Margaret was put into the charge of her faithful house-keeper, and Roland did not see her again until the evening. As she met him she began immediately to talk upon some unimportant subject, and there was that in her face which told him that it was her desire that the great thought which filled both their minds should not be the subject of their conversation. She told him she was going to the sea-shore for a short time; she needed a change, and she would go the next day. He understood her perfectly, and they discussed various matters of business connected with the Works. She said nothing about the time of her return, and he did not allude to it.
On the day that Margaret left Sardis, Roland began his preparations for descending the shaft. He had so thoroughly considered the machinery and appliances necessary for the undertaking, and had worked out all his plans in such detail, in his mind and upon paper, that he knew exactly what he wanted to do. His orders for the great length of chain exhausted the stock of several manufactories, and the engines he obtained were even more powerful than he had intended them to be; but these he could procure immediately, and for smaller ones he would have been obliged to wait.
The circular car which was intended to move up and down the shaft, and the peculiar machinery connected with it, with the hoisting apparatus, were all made in his Works. His skilled artisans labored steadily day and night.
It was ten days before he was ready to make his descent. Margaret was still at the sea-shore. They had written to each other frequently, but neither had made mention of the great shaft. Even when he was ready to go down he said nothing to any one of any immediate intention of descending. There was a massive door which covered the mouth of the pit; this he ordered locked and went away.
The next morning he walked into the building a little earlier than was his custom, called for the engineers, and for Mr. Bryce, who was to take charge of everything connected with the descent, and announced that he was going down as soon as preparations could be made.
Mr. Bryce and the men who were to assist him were very serious. They said nothing that was not necessary. If their employer had been any other man than Roland Clewe it is possible they might have remonstrated with him. But they knew him, and they said and did nothing more than was their duty.
The door of the shaft was removed, the car which had hung high above it was lowered to the mouth of the opening, and Roland stepped within it and seated himself. Above him and around him were placed geological tools and instruments of many kinds; a lantern, food and drink; everything, in fact, which he could possibly be presumed to need upon this extraordinary journey. A telephone was at his side by which he could communicate at any time with the surface of the earth. There were electric bells; there was everything to make his expedition safe and profitable. When he gave the word to start the engines, there were no ceremonies, and nothing was said out of the common.
When the conical top of the car had descended below the surface, a steel grating, with orifices for the passage of the chains, was let down over the mouth of the shaft, and the downward journey was begun. In the floor of the car were grated openings, through which Clewe could look downward; but although the shaft below him was brilliantly illuminated by electric lights placed under the car, it did not frighten him or make him dizzy to look down, for the aperture did not appear to be very far below him. The upper part of the car was partially open, and bright lights shone upon the sides of the shaft.
As he slowly descended, he could see the various strata appearing and disappearing in the order in which he knew them. Not far below the surface he passed cavities which he believed held water; but there was no water in them now. He had expected these, and had feared that upon their edges there might be loosened patches of rock or soil, but everything seemed tightly packed and hard. If anything had been loosened it had gone down already.
Down, down he went until he came to the eternal rocks, where the inside of the shaft was polished as if it had been made of glass. It became warmer and warmer, but he knew that the heat would soon decrease. The character of the rocks changed, and he studied them as he went down, and continually made notes.
After a time the polished rocky sides of the shaft grew to be of a solemn sameness. Clewe ceased to take notes; he lighted a cigar and smoked. He tried to quietly imagine what he would come to when he got to the bottom; it would be some sort of a cave into which his shell had made an opening. He wondered what sort of a cave it would be, and how high the roof of it was from the bottom. He wondered if his gardener had remembered what he had told him about the flower-beds in front of his house; he wanted certain changes made which Margaret had suggested. He tried to keep his mind on the flower-beds, but it drifted away to the cave below. He began to wonder if he would come to some underground body of water where he would be drowned; but he knew that was a silly thought. If the shaft had gone through subterranean reservoirs, the water of these would have run out, and before they reached the bottom of the shaft would have dissipated into mist.
Down, down he went. He looked at his watch; he had been in that car only an hour and a half. Was that possible? He had supposed he was almost at the bottom. Suddenly he thought of the people above, and of the telephone. Why had not some of them spoken to him? It was shameful! He instantly called Bryce, and his heart leaped with joy when he heard the familiar voice in his ear. Now he talked steadily on for more than an hour. He had his gardener called, and he told him all that he wanted done in the flower-beds. He gave many directions in regard to the various operations of the Works. Things had been put back a great deal of late. He hoped soon to have everything going on in the ordinary way. There were two or three inventions in which he took particular interest, and of these he talked at great length with Mr. Bryce. Suddenly, in the midst of some talk about hollow steel rods, he told Bryce to let the engines move faster; there was no reason why the car should go so slowly.
