directed at that quietly
stubborn piece of unyielding mechanism.
"I should think, Perry," I chided, "that a man of your
professed religiousness would rather be at his prayers than cursing
in the presence of imminent death."
"Death!" he cried. "Death is it that appalls you? That is
nothing by comparison with the loss the world must suffer. Why,
David within this iron cylinder we have demonstrated possibilities
that science has scarce dreamed. We have harnessed a new principle,
and with it animated a piece of steel with the power of ten
thousand men. That two lives will be snuffed out is nothing to the
world calamity that entombs in the bowels of the earth the
discoveries that I have made and proved in the successful
construction of the thing that is now carrying us farther and
farther toward the eternal central fires."
I am frank to admit that for myself I was much more
concerned with our own immediate future than with any problematic
loss which the world might be about to suffer. The world was at
least ignorant of its bereavement, while to me it was a real and
terrible actuality.
"What can we do?" I asked, hiding my perturbation beneath
the mask of a low and level voice.
"We may stop here, and die of asphyxiation when our
atmosphere tanks are empty," replied Perry, "or we may continue on
with the slight hope that we may later sufficiently deflect the
prospector from the vertical to carry us along the arc of a great
circle which must eventually return us to the surface. If we
succeed in so doing before we reach the higher internal temperature
we may even yet survive. There would seem to me to be about one
chance in several million that we shall succeed-otherwise we shall
die more quickly but no more surely than as though we sat supinely
waiting for the torture of a slow and horrible death."
I glanced at the thermometer. It registered 110 degrees.
While we were talking the mighty iron mole had bored its way over a
mile into the rock of the earth's crust.
"Let us continue on, then," I replied. "It should soon be
over at this rate. You never intimated that the speed of this thing
would be so high, Perry. Didn't you know it?"
"No," he answered. "I could not figure the speed exactly,
for I had no instrument for measuring the mighty power of my
generator. I reasoned, however, that we should make about five
hundred yards an hour."
"And we are making seven miles an hour," I concluded for
him, as I sat with my eyes upon the distance meter. "How thick is
the Earth's crust, Perry?" I asked.
"There are almost as many conjectures as to that as there
are geologists," was his answer. "One estimates it thirty miles,
because the internal heat, increasing at the rate of about one
degree to each sixty to seventy feet depth, would be sufficient to
fuse the most refractory substances at that distance beneath the
surface. Another finds that the phenomena of precession and
nutation require that the earth, if not entirely solid, must at
least have a shell not less than eight hundred to a thousand miles
in thickness. So there you are. You may take your choice."
"And if it should prove solid?" I asked.
"It will be all the same to us in the end, David," replied
Perry. "At the best our fuel will suffice to carry us but three or
four days, while our atmosphere cannot last to exceed three.
Neither, then, is sufficient to bear us in the safety through eight
thousand miles of rock to the antipodes."
"If the crust is of sufficient thickness we shall come to a
final stop between six and seven hundred miles beneath the earth's
surface; but during the last hundred and fifty miles of our journey
we shall be corpses. Am I correct?" I asked.
"Quite correct, David. Are you frightened?"
"I do not know. It all has come so suddenly that I scarce
believe that either of us realizes the real terrors of our
position. I feel that I should be reduced to panic; but yet I am
not. I imagine that the shock has been so great as to partially
stun our sensibilities."
Again I turned to the thermometer. The mercury was rising
with less rapidity. It was now but 140 degrees, although we had
penetrated to a depth of nearly four miles. I told Perry, and he
smiled.
"We have shattered one theory at least," was his only
comment, and then he returned to his self-assumed occupation of
fluently cursing the steering wheel. I once heard a pirate swear,
but his best efforts would have seemed like those of a tyro
alongside of Perry's masterful and scientific imprecations.
Once more I tried my hand at the wheel, but I might as well
have essayed to swing the earth itself. At my suggestion Perry
stopped the generator, and as we came to rest I again threw all my
strength into a supreme effort to move the thing even a hair's
breadth-but the results were as barren as when we had been
traveling at top speed.
I shook my head sadly, and motioned to the starting lever.
Perry pulled it toward him, and once again we were plunging
downward toward eternity at the rate of seven miles an hour. I sat
with my eyes glued to the thermometer and the distance meter. The
mercury was rising very slowly now, though even at 145 degrees it
was almost unbearable within the narrow confines of our metal
prison.
About noon, or twelve hours after our start upon this
unfortunate journey, we had bored to a depth of eighty-four miles,
at which point the mercury registered 153 degrees F.
Perry was becoming more hopeful, although upon what meager
food he sustained his optimism I could not conjecture. From cursing
he had turned to singing-I felt that the strain had at last
affected his mind. For several hours we had not spoken except as he
asked me for the readings of the instruments from time to time, and
I announced them. My thoughts were filled with vain regrets. I
recalled numerous acts of my past life which I should have been
glad to have had a few more years to live down. There was the
affair in the Latin Commons at Andover when Calhoun and I had put
gunpowder in the stove-and nearly killed one of the masters. And
then-but what was the use, I was about to die and atone for all
these things and several more. Already the heat was sufficient to
give me a foretaste of the hereafter. A few more degrees and I felt
that I should lose consciousness.
