I was born in Connecticut about thirty years ago. My name is David Innes. My
father was a wealthy mine owner. When I was nineteen he died. All his property
was to be mine when I had attained my majority—provided that I had devoted the
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 in his invention. He was an old fellow who had devoted
the better part of a long life to the perfection of a mechanical subterranean
prospector. As relaxation he studied paleontology. I looked over his plans,
listened to his arguments, 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, football, and baseball, 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 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 1/2 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 153 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.