The windlasses moved with a little more rapidity, and Clewe now turned and looked at an indicator which was placed on the side of the car, a little over his head. This instrument showed the depth to which he had descended, but he had not looked at it before, for if there should be anything which would make him nervous it would be the continual consideration of the depth to which he had descended.
The indicator showed that he had gone down fourteen and one eighth miles. Clewe turned and sat stiffly in his seat. He glanced down and saw beneath him only an illuminated hole, fading away at the bottom. Then he turned to speak to Bryce, but to his surprise he could think of nothing to say. After that he lighted another cigar and sat quietly.
Some minutes passed—he did not know how many—and he looked down through the gratings at the floor of the car. The electric light streamed downward through a deep orifice, which did not fade away and end in nothing; it ended in something dark and glittering. Then, as he came nearer and nearer to this glittering thing, he saw that it was his automatic shell, lying on its side, but he could see only a part of it through the opening of the bottom of the shaft which he was descending. In an instant, as it seemed to him, the car emerged from the narrow shaft, and he seemed to be hanging in the air-at least there was nothing he could see except that great shell, lying some forty feet below him. But it was impossible that the shell should be lying on the air! He rang to stop the car.
“Anything the matter?” cried Bryce, almost at the same instant.
“Nothing at all,” Clewe replied. “It's all right, I am near the bottom.”
In a state of the highest nervous excitement, Clewe gazed about him. He was no longer in a shaft; but where was he? Look out on what side he would, he saw nothing but the light going out from his lamps, but which seemed to extend indefinitely all about him. There seemed to be no limit to his vision in any direction. Then he leaned over the side of his car and looked downward. There was the great shell directly under him, but under it and around it, extending as far beneath it as it extended in every other direction, was the light from his own lamps, and yet that great shell, weighing many tons, lay as if it rested upon the solid ground!
After a few moments Clewe shut his eyes; they pained him. Something seemed to be coming into them like a fine frost in a winter wind. Then he called to Bryce to let the car descend very slowly. It went down, down, gradually approaching the great shell. When the bottom of the car was within two feet of it, Clewe rang to stop. He looked down at the complicated machine he had worked upon so long, with something like a feeling of affection. This he knew, it was his own. Looking upon its familiar form, he felt that he had a companion in this region of unreality.
Pushing back the sliding door of the car, Clewe sat upon the bottom and cautiously put out his feet and legs, lowering them until they touched the shell. It was firm and solid. Although he knew it must be so, the immovability of the great mass of iron gave him a sudden shock of mysterious fear. How could it be immovable when there was nothing under it?
But he must get out of that car, he must explore, he must find out. There certainly could be no danger so long as he could cling to his shell.
He now cautiously got out of the car and let himself down upon the shell. It was not a pleasant surface to stand upon, being uneven, with great spiral ribs, and Clewe sat down upon it, clinging to it with his hands. Then he leaned over to one side and looked beneath him. The shadows of that shell went down, down, down, until it made him sick to look at it. He drew back quickly, clutched the shell with his arms, and shut his eyes. He felt as if he were about to drop with it into a measureless depth of atmosphere.
But he soon raised himself. He had not come down here to be frightened, to let his nerves run away with him. He had come to find out things. What was it that this shell rested upon? Seizing two of the ribs with a strong clutch, he let himself hang over the sides of the shell until his feet were level with its lower side. They touched something hard. He pressed them downward; it was very hard. He raised himself and stood upon the substance which supported the shell. It was as solid as any rock. He looked down and saw his shadow stretching far beneath him. It seemed as if he were standing upon petrified air. He put out one foot and he moved a little, still holding on to the shell. He walked, as if upon solid air, to the foremost end of the long projectile. It relieved him to turn his thoughts from what was around him to this familiar object. He found its conical end shattered and broken.
After a little he slowly made his way back to the other end of the shell, and now his eyes became somewhat accustomed to the great radiance about him. He thought he could perceive here and there faint indications of long, nearly horizontal lines—lines of different shades of light. Above him, as if it hung in the air, was the round, dark hole through which he had descended.
He rose, took his hands from the shell, and made a few steps. He trod upon a horizontal surface, but in putting one foot forward, he felt a slight incline. It seemed to him that he was about to slip downward! Instantly he retreated to the shell and clutched it in a sudden frenzy of fear.
Standing thus, with his eyes still wandering, he heard the bell of the telephone ring. Without hesitation he mounted the shell and got into the car. Bryce was calling him.
“Come up,” he said. “You have been down there long enough. No matter what you have found, it is time for you to come up.”
Roland Clewe was not accustomed to receive commands, but he instantly closed the sliding door of the car, seated himself, and put his mouth to the telephone.
“All right,” he said. “You can haul me up, but go very slowly at first.”