"What are the readings now, David?" Perry's voice broke in
upon my somber reflections.
"Ninety miles and 153 degrees," I replied.
"Gad, but we've knocked that thirty-mile-crust theory into
a cocked hat!" he cried gleefully.
"Precious lot of good it will do us," I growled back.
"But my boy," he continued, "doesn't that temperature
reading mean anything to you? Why it hasn't gone up in six miles.
Think of it, son!"
"Yes, I'm thinking of it," I answered; "but what difference
will it make when our air supply is exhausted whether the
temperature is 153 degrees or 153,000? We'll be just as dead, and
no one will know the difference, anyhow." But I must admit that for
some unaccountable reason the stationary temperature did renew my
waning hope. What I hoped for I could not have explained, nor did I
try. The very fact, as Perry took pains to explain, of the blasting
of several very exact and learned scientific hypotheses made it
apparent that we could not know what lay before us within the
bowels of the earth, and so we might continue to hope for the best,
at least until we were dead-when hope would no longer be essential
to our happiness. It was very good, and logical reasoning, and so I
embraced it.
At one hundred miles the temperature had
dropped to 152? degrees! When I announced it Perry reached
over and hugged me.
From then on until noon of the second day, it continued to
drop until it became as uncomfortably cold as it had been
unbearably hot before. At the depth of two hundred and forty miles
our nostrils were assailed by almost overpowering ammonia fumes,
and the temperature had dropped to
ten below zero! We suffered nearly two hours of this
intense and bitter cold, until at about two hundred and forty-five
miles from the surface of the earth we entered a stratum of solid
ice, when the mercury quickly rose to 32 degrees. During the next
three hours we passed through ten miles of ice, eventually emerging
into another series of ammonia-impregnated strata, where the
mercury again fell to ten degrees below zero.
Slowly it rose once more until we were convinced that at
last we were nearing the molten interior of the earth. At four
hundred miles the temperature had reached 152 degrees. Feverishly I
watched the thermometer. Slowly it rose. Perry had ceased singing
and was at last praying.
Our hopes had received such a deathblow that the gradually
increasing heat seemed to our distorted imaginations much greater
than it really was. For another hour I saw that pitiless column of
mercury rise and rise until at four hundred and ten miles it stood
at 153 degrees. Now it was that we began to hang upon those
readings in almost breathless anxiety.
One hundred and fifty-three degrees had been the maximum
temperature above the ice stratum. Would it stop at this point
again, or would it continue its merciless climb? We knew that there
was no hope, and yet with the persistence of life itself we
continued to hope against practical certainty.
Already the air tanks were at low ebb-there was barely
enough of the precious gases to sustain us for another twelve
hours. But would we be alive to know or care? It seemed incredible.
At four hundred and twenty miles I took another reading.
"Perry!" I shouted. "Perry, man! She's going down! She's
going down! She's 152 degrees again."
"Gad!" he cried. "What can it mean? Can the earth be cold
at the center?"
"I do not know, Perry," I answered; "but thank God, if I am
to die it shall not be by fire-that is all that I have feared. I
can face the thought of any death but that."
Down, down went the mercury until it stood as low as it had
seven miles from the surface of the earth, and then of a sudden the
realization broke upon us that death was very near. Perry was the
first to discover it. I saw him fussing with the valves that
regulate the air supply. And at the same time I experienced
difficulty in breathing. My head felt dizzy-my limbs heavy.
I saw Perry crumple in his seat. He gave himself a shake
and sat erect again. Then he turned toward me.
"Good-bye, David," he said. "I guess this is the end," and
then he smiled and closed his eyes.
"Good-bye, Perry, and good luck to you," I answered,
smiling back at him. But I fought off that awful lethargy. I was
very young-I did not want to die.
For an hour I battled against the cruelly enveloping death
that surrounded me upon all sides. At first I found that by
climbing high into the framework above me I could find more of the
precious life-giving elements, and for a while these sustained me.
It must have been an hour after Perry had succumbed that I at last
came to the realization that I could no longer carry on this
unequal struggle against the inevitable.
With my last flickering ray of consciousness I turned
mechanically toward the distance meter. It stood at exactly five
hundred miles from the earth's surface-and then of a sudden the
huge thing that bore us came to a stop. The rattle of hurtling rock
through the hollow jacket ceased. The wild racing of the giant
drill betokened that it was running loose in
air-and then another truth flashed upon me. The point of
the prospector was above us. Slowly it dawned on me that since
passing through the ice strata it had been above. We had turned in
the ice and sped upward toward the earth's crust. Thank God! We
were safe!
I put my nose to the intake pipe through which samples were
to have been taken during the passage of the prospector through the
earth, and my fondest hopes were realized-a flood of fresh air was
pouring into the iron cabin. The reaction left me in a state of
collapse, and I lost consciousness.
