The Coming Race | Page 5

hum as of voices and a
dull tramp as of 9feet. Straining my eye farther down, I clearly beheld
at a distance the outline of some large building. It could not be mere
natural rock, it was too symmetrical, with huge heavy Egyptian-like
columns, and the whole lighted as from within. I had about me a small
pocket-telescope, and by the aid of this, I could distinguish, near the
building I mention, two forms which seemed human, though I could
not be sure. At least they were living, for they moved, and both
vanished within the building. We now proceeded to attach the end of
the rope we had brought with us to the ledge on which we stood, by the
aid of clamps and grappling hooks, with which, as well as with
necessary tools, we were provided.
We were almost silent in our work. We toiled like men afraid to speak
to each other. One end of the rope being thus apparently made firm to
the ledge, the other, to which we fastened a fragment of the rock, rested

on the ground below, a distance of some fifty feet. I was a younger man
and a more active man than my companion, and having served on board
ship in my boyhood, this mode of transit was more familiar to me than
to him. In a whisper I claimed the precedence, so that when I gained the
ground I might serve to hold the rope more steady for his descent. I got
safely to the ground beneath, and the engineer now began to lower
himself. But he had scarcely accomplished ten feet of the descent, when
the fastenings, which we had fancied so secure, gave way, or rather the
rock itself proved treacherous and crumbled beneath the strain; and the
unhappy man was precipitated to the bottom, falling just at my feet, and
bringing down with his fall splinters of the rock, one of which,
fortunately but a small one, struck and for the time stunned me. When I
recovered my senses I saw my companion an inanimate mass beside me,
life utterly extinct. While I was bending over his corpse in grief and
horror, I heard close at hand a strange sound between a snort and a hiss;
and turning instinctively to the quarter from 10which it came, I saw
emerging from a dark fissure in the rock a vast and terrible head, with
open jaws and dull, ghastly, hungry eyes- the head of a monstrous
reptile resembling that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely larger
than the largest creature of that kind I had ever beheld in my travels. I
started to my feet and fled down the valley at my utmost speed. I
stopped at last, ashamed of my panic and my flight, and returned to the
spot on which I had left the body of my friend. It was gone; doubtless
the monster had already drawn it into its den and devoured it. the rope
and the grappling- hooks still lay where they had fallen, but they
afforded me no chance of return; it was impossible to re-attach them to
the rock above, and the sides of the rock were too sheer and smooth for
human steps to clamber. I was alone in this strange world, amidst the
bowels of the earth.
Chapter III.
Slowly and cautiously I went my solitary way down the lamplit road
and towards the large building I have described. The road itself seemed
like a great Alpine pass, skirting rocky mountains of which the one
through whose chasm I had descended formed a link. Deep below to
the left lay a vast valley, which presented to my astonished eye the

unmistakeable evidences of art and culture. There were fields covered
with a strange vegetation, similar to none I have seen above the earth;
the colour of it not green, but rather of a dull and leaden hue or of a
golden red.
There were lakes and rivulets which seemed to have been curved into
artificial banks; some of pure water, others that shone like pools of
naphtha. At my right hand, ravines and defiles opened amidst the rocks,
with passes between, evidently constructed by art, and bordered by
trees resembling, for the 11most part, gigantic ferns, with exquisite
varieties of feathery foliage, and stems like those of the palm-tree.
Others were more like the cane-plant, but taller, bearing large clusters
of flowers. Others, again, had the form of enormous fungi, with short
thick stems supporting a wide dome-like roof, from which either rose
or drooped long slender branches. The whole scene behind, before, and
beside me far as the eye could reach, was brilliant with innumerable
lamps. The world without a sun was bright and warm as an Italian
landscape at noon,