The car rose. When it reached the orifice in the top of the cave of light, Clewe heard the conical steel top grate slightly as it touched its edge, for it was still swinging a little from the motion given to it by his entrance; but it soon hung perfectly vertical and went silently up the shaft.
Seated in the car, which was steadily ascending the great shaft, Roland Clewe took no notice of anything about him. He did not look at the brilliantly lighted interior of the shaft, he paid no attention to his instruments, he did not consult his watch, nor glance at the dial which indicated the distance he had travelled. Several times the telephone bell rang, and Bryce inquired how he was getting along; but these questions he answered as briefly as possible, and sat looking down at his knees and seeing nothing.
When he was half-way up, he suddenly became conscious that he was very hungry. He hurriedly ate some sandwiches and drank some water, and then, again, he gave himself up entirely to mental labor. When, at last, the noise of machinery above him and the sound of voices aroused him from his abstraction, the car emerged upon the surface of the earth, Clewe hastily slid back the door and stepped out. At that instant he felt himself encircled by a pair of arms. Bryce was near by, and there were other men by the engines, but the owner of those arms thought nothing of this.
“Margaret!” cried Clewe, “how came you here?”
“I have been here all the time,” she exclaimed; “or, at least, nearly all the time.” And as she spoke she drew back and looked at him, her eyes full of happy tears. “Mr. Bryce telegraphed to me the instant he knew you were going down, and I was here before you had descended half-way.”
“What!” he cried. “And all those messages came from you?”
“Nearly all,” she answered. “But tell me, Roland—tell me; have you been successful? What have you discovered?”
“I am successful,” he answered. “I have discovered everything!”
Mr. Bryce came forward.
“I will speak to you all very soon,” said Clewe. “I can't tell you anything now. Margaret, let us go. I shall want to talk to you directly, but not until I have been to my office. I will meet you at your house in a very few minutes.” And with that he left the building and fairly ran to his office.
A quarter of an hour later Roland entered Margaret's library, where she sat awaiting him. He carefully closed the doors and windows. They sat side by side upon the sofa.
“Now, Roland,” she said, “I cannot wait one second longer. What is it that you have discovered?”
“Margaret,” said he, “I am afraid you will have to wait a good many seconds. If I were to tell you directly what I have discovered, you would not understand it. I am the possessor of wonderful facts, but I believe also that I am the master of a theory more wonderful. The facts I found out when I got to the bottom of the shaft, but the theory I worked out coming up.”
“But give them to me quickly!” she cried. “The facts first—I can wait for the theory.”
“No,” he said, “I cannot do it; I must tell you the whole thing as I have it, arranged in my mind. Now, in the first place, you must understand that this earth was once a comet.”
“Oh, bother your astronomy, I really can't understand it! What did you find in the bottom of that hole?”
“You must listen to me,” he said. “You cannot comprehend a thing I say if I do not give it to you in the proper order. There have been a great many theories about comets, but there is only one of them in which I have placed any belief. You know that as a comet passes around the sun, its tail is always pointed away from the sun, so that no matter how rapidly the head shall be moving in its orbit, the end of the tail—in order to keep its position—must move with a rapidity impossible to conceive. If this tail were composed of nebulous mist, or anything of that sort, it could not keep its position. There is only one theory which could account for this position, and that is that the head of a comet is a lens and the tail is light. The light of the sun passes through the lens and streams out into space, forming the tail, which does not follow the comet in the inconceivable manner generally supposed, but is constantly renewed, always, of course; stretching away from the sun!”
“Oh, dear!” ejaculated Margaret. “I have read that.”
“A little patience,” he said. “When I arrived at the bottom of the shaft, I found myself in a cleft, I know not how large, made in a vast mass of transparent substance, hard as the hardest rock and transparent as air in the light of my electric lamps. My shell rested securely upon this substance. I walked upon it. It seemed as if I could see miles below me. In my opinion, Margaret, that substance was once the head of a comet.”
“What is the substance?” she asked, hastily.
“It is a mass of solid diamond!”
Margaret screamed. She could not say one word.
“Yes,” said he, “I believe the whole central portion of the earth is one great diamond. When it was moving about in its orbit as a comet, the light of the sun streamed through this diamond and spread an enormous tail out into space; after a time this nucleus began to burn.”
“Burn!” exclaimed Margaret.
“Yes, the diamond is almost pure carbon; why should it not burn? It burned and burned and burned. Ashes formed upon it and encircled it; still it burned, and when it was entirely covered with its ashes it ceased to be transparent, it ceased to be a comet; it became a planet, and revolved in a different orbit. Still it burned within its covering of ashes, and these gradually changed to rock, to metal, to everything that forms the crust of the earth.”
She gazed upon him, entranced.
