At the Earths Core | Page 7

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