Coblentz In Caverns Below

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-98744-634-4
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 164 Seiten

Reihe: Classics To Go

Mining engineer Frank Comstock takes a job checking out the integrity of a shut-down mine in Nevada. He gets his answer when the mine caves in, plunging him far underground into a network of tunnels occupied by two warring races of unknown chalk-skinned humans! Frank finds himself in a world of trouble as he gets caught in a battle, captured by one side, taken under the protection of a curious professor, and integrated into this strange society. Frank finds Wu a bizarre place. Diplomats invent reasons to continue a pointless war, just to protect the jobs and dividends of arms producers. Prosperity is measured in the amount of excess production they need to destroy. Workers and owners regularly clash, and neither side comes out ahead. Plus, there are differences from the land he's left behind! (Goodreads)

Autoren/Hrsg.

Coblentz, Stanton A.

Leseproben

CHAPTER II
A Mysterious Light
I have always marvelled that Clay and I lived through the cataclysm. But probably we owe our survival to the fact that the fissure, far from being perpendicular, sloped at an angle of only thirty or forty degrees, so that, while rolling over and over in our descent, we were at least spared a direct drop. At all events, we finally did come to a stop without receiving any fatal hurt. It may have been minutes, or it may have been hours, before I recovered consciousness; but when at length I came to myself, it was with a dull aching in the head, and with a sensation of soreness in every limb and muscle. "Where am I?" I gasped, still but hazily aware of what had happened, and with the sickly, absurd feeling that perhaps I had died and was reawakening in the Afterlife. And it was only the sound of another human voice that brought me once more to my senses. "Where are you? Would to God I knew!—down in hell, I guess!" came in mumbled accents from an unseen figure. "Much hurt, Phil?" I jerked out, striving vainly to locate my friend amid the impenetrable blackness. And, as I spoke, I moved to a sitting position and made my first effort to extricate myself from the rocks and dust that buried me almost waist-deep. "No, not hurt much!" came Clay's drawled reply. "A few little cuts and bruises, more or less, and one black eye. But what does that amount to? Couldn't use the eye down here, anyway!" And then, after a moment of silence, he asked, "How about you, Frank? Hope you're not banged up too much." "No, I'm all right," I protested, as stanchly as I could, considering that I felt as if I had been run through a threshing-machine. "We'll sure be able to collect big damages!" proceeded Clay, as optimistically as though we had already made our escape. "But say, old pal, you certainly were right about the earthquake! That one was a whopper! I didn't know they had them around this part of the country!" "Neither did I!" I declared. And, even as I spoke, a violent shudder once more went through me. The earth was again trembling! "Guess the climate here isn't any too healthy!" decided my friend, while from somewhere amid the darkness, I heard him shaking off the débris and struggling to his feet. "Don't know where we are, Frank, but I wouldn't mind being anywhere else! Come! Where are you, old fellow?" As we had lost the flashlights in our fall, it took us several anxious minutes to locate one another amid that tar-like blackness. Several times we stumbled over unseen obstacles, and more than once we followed a false lead; but at length, guided by the sound of each other's voices, we brushed shoulders in the darkness. And thenceforth, like lost children, we held hands lest we lose track of each other. Where had we fallen?—to what hidden cavern deep in the earth's maw? This was the question we asked ourselves many times, as we groped our way down the sloping floor, we could not guess whither. Yet each moment we were making discoveries. After a few minutes, as we shuffled cautiously forward, we had passed the débris-littered area and found a smooth stone floor slanting beneath our feet. And we discovered that, a yard or two to each side of us, was a polished stone wall! "Holy Jerusalem!" whistled my companion. "Who'd have thought the mine reached down this far?" "Mine?" I returned, derisively. "Your misfortunes must have gone to your head, Phil! When did you ever see a mine with polished walls?" "Well, what is it if not a mine?" he flung back in gruff challenge. "What is it? Just tell me that!" Not being able to answer, I remained silent. But a strange suspicion, which had been forming in my mind, was gradually deepening; and involuntarily I shuddered once more and pressed closer to my friend—nor was I reassured by the renewed trembling of the earth which from time to time interrupted our ruminations. I am afraid that grim conjectures came into the mind of Clay also, for he remained tense and silent for many minutes as we continued to fumble, like blind men, down those uncanny subterranean corridors. "The devil take us both!" he at last muttered, with an attempted levity that did not serve to conceal his alarm. "You'd think we were going straight down to Dante's Inferno! Why, I can almost feel the little imps dancing in the darkness all about us!" "The imps be damned!" I snapped in unseemly irritation. "Most likely, that's what we'll be," he returned, wryly. And then, in soberer tones, he spoke again. "But seriously, old man, where do you suppose we are?—in the pit of some extinct volcano?" "Possibly—but that doesn't explain why the walls are so smooth and even." "No, it doesn't. However, mightn't it be the channel of a dried-up subterranean river? In the course of ages, the water might have washed the walls smooth." "It might have," I conceded, briefly. Yet deep within me, there was the feeling, the persistent feeling, that it was not water that had hollowed out the passageway. For ten or fifteen minutes we plodded on without a word, moving at a snail's pace in our anxiety, and not aware of any change in our environment. The walls were still as polished and regular as ever; the blackness was as absolute and as unbroken; the occasional jarring of the earth continued at uneven intervals, growing a little more pronounced than before, but disturbing us less, since we were now becoming used to it. Then, unexpectedly, the gallery curved, turning almost at right angles; and, as we felt our way around the bend, it curved again at an even sharper angle; then it curved once more, while, as if to add to our bewilderment, we discovered several side-galleries branching off in various directions. At the same time, the thuddings of the earth grew more severe than ever and they were accompanied by rumblings, roars, and reverberations of terrifying force and insistency. Crash after crash burst upon our ears as if from some remote storm-center—crash after crash that echoed and re-echoed eerily in that narrow corridor, until our ear-drums ached from the strain and our agitated hearts pumped with a thumping rapidity. What could it be?—some volcanic disturbance in the heart of the earth? So we were inclined to believe as, sweating with fear, we halted for a consultation. In another moment, might we not feel the reek of sulphur in our nostrils and gasp our last beneath the suffocating fumes? For several minutes we conferred, but could reach no conclusion. Standing there against the invisible cavern wall, with the earth almost constantly quivering and with low, gruff, distant detonations dinning upon our ears, we found it difficult, almost impossible to exchange ideas. That terror which is close to madness was upon us both; and since the most difficult thing to do was to do nothing at all, it was not long before we were on our way again. A moment later we were to receive a sharp surprise. Groping around another bend in the gallery, we were startled to see, far ahead of us, an indistinct patch of light. Vaguely rectangular in shape, and of an unearthly greenish hue, it wavered and flickered strangely, at times almost disappearing, at times flaring to a hectic, momentary brilliance, shot through with flashes of red, orange, and violet. And, simultaneously, the far-off thunders grew more deep-throated, with occasional snarls and reports as of siege-artillery. "Sacred Catfish!" muttered Clay in awe-stricken tones. "You could almost believe the old yarns about Satan and his court of devils!" I must confess that, hard-headed man of science though I pride myself on being, a wave of superstitions fright went through me at these words; some old ancestral terror had gripped me until my legs shook and all but sank beneath me. Nevertheless, I strove desperately to rally what remained of my strength. "Court of devils?" I tossed back, mockingly. "The only devils are in your imagination, Phil! It's clear enough what's wrong; the earth is suffering from a little fit of indigestion, something out of gear down here in her volcanic entrails. Most likely it'll clear up any moment." Hardly were these words out of my mouth when the earth gave a lurch so violent that we were both knocked off our feet. And for one instant, the light from down the gallery became a sun-like illumination, by whose glare I caught a glimpse of Clay's harried face, scarred and red with newly clotted blood, with one eye half closed, and with a long gash across the great dome of his forehead. Probably I did not present a more inviting sight, for, as we both picked ourselves up from the cavern floor, he exclaimed, "Say, old fellow, I ought to have your picture now! The way you're looking, you'd scare off a brigade of fighting Hottentots!" Not thanking him for this compliment, I started away again along the gallery, whose walls were now and then dimly visible by the flickering light from ahead. All lingering idea that it was the channel of a subterranean river was now dissipated! To our astonishment, we saw that the ceiling formed a perfect triangle, an inverted V like the roof of a house! Here was the handiwork of man—or else we were both dreaming! But what man before us had penetrated to these abysmal labyrinths? But it was useless to speculate. Let us go forward and find out! It is difficult for me today to say how Clay and I, fear-stricken and wounded, found courage to press on through that hideous, down-sloping cavern, where at any moment we might expect annihilation. Perhaps it was that we realized the impossibility of retracing our footsteps through the darkness; perhaps it was that the light ahead, mysterious and frightening as it was, seemed less to be...