“Some parts of this great central mass of carbon burn more fiercely than other parts. Some parts do not burn at all. In volcanic regions the fires rage; where my great shell went down it does not burn at all. Now you have my theory. It is crude and rough, for I have tried to give it to you in as few words as possible.”
“Oh, Roland,” she cried, “it is absurd! Diamond! Why, people will think you are crazy. You must not say such a thing as that to anybody. It is simply impossible that the greater part of this earth should be an enormous diamond.”
“Margaret,” he answered, “nothing is impossible. The central portion of this earth is composed of something; it might just as well be diamond as anything else. In fact, if you consider the matter, it is more likely to be, because diamond is a very original substance. As I have said, it is almost pure carbon. I do not intend to say one word of what I have told you to any one—at least, until the matter has been well considered—but I am not afraid of being thought crazy. Margaret, will you look at these?”
He took from his pocket some shining substances resembling glass. Some of them were flat, some round; the largest was as big as a lemon, others were smaller fragments of various sizes.
“These are pieces of the great diamond which were broken when the shell struck the bottom of the cave in which I found it. I picked them up as I felt my way around this shell, when walking upon what seemed to me like solid air. I thrust them into my pocket, and I would not come to you, Margaret, with this story, until I had gone to my office to find out if these fragments were really diamond. I tested them; their substance is diamond!”
Half dazed, she took the largest piece in her hand.
“Roland,” she whispered, “if this is really a diamond, there is nothing like it known to man!”
“Nothing, indeed,” said he.
She sat staring at the great piece of glowing mineral which lay in her hand. Its surface was irregular; it had many faces; the subdued light from the window gave it the appearance of animated water. He felt it necessary to speak.
“Even these little pieces,” he said, “are most valuable jewels.”
She still sat silent, looking at the glowing object she held.
“You see, these are not like the stones which are found in our diamond-fields,” he said. “Those, most likely, were little, unconsumed bits of the original mass, afterwards gradually forced up from the interior in the same way that many metals and minerals are forced up, and then rounded and dulled by countless ages of grinding and abrasion, due to the action of rocks or water.”
“Roland,” she cried, excitedly, “this is riches beyond imagination! What is common wealth to what you have discovered? Every living being on earth could—”
“Ah, Margaret,” he interrupted, “do not let your thoughts run that way. If my discovery should be put to the use of which you are thinking, it would bring poverty, not wealth, to the world, and not a diamond on earth would be worth more than a common pebble. Everywhere, in civilized countries and in barbaric palaces, people would see their riches vanish before them as if it had been blighted by the touch of an evil magician.”
She trembled. “And these—are they to be valued as common pebbles?”
“Oh no,” said he; “so long as that great shaft is mine, these broken fragments are to us riches far ahead of our wildest imaginations.”
“Roland,” she cried, “are you going down into that shaft for more of them?”
“Never, never, never again,” he said. “What we have here is enough for us, and if I were offered all the good that there is in this world, which money cannot buy, I would never go down into that cleft again. There was one moment when I stood in that cave in which an awful terror shot into my soul which I shall never be able to forget. In the light of my electric lamps, sent through a vast transparent mass, I could see nothing, but I could feel. I put out my foot and I found it was upon a sloping surface. In another instant I might have slid—where? I cannot bear to think of it!”
She threw her arms around him and held him tightly.
When the engines of the Dipsey had stopped, and she was quietly floating upon the smooth surface of Lake Shiver, Mr. Gibbs greatly desired to make a connection with the telegraphic cable which was stretched at the bottom of the ocean, beneath him, and to thus communicate with Sardis, But when this matter was discussed in council, several objections were brought against it, the principal one being that the cable could not be connected with the Dipsey without destroying its connection with the little station near the pole; and although this means of telegraphic communication with regions which might never be visited again might well be considered as possessing no particular value, still it was such a wonderful thing to lay a telegraph line to the pole that it seemed the greatest pity in the world to afterwards destroy it.
The friends of this exploring party had not heard from it since it left the polar sea, but there could be no harm in making them wait a little longer. If the return voyage under the ice should be as successfully accomplished as the first submarine cruise, it would not be very many days before the Dipsey should arrive at Cape Tariff. She would not proceed so slowly as she did when coming north, for now her officers would feel that in a measure they knew the course, and moreover they would not be delayed by the work of laying a cable as they progressed.
So it was agreed that it would be a waste of time and labor to stop here and make connection with the cable, and preparations were made for a descent to a safe depth beneath the surface, when they would start southward on their homeward voyage. Mrs. Sarah Block, wrapped from head to foot in furs, remained on deck as long as her husband would allow her to do so. For some time before her eyes had been slowly wandering around the edge of that lonely piece of water, and it was with an unsatisfied air that she now stood gazing from side to side. At last Sammy took her by the arm and told her she must go below, for they were going to close up the hatchways.
“Well,” said Sarah, with a sigh, “I suppose I must give 'em up; they were the warmest and most comfortable ones I had, and I could have thawed 'em out and dried 'em so that they would have been as good as ever. I would not mind leavin' 'em if there was a human bein' in this neighborhood that would wear 'em; but there ain't, and it ain't likely there ever will be, and if they are frozen stiff in the ice somewhere, they may stay here, as good as new, for countless ages!”
Of course everybody was very happy, now that they were returning homeward from a voyage successful beyond parallel in history, and even Rovinski was beginning to assume an air of gratified anticipation. He had been released from his confinement and allowed to attend to his duties, but the trust which had been placed in him when this kindness had been extended to him on a previous occasion was wanting now. Everybody knew that he was an unprincipled man, and that if he could gain access to the telegraph instrument at Cape Tariff he would make trouble for the real discoverer of the north pole; so it was agreed among the officers of the vessel that the strictest watch must be kept on him and no shore privileges be allowed him.
The southward voyage of the Dipsey was an easy one and without notable incident; and at last a lookout who had been posted at the upper skylight reported light from above. This meant that they had reached open water southward of the frozen regions they had been exploring, and the great submarine voyage, the most peculiar ever made by man, was ended. Captain Jim Hubbell immediately put on a heavy pea-jacket with silver buttons, for as soon as the vessel should sail upon the surface of the sea he would be in command.
When the dripping Dipsey rose from the waters of the arctic regions, it might have been supposed that the people on board of her were emerging into a part of the world where they felt perfectly at home. Cape Tariff, to which they were bound, was a hundred miles away, and was itself a lonely spot, often inaccessible in severe weather, and they must make a long and hazardous voyage from it before they could reach their homes; but by comparison with the absolutely desolate and mysterious region they had left, any part of the world where there was a possibility of meeting with other human beings seemed familiar and homelike.
But when the Dipsey was again upon the surface of the ocean, when the light of day was shining unobstructed upon the bold form of Captain Hubbell as he strode upon the upper deck—being careful not to stand still lest his shoes should freeze fast to the planks beneath him—the party on board were not so-well satisfied as they expected to be. There was a great wind blowing, and the waves were rolling high. Not far away, on their starboard bow, a small iceberg, tossing like a disabled ship, was surging towards them, impelled by a biting blast from the east, and the sea was so high that sometimes the spray swept over the deck of the vessel, making it impossible for Captain Hubbell and the others with him to keep dry.
Still the captain kept his post and roared out his orders, still the Dipsey pressed forward against wind and wave. Her engines were strong, her electric gills were folded close to her sides, and she seemed to feel herself able to contend against the storm, and in this point she was heartily seconded by her captain.
But the other people on board soon began to have ideas of a different kind. It seemed to all of them, including the officers, that this vessel, not built to encounter very heavy weather, was in danger, and even if she should be able to successfully ride out the storm, their situation must continue to be a very unpleasant one. The Dipsey pitched and tossed and rolled and shook herself, and it was the general opinion, below decks, that the best thing for her to do would be to sink into the quiet depths below the surface, where she was perfectly at home, and proceed on her voyage to Cape Tariff in the submarine fashion to which she was accustomed.
It was some time before Captain Hubbell would consent to listen to such a proposition as this, but when a wave, carrying on its crest a lump of ice about the size of a flour barrel, threw its burden on the deck of the vessel, raking it from stem to stern, the captain, who had barely been missed by the grating missile, agreed that in a vessel with such a low rail and of such defective naval principles, it would be better perhaps to sail under the water than on top of it, and so he went below, took off his pea-jacket with the silver buttons, and retired into private life. The Dipsey then sank to a quiet depth and continued her course under water, to the great satisfaction of everybody on board.
On a fine, frosty morning, with a strong wind blowing, although the storm had subsided, the few inhabitants of the little settlement at Cape Tariff saw in the distance a flag floating over the water. The Dipsey had risen to the surface some twenty miles from the Cape and now came bravely on, Captain Hubbell on deck, his silver buttons shining in the sun. The sea was rough, but everybody was willing to bear with a little discomfort in order to be able to see the point of land which was the end of the voyage on the Dipsey, to let their eyes rest as early as possible upon a wreath of smoke arising from the habitation of human beings, and to catch sight of those human beings themselves.
As soon as the Dipsey arrived in the harbor, Sammy and most of the officers went on shore to open communication with Sardis. Sarah Block stayed on the vessel. She had been on shore when she had arrived at Cape Tariff in the Go Lightly, and her disgust with the methods of living in that part of the world had been freely expressed. So long as she had perfectly comfortable quarters on board the good ship she did not wish to visit the low huts and extremely close quarters in which dwelt the people of the little colony. Rovinski also remained on board, but not because he wanted to do so. A watch was kept upon him; but as the Dipsey was anchored some distance from the landing-place, Mr. Marcy was of the opinion that if he attempted to swim ashore it might be well to let him do so, for if he should not be benumbed in the water into which he would plunge he would certainly be frozen to death as soon as he reached the shore.
The messages which came from Sardis as soon as news had been received of the safe return of the explorers were full of hearty congratulations and friendly welcome, but they were not very long, and Sammy said to Mr. Gibbs that he thought it likely that this was one of Mr. Clewe's busy times. The latter telegraphed that he would send a vessel for them immediately, and as she was now lying at St. John's they would not have to wait very long.
The fact was that the news of the arrival of the Dipsey at Cape Tariff had come to Sardis a week after Clewe's descent into the shaft, and he was absorbed, body and soul, in his underground discoveries. He was not wanting in sympathy, or even affection, for the people who had been doing his work, and his interest in their welfare and their achievements was as great as it ever had been, but the ideas and thoughts which now occupied his mind were of a character which lessened and overshadowed every other object of consideration. Most of the messages sent to Cape Tariff had come from Margaret Raleigh.
When Sammy Block and his companion explorers had journeyed from Cape Tariff to Sardis, they found Roland Clewe ready to tender a most grateful welcome, and to give full and most interested attention to the stories of their adventures and to their scientific reports. For a time he was willing to allow his own great discovery to lie fallow in his mind, and to give his whole attention to the wonderful achievement which had been made under his direction.
He had worked out his theory of the formation and present constitution of the earth; had written a full and complete report of what he had seen and done, and was ready, when he thought the proper time had arrived, to announce to the world his theories and his facts. Moreover, he had sent to several jewelers and mineralogists some of the smaller fragments which he had picked up in the cave of light, and these specialists, while reporting the material of the specimens purest diamond, expressed the greatest surprise at their shape and brilliancy. They had evidently not been ground or cut, and yet their sharp points and glittering surfaces reflected light as if they had been in the hands of a diamond-cutter. One of these experts wrote to Clewe asking him if he had been digging diamonds with a machine which broke the gems to pieces.
So the soul of Roland Clewe was satisfied; it seemed to walk the air as he himself once had trod what seemed to him a solid atmosphere. There was now nothing that his ambition might point out which would induce him to endeavor to climb higher in the field of human achievement than the spot on which he stood. From this great elevation he was perfectly willing to look down and kindly consider the heroic performances of those who had reached the pole, and who had anchored a buoy on the extreme northern point of the earth's axis.
Mr. Gibbs's reports, and those of his assistants, were well worked out, and of the greatest value to the scientific world, and every one who had made that memorable voyage on the Dipsey had stories to tell for which editors in every civilized land would have paid gold beyond all former precedent.
But Roland Clewe did not care to say anything to the world until he could say everything that he wished to say. It had been known that he had sent an expedition into Northern waters, but exactly what he intended to do had not been known, and what he had done had not been communicated even to the telegraph-operators at Cape Tariff. These had received despatches in cipher from points far away to the north, but while they transmitted them to Sardis they had no idea of their signification. When everything should be ready to satisfy the learned world, as well as the popular mind, the great discovery of the pole would be announced.
In the meantime there was a suspicion in the journalistic world that the man of inventions who lived at Sardis, New Jersey, had done something out of the common in the North. A party of people, one of them a woman, had been taken up there and left there, and they had recently been brought back. The general opinion was that Clewe had endeavored to found a settlement at some point north of Cape Tariff, probably for purposes of scientific observation, and that he had failed. The stories of these people, however, would be interesting, and several reporters made visits to Sardis. But they all saw Sammy, and not one of them considered his communications worth more than a brief paragraph.
In a week Mr. Gibbs would have finished his charts, his meteorological, his geological, and geographical reports, and a clear, succinct account of the expedition, written by Clewe himself from the statements of the party, would be ready for publication; and in the brilliantly lighted sky of discovery which now rested, one edge upon Sardis and the other upon the pole, there was but one single cloud, and this was Rovinski.
The ambitious and unscrupulous Pole had been the source of the greatest trouble and uneasiness since he had left Cape Tariff. While there he had found that he could not possibly get ashore, and so had kept quiet; but when on board the vessel which had been sent to them from St. John's, he had soon begun to talk to the crew, and there seemed to be but one way of preventing him from making known what had been done by the expedition before its promoters were ready for the disclosure, and this was to declare him a maniac, whose utterances were of no value whatever. He was put into close confinement, and it was freely reported that he had gone crazy while in the arctic regions, and that his mind had been filled with all sorts of insane notions regarding that part of the world.
It had been intended to put him in jail on a criminal charge, but this would not prevent him from talking; and so, when he arrived in New Jersey, he was sent to an insane asylum, the officers of which were not surprised to receive him, for, in their opinion, a wilder-looking maniac was not, to be found within the walls of the institution.
Early on the morning of the day before the world was to be electrified by the announcement of the discovery of the pole, a man named William Cunningham, employed in the Sardis Works, entered the large building which had been devoted to the manufacture of the automatic shell, but which had not been used of late and had been kept locked. Cunningham was the watchman, and had entered to make his usual morning rounds. He had scarcely closed the door behind him when, looking over towards the engines which still stood by the mouth of the shaft made by the automatic shell, he was amazed to see that the car which had been used by Roland Clewe in his descent was not hanging above them.
Utterly unable to understand this state of affairs, he ran to the mouth of the shaft. He found the great trap-door which had closed it thrown back, and the grating which had been made to cover the orifice after the car had descended in its place. The engines were not moving, and the chain on the windlass of one of them appeared not to have been disturbed, but on the other windlass one of the chains had been unwound. Cunningham was so astonished that he could not believe what he saw. He had been there the night before; everything had been in order, the shaft closed, and the trap-door locked. He leaned over the grating and looked down; he could see nothing but a black hole without any bottom. The man did not look long, for it made him dizzy. He turned and ran out of the house to call Mr. Bryce.
Ivan Rovinski was not perhaps a lunatic, but his unprincipled ambition had made him so disregard the principles of ordinary prudence when such principles stood in his way that it could not be said that he was at all times entirely sane. He understood thoroughly why he had been put in an asylum, and it enraged him to think that by this course his enemies had obtained a great advantage over him. No matter what he might say, it was only necessary to point to the fact that he was in a lunatic asylum, or that he had just come out of one, to make his utterances of no value.
But to remain in confinement did not suit him at all, and, after three days' residence in the institution in which he had been placed, he escaped and made his way to a piece of woods about two miles from Sardis, where, early that year, he had built himself a rude shelter, from which he might go forth at night and study, so far as he should be able, the operations in the Works of Roland Clewe. Having safely reached his retreat, he lost no time in sallying forth to spy out what was going on at Sardis.
He was cunning and wary, and a man of infinite resource. It was not long before he found out that the polar discovery had not been announced, but he also discovered from listening to the conversations of some of the workmen in the village, which he frequently visited in a guise very unlike his ordinary appearance, that something extraordinary had taken place in the Sardis Works, of which he had never heard. A great shaft had been sunk, the people said, by accident; Mr. Clewe had gone down it in a car, and it had taken him nearly three hours to get to the bottom. Nobody yet knew what he had discovered, but it was supposed to be something very wonderful.
The night after Rovinski heard this surprising news he was in the building which had contained the automatic shell. As active as a cat, he had entered by an upper window.
Rovinski spent the night in that building. He had with him a dark lantern, and he made the most thorough examination of the machinery at the mouth of the shaft. He was a man of great mechanical ability and an expert in applied electricity. He understood that machinery, with all its complicated arrangements and appliances, as well as if he had built it himself. In fact, while examining it, he thought of some very valuable improvements which might have been made in it. He knew that it was an apparatus for lowering the car to a great depth, and, climbing into the car, he examined everything it contained. Coming down, he noticed the grating, and he knew what it was for. He looked over the engines and calculated the strength of the chains on the windlasses. He took an impression of the lock of the trap-door, and when he went away in the very early hours of the morning he understood the apparatus which was intended to lower the car as well as any person who had managed it. He knew nothing about the shaft under the great door, but this he intended to investigate as thoroughly as he had investigated the machinery.
The next night he entered the building very soon after Cunningham had gone his rounds, and he immediately set to work to prepare for his descent into the shaft. He disconnected one of the engines, for he sneeringly said to himself that the other one was more than sufficient to lower and raise the car. He charged and arranged all the batteries and put in perfect working order the mechanism by which Clewe had established a connection between the car and the engines, using one of the chains as a conductor, so that he could himself check or start the engines if an emergency should render it necessary.
Then Rovinski, bounding around like a wild animal in a cage, took out a key he had brought with him, opened the trap-door, lifted it back, and gazed down. He could see a beautifully cut well, but that was all. But no matter how deep it was, he intended to go down to the bottom of it.
He started the engine and lowered the car to the ground. Then he looked up at a grating which hung above it and determined to make use of this protection. He could not lower it in the ordinary way after he had entered the car, but in fifteen minutes he had arranged a pulley and rope by which, after the car had gone below the surface, he could lower the grating to its place. He got in, started down into the dark hole, stopped the engine, lowered the grating, went down a little farther, and turned on the electric lights.
The descent of Rovinski was a succession of the wildest sensations of amazed delight. Stratum after stratum passed before his astonished eyes, and, when he had gone down low enough, he allowed himself the most extravagant expressions of ecstasy. His progress was not so regular and steady as that of Roland Clewe had been. He found that he had perfect control of the engine and car, and sometimes he went down rapidly, sometimes slowly, and frequently he stopped. As he continued to descend, his amazement at the wonderful depth of the shaft became greater and greater and his mind was totally unable to appreciate the situation. Still he was not frightened, and went on down.
At last Rovinski emerged into the cave of light. There he stopped, the car hanging some twenty or thirty feet above the bottom. He looked out, he saw the shell, he saw the vast expanse of lighted nothingness, he tried to imagine what it was that that mass of iron rested upon. If he had not seen it, he would have thought he had come out into the upper air of some bottomless cavern. But a great iron machine nearly twenty feet long could not rest upon air! He thought he might be dreaming; he sat up and shut his eyes; in a few minutes he would open them and see if he still saw the same incomprehensible things.
The downward passage of Rovinski had occupied a great deal more time than he had calculated for. He had stopped so much, and had been so careful to examine the walls of the shaft, that morning had now arrived in the upper world, and it was at this moment, as he sat with his eyes closed, that William Cunningham looked down into the mouth of the shaft.
Cunningham was an observing man, and that morning he had picked up a pin and stuck it in the lapel of his rough coat, but he had done this hastily and carelessly. The pin was of a recently invented kind, being of a light, elastic metal, with its head of steel. As Cunningham leaned forward the pin slipped out of his coat; it fell through one of the openings in the grating, and descended the shaft head downward.
For the first quarter of a mile the pin went swiftly in an absolutely perpendicular line, nearly at the middle of the shaft. For the next three-quarters of a mile it went down like a rifle-ball. For the next five miles it sped on as if it had been a planet revolving in space. Then, for eight miles, this pin, falling perpendicularly through a greater distance than any object on this earth had ever fallen perpendicularly, went downward with a velocity like that of light. Its head struck the top of the car, which was hanging motionless in the cave of light; it did not glance off, for its momentum was so great that it would glance from nothing. It passed through that steel roof; it passed through Rovinski's head, through his heart, down through the car, and into the great shell which lay below.
When Mr. Bryce and several workmen came running back with William Cunningham, they were as much surprised as he had been, and could form no theory to account for the disappearance of the car. It could not have slipped down accidentally and descended by its own weight, for the trap-door was open and the grating was in place. They sent in great haste for Mr. Clewe, and when he arrived he wasted no time in conjectures, but instantly ordered that the engine which was attached to the car should be started and its chain wound up.
So great was the anxiety to get the car to the surface of the earth that the engine which raised it was run at as high a speed as was deemed safe, and in a little more than an hour the car came out of the mouth of the shaft, and in it sat Ivan Rovinski, motionless and dead.
No one who knew Rovinski wondered that he had had the courage to make the descent of the shaft, and those who were acquainted with his great mechanical ability were not surprised that he had been able to manage, by himself, the complicated machinery which would ordinarily require the service of several men; but every one who saw him in the car, or after he had been taken out of it, was amazed that he should be dead. There was no sign of accident, no perceptible wound, no appearance, in fact, of any cause why he should be a tranquil corpse and not an alert and agile devil. Even when a post-mortem examination was made, the doctors were puzzled. A threadlike solution of continuity was discovered in certain parts of his body, but it was lost in others, and the coroner's verdict was that he came to his death from unknown causes while descending a shaft. The general opinion was that in some way or other he had been frightened to death.
This accident, much to Roland Clewe's chagrin, discovered to the public the existence of the great shaft. Whether or not he would announce its existence himself, or whether he would close it up, had not been determined by Clewe; but when he and Margaret had talked over the matter soon after the terrible incident, his mind was made up beyond all possibility of change, and, by means of great bombs, the shaft was shattered and choked up for a depth of half a mile from its mouth. When this work was accomplished, nothing remained but a shallow well, and, when this had been filled up with solid masonry, the place where the shaft had been was as substantial as any solid ground.
Now the great discovery was probably shut out forever from the world, but Clewe was well satisfied. He would never make another shaft, and it was not to be expected that men would plan and successfully construct one which would reach down to the transparent nucleus of the earth. The terrible fate, whatever it was, which had overtaken Rovinski, should not, if Clewe could help it, overtake any other human being.
“But my great discovery,” said he to Margaret, “that remains as wonderful as the sun, and as safe to look upon; for with my Artesian ray I can bore down to the solid centre of the earth, and into it, and any man can study it with no more danger than if he sat in his armchair at home; and if they doubt what I say about the material of which that solid centre is composed, we can show them the fragments of it which I brought up with me.”