_A strange manuscript found in a copper cylinder_
          (the fourth installment)

   from _Harper's weekly_ (1888-jan-28) 
         (by James De Mille)


Chapter V.  The Torrent Sweeping Under the Mountains

The boat drifted on.  The light given by the aurora and the low
moon seemed to grow fainter; and as I looked behind I saw that the
distant glow from the volcanic fires had become more brilliant in
the increasing darkness.  The sides of the channel grew steeper,
until at last they became rocky precipices, rising to an unknown
height.  The channel itself grew narrower, till from a width of two
miles it had contracted to a tenth of those dimensions; but with
this lessening width the waters seemed to rush far more swiftly. 
Here I drifted helplessly, and saw the gloomy, rocky cliffs sweep
past me as I was hurled onward on the breast of the tremendous
flood.  I was in despair.  The fate of Agnew had prepared me for my
own, and I was only thankful that my fate, since it was inevitable,
would be less appalling.  Death seemed certain, and my chief
thought now was as to the moment when it would come.  I was
prepared.  I felt that I could meet it calmly, sternly, even
thankfully; far better was a death here amid the roar of waters
than at the hands of those abhorrent beings by whose treachery my
friend had fallen.

  As I went on, the precipices rose higher and seemed to overhang,
the channel grew narrower, the light grew fainter, until at last
all around me grew dark.  I was floating at the bottom of a vast
chasm, where the sides seemed to rise precipitously for thousands
of feet, where neither watery flood nor rocky wall was visible, and
where, far above, I could see the line of sky between the summits
of the cliffs, and watch the glowing stars.  And as I watched them
there came to me the thought that this was my last sight on earth,
and I could only hope that the life which was so swiftly
approaching its end might live again somewhere among those
glittering orbs.  So I thought; and with these thoughts I drifted
on, I cannot tell how long, until at length there appeared a vast
black mass, where the open sky above me terminated, and where the
luster of the stars and the light of the heavens were all swallowed
up in utter darkness.

  This, then, I thought, is the end.  Here, amid this darkness, I
must make the awful plunge and find my death I fell upon my knees
in the bottom of the boat and prayed.  As I knelt there the boat
drew nearer, the black mass grew blacker.  The current swept me on. 
There were no breakers; there was no phosphorescent sparkle of
seething waters, and no whiteness of foam.  I thought that I was on
the brink of some tremendous cataract a thousand times deeper than
Niagara; some fall where the waters plunged into the depths of the
earth; and where, gathering for the terrific descent, all other
movements--all dashings and writhings and twistings--were
obliterated and lost in the one overwhelming onward rush.  Suddenly
all grew dark--dark beyond all expression; the sky above was in a
moment snatched from view; I had been flung into some tremendous
cavern; and there, on my knees, with terror in my heart, I waited
for death.

  The moments passed, and death delayed to come.  The awful plunge
was still put off; and though I remained on my knees and waited
long, still the end came not.  The waters seemed still, the boat
motionless.  It was borne upon the surface of a vast stream as
smooth as glass; but who could tell how deep that stream was, or
how wide?  At length I rose from my knees and sank down upon the
seat of the boat, and tried to peer through the gloom.  In vain. 
Nothing was visible.  It was the very blackness of darkness.  I
listened, but heard nothing save a deep, dull, droning sound, which
seemed to fill all the air and make it all tremulous with its
vibrations.  I tried to collect my thoughts.  I recalled that old
theory which had been in my mind before this, and which I had
mentioned to Agnew.  This was the notion that at each pole there is
a vast opening; that into one of them all the waters of the ocean
pour themselves, and, after passing through the earth, come out at
the other pole, to pass about its surface in innumerable streams. 
It was a wild fancy, which I had laughed at under other
circumstances, but which now occurred to me once more, when I was
overwhelmed with despair, and my mind was weakened by the horrors
which I had experienced; and I had a vague fear that I had been
drawn into the very channel through which the ocean waters flowed
in their course to that terrific, that unparalleled abyss.  Still,
there was as yet no sign whatever of anything like a descent, for
the boat was on even keel, and perfectly level as before, and it
was impossible for me to tell whether I was moving swiftly or
slowly, or standing perfectly still; for in that darkness there
were no visible objects by which I could find out the rate of my
progress; and as those who go up in balloons are utterly insensible
of motion, so was I on those calm but swift waters.

  At length there came into view something which arrested my
attention and engrossed all my thoughts.  It was faint glow that at
first caught my gaze; and, on turning to see it better, I saw a
round red spot glowing like fire.  I had not seen this before.  It
looked like the moon when it rises from behind clouds, and glows
red and lurid from the horizon; and so this glowed, but not with
the steady light of the moon, for the light was fitful, and
sometimes flashed into a baleful brightness, which soon subsided
into a dimmer luster.  New alarm arose within me, for this new
sight suggested something more terrible than anything that I had
thus far thought of.  This, then, I thought, was to be the end of
my voyage; this was my goal--a pit of fire, into which I should be
hurled!  Would it be well, I thought, to wait for such a fate, and
experience such a death-agony?  Would it not be better for me to
take my own life before I should know the worst?  I took my pistol
and loaded it, so as to be prepared, but hesitated to use it until
my fate should be more apparent.  So I sat, holding my pistol,
prepared to use it, watching the light, and awaiting the time when
the glowing fires should make all further hope impossible.  But
time passed, and the light grew no brighter; on the contrary, it
seemed to grow fainter.  There was also another change.  Instead of
shining before me, it appeared more on my left.  From this it went
on changing its position until at length it was astern.  All the
time it continued to grow fainter, and it seemed certain that I was
moving away from it rather than towards it.  In the midst of this
there occurred a new thought, which seemed to account for this
light--this was, that it arose from these same volcanoes which had
illuminated the northern sky when I was ashore, and followed me
still with their glare.  I had been carried into this darkness,
through some vast opening which now lay behind me, disclosing the
red volcano glow, and this it was that caused that roundness and
resemblance to the moon.  I saw that I was still moving on away
from that light as before, and that its changing position was due
to the turning of the boat as the water drifted it along, now stern
foremost, now sidewise, and again bow foremost.  From this it
seemed plainly evident that the waters had borne me into some vast
cavern of unknown extent, which went under the mountains--a
subterranean channel, whose issue I could not conjecture.  Was this
the beginning of that course which should ultimately become a
plunge deep down into some unutterable abyss? or might I ever hope
to emerge again into the light of day perhaps in some other
ocean--some land of ice and frost and eternal night?  But the old
theory of the flow of water through the earth had taken hold of me
and could not be shaken off.  I knew some scientific men held the
opinion that the earth's interior is a mass of molten rock and
pent-up fire, and that the earth itself had once been a burning
orb, which had cooled down at the surface; yet, after all, this was
only a theory, and there were other theories which were totally
different.  As a boy I had read wild works of fiction about lands
in the interior of the earth, with a sun at the center, which gave
them the light of a perpetual day.  These, I knew, were only the
creations of fiction; yet, after all, it seemed possible that the
earth might contain vast hollow spaces in its interior--realms of
eternal darkness, caverns in comparison with which the hugest caves
on the surface were but the tiniest cells.  I was now being borne
on to these.  In that case there might be no sudden plunge, after
all.  The stream might run on for many thousand miles through this
terrific cavern gloom, in accordance with natural laws; and I might
thus live, and drift on in this darkness, until I should die a
lingering death of horror and despair.

  There was no possible way of forming any estimate as to speed. 
All was dark, and even the glow behind was fading away; nor could
I make any conjecture whatever as to the size of the channel.  At
the opening it had been contracted and narrow; but here it might
have expanded itself to miles, and its vaulted top might reach
almost to the summit of the lofty mountains.  While sight thus
failed me, sound was equally unavailing, for it was always the
same--a sustained and unintermittent roar, a low, droning sound,
deep and terrible, with no variations of dashing breakers or
rushing rapids or falling cataracts.  Vague thoughts of final
escape came and went; but in such a situation hope could not be
sustained.  The thick darkness oppressed the soul; and at length
even the glow of the distant volcanoes, which had been gradually
diminishing, grew dimmer and fainter, and finally faded out
altogether.  That seemed to me to be my last sight of earthly
things.  After this nothing was left.  There was no longer for me
such a thing as sight; there was nothing but darkness--perpetual
and eternal night.  I was buried in a cavern of rushing waters, to
which there would be no end, where I should be borne onward
helplessly by the resistless tide to a mysterious and an appalling
doom.

  The darkness grew so intolerable that I longed for something to
dispel it, if only for a moment.  I struck a match.  The air was
still, and the flame flashed out, lighting up the boat and showing
the black water around me.  This made me eager to see more.  I
loaded both barrels of the rifle, keeping my pistol for another
purpose, and then fired one of them.  There was a tremendous
report, that rang in my ears like a hundred thunder-volleys, and
rolled and reverberated far along, and died away in endless echoes. 
The flash lighted up the scene for an instant, and for an instant
only; like the sudden lightning, it revealed all around.  I saw a
wide expanse of water, black as ink--a Stygian pool; but no rocks
were visible, and it seemed as though I had been carried into a
subterranean sea.

  I loaded the empty barrel and waited.  The flash of light had
revealed nothing, yet it had distracted my thoughts, and the work
of reloading was an additional distraction.  Anything was better
than inaction.  I did not wish to waste my ammunition, yet I
thought that an occasional shot might serve some good purpose, if
it was only to afford me some relief from despair.

  And now, as I sat with the rifle in my hands, I was aware of a
sound--new, exciting, different altogether from the murmur of
innumerable waters that filled my ears, and in sharp contrast with
the droning echoes of the rushing flood.  It was a sound that spoke
of life.  I heard quick, heavy pantings, as of some great living
thing; and with this there came the noise of regular movements in
the water, and the foaming and gurgling of waves.  It was as though
some living, breathing creature were here, not far away, moving
through these midnight waters; and with this discovery there came
a new fear--the fear of pursuit.  I thought that some sea-monster
had scented me in my boat, and had started to attack me.  This new
fear aroused me to action.  It was a danger quite unlike any other
which I had ever known; yet the fear which it inspired was a
feeling that roused me to action, and prompted me, even though the
coming danger might be as sure as death, to rise against it and
resist to the last.  So I stood up with my rifle and listened, with
all my soul in my sense of hearing.  The sounds arose more plainly. 
They had come nearer.  They were immediately in front.  I raised my
rifle and took aim.  Then in quick succession two reports thundered
out with tremendous uproar and interminable echoes, but the long
reverberations were unheeded in the blaze of sudden light and the
vision that was revealed.  For there full before me I saw, though
but for an instant, a tremendous sight.  It was a vast monster,
moving in the waters against the stream and towards the boat.  Its
head was raised high, its eyes were inflamed with a baleful light,
its jaws, opened wide, bristled with sharp teeth, and it had a long
neck joined to a body of enormous bulk, with a tail that lashed all
the water into foam.  It was but for an instant that I saw it, and
then with a sudden plunge the monster dived, while at the same
moment all was as dark as before.

  Full of terror and excitement, I loaded my rifle again and
waited, listening for a renewal of the noise.  I felt sure that the
monster, balked of his prey, would return with redoubled fury, and
that I should have to renew the conflict.  I felt that the dangers
of the subterranean passage and of the rushing waters had passed
away, and that a new peril had arisen from the assault of this
monster of the deep.  Nor was it this one alone that was to be
dreaded.  Where one was, others were sure to be; and if this one
should pass me by it would only leave me to be assailed by monsters
of the same kind, and these would probably increase in number as I
advanced farther into this realm of darkness.  And yet, in spite of
these grisly thoughts, I felt less of horror than before, for the
fear which I had was now associated with action; and as I stood
waiting for the onset and listening for the approach of the enemy,
the excitement that ensued was a positive relief from the dull
despair into which I had sunk but a moment before.

  Yet, though I waited for a new attack, I waited in vain.  The
monster did not come back.  Either the flash and the noise had
terrified him, or the bullets had hit him, or else in his vastness
he had been indifferent to so feeble a creature as myself; but
whatever may have been the cause, he did not emerge again out of
the darkness and silence into which he had sunk.  For a long time
I stood waiting; then I sat down, still watchful, still listening,
but without any result, until at length I began to think that there
was no chance of any new attack.  Indeed, it seemed now as though
there had been no attack at all, but that the monster had been
swimming at random without any thought of me, in which case my
rifle-flashes had terrified him more than his fearful form had
terrified me.  On the whole this incident had greatly benefited me. 
It had roused me from my despair.  I grew reckless, and felt a
disposition to acquiesce in whatever fate might have in store for
me.

  And now, worn out with fatigue and exhausted from long
watchfulness and anxiety, I sank down in the bottom of the boat and
fell into a deep sleep.   

Chapter VI.  The New World  

How long I slept I do not know.  My sleep was profound, yet
disturbed by troubled dreams, in which I lived over again all the
eventful scenes of the past; and these were all intermingled in the
wildest confusion.  The cannibals beckoned to us from the peak, and
we landed between the two volcanoes.  There the body of the dead
sailor received us, and afterwards chased us to the boat.  Then
came snow and volcanic eruptions, and we drifted amid icebergs and
molten lava until we entered an iron portal and plunged into
darkness.  Here there were vast swimming monsters and burning orbs
of fire and thunderous cataracts falling from inconceivable
heights, and the sweep of immeasurable tides and the circling of
infinite whirlpools; while in my ears there rang the never-ending
roar of remorseless waters that came after us, with all their waves
and billows rolling upon us.  It was a dream in which all the
material terrors of the past were renewed; but these were all as
nothing when compared with a certain deep underlying feeling that
possessed my soul--a sense of loss irretrievable, an expectation of
impending doom, a drear and immitigable despair.

  In the midst of this I awoke.  It was with a sudden start, and I
looked all around in speechless bewilderment.  The first thing of
which I was conscious was a great blaze of light--light so lately
lost, and supposed to be lost forever, but now filling all the
universe--bright, brilliant, glowing bringing hope and joy and
gladness, with all the splendor of deep blue skies and the
multitudinous laughter of ocean waves that danced and sparkled in
the sun.  I flung up my arms and laughed aloud.  Then I burst into
tears, and, falling on my knees, I thanked the Almighty Ruler of
the skies for this marvelous deliverance.  Rising from my knees, I
looked around, and once more amazement overwhelmed me.  I saw a
long line of mountains towering up to immeasurable heights, their
summits covered with eternal ice and snow.  There the sun blazed
low in the sky, elevated but a few degrees above the mountain
crests, which gleamed in gold and purple under its fiery rays.  The
sun seemed enlarged to unusual dimensions, and the mountains ran
away on every side like the segment of some infinite circle.  At
the base of the mountains lay a land all green with vegetation,
where cultivated fields were visible, and vineyards and orchards
and groves, together with forests of palm and all manner of trees
of every variety of hue, which ran up the sides of the mountains
till they reached the limits of vegetation and the regions of snow
and ice.

  Here in all directions there were unmistakable signs of human
life--the outlines of populous cities and busy towns and hamlets;
roads winding far away along the plain or up the mountain-sides,
and mighty works of industry in the shape of massive structures,
terraced slopes, long rows of arches, ponderous pyramids, and
battlemented walls.

  From the land I turned to the sea.  I saw before me an expanse of
water intensely blue--an extent so vast that never before in all my
ocean voyages had anything appeared at all comparable with it.  Out
at sea, wherever I had been, the water had always limited the view;
the horizon had never seemed far away; ships soon sank below it,
and the visible surface of the earth was thus always contracted;
but here, to my bewilderment, the horizon appeared to be removed to
an immeasurable distance and raised high in the air, while the
waters were prolonged endlessly.  Starting from where I was, they
went away to inconceivable distances, and the view before me seemed
like a watery declivity reaching for a thousand miles, till it
approached the horizon far up in the sky.  Nor was it any delusion
of the senses that caused this unparalleled spectacle.  I was
familiar with the phenomena of the mirage, and knew well that there
was nothing of that kind here; for the mirage always shows great
surfaces of stillness, or a regular vibration--glassy tides and
indistinct distances; but here everything was sharply defined in
the clear atmosphere: the sky overhung a deep blue vault; the waves
danced and sparkled in the sun; the waters rolled and foamed on
every side; and the fresh breeze, as it blew over the ocean,
brought with it such exhilarating influences that it acted upon me
like some reviving cordial.

  From the works of nature I turned to those of man.These were
visible everywhere: on the land, in cities and cultivated fields
and mighty constructions; on the sea, in floating craft, which
appeared wherever I turned my eyes--boats like those of fishermen,
ships long and low, some like galleys, propelled by a hundred oars,
others provided with one huge square-sail, which enabled them to
run before the wind.  They were unlike any ships which I had ever
seen; for neither in the Mediterranean nor in Chinese waters were
there any craft like these, and they reminded me rather of those
ancient galleys which I had seen in pictures.

  I was lost in wonder as to where I was, and what land this could
be to which I had been brought.  I had not plunged into the
interior of the earth, but I had been carried under the mountains,
and had emerged again into the glad light of the sun.  Could it be
possible, I thought, that Agnew's hope had been realized, and that
I had been carried into the warm regions of the South Pacific
Ocean?  Yet in the South Pacific there could be no place like
this--no immeasurable expanse of waