At the Earths Core | Page 9

I am going to have a look at the blessed sky that I had given up all hope of ever seeing again," and so saying I lifted the bars from the inner door, and swung it open. There was quite a quantity of loose material in the jacket, and this I had to remove with a shovel to get at the opposite door in the outer shell.
In a short time I had removed enough of the earth and rock to the floor of the cabin to expose the door beyond. Perry was directly behind me as I threw it open. The upper half was above the surface of the ground. With an expression of surprise I turned and looked at Perry--it was broad daylight without!
"Something seems to have gone wrong either with our calculations or the chronometer," I said. Perry shook his head--there was a strange expression in his eyes.
"Let's have a look beyond that door, David," he cried.
Together we stepped out to stand in silent contemplation of a landscape at once weird and beautiful. Before us a low and level shore stretched down to a silent sea. As far as the eye could reach the surface of the water was dotted with countless tiny isles--some of towering, barren, granitic rock--others resplendent in gorgeous trappings of tropical vegetation, myriad starred with the magnificent splendor of vivid blooms.
Behind us rose a dark and forbidding wood of giant arborescent ferns intermingled with the commoner types of a primeval tropical forest. Huge creepers depended in great loops from tree to tree, dense under-brush overgrew a tangled mass of fallen trunks and branches. Upon the outer verge we could see the same splendid coloring of countless blossoms that glorified the islands, but within the dense shadows all seemed dark and gloomy as the grave.
And upon all the noonday sun poured its torrid rays out of a cloudless sky.
"Where on earth can we be?" I asked, turning to Perry.
For some moments the old man did not reply. He stood with bowed head, buried in deep thought. But at last he spoke.
"David," he said, "I am not so sure that we are ON earth."
"What do you mean Perry?" I cried. "Do you think that we are dead, and this is heaven?" He smiled, and turning, pointing to the nose of the prospector protruding from the ground at our backs.
"But for that, David, I might believe that we were indeed come to the country beyond the Styx. The prospector renders that theory untenable--it, certainly, could never have gone to heaven. However I am willing to concede that we actually may be in another world from that which we have always known. If we are not ON earth, there is every reason to believe that we may be IN it."
"We may have quartered through the earth's crust and come out upon some tropical island of the West Indies," I suggested. Again Perry shook his head.
"Let us wait and see, David," he replied, "and in the meantime suppose we do a bit of exploring up and down the coast--we may find a native who can enlighten us."
As we walked along the beach Perry gazed long and earnestly across the water. Evidently he was wrestling with a mighty problem.
"David," he said abruptly, "do you perceive anything unusual about the horizon?"
As I looked I began to appreciate the reason for the strangeness of the landscape that had haunted me from the first with an illusive suggestion of the bizarre and unnatural--THERE WAS NO HORIZON! As far as the eye could reach out the sea continued and upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in the distance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until the impression became quite real that one was LOOKING UP at the most distant point that the eyes could fathom--the distance was lost in the distance. That was all--there was no clear-cut horizontal line marking the dip of the globe below the line of vision.
"A great light is commencing to break on me," continued Perry, taking out his watch. "I believe that I have partially solved the riddle. It is now two o'clock. When we emerged from the prospector the sun was directly above us. Where is it now?"
I glanced up to find the great orb still motionless in the center of the heaven. And such a sun! I had scarcely noticed it before. Fully thrice the size of the sun I had known throughout my life, and apparently so near that the sight of it carried the conviction that one might almost reach up and touch it.
"My God, Perry, where are we?" I exclaimed. "This thing is beginning to get on my nerves."
"I think that I may state quite positively, David," he commenced, "that we are--" but he got no further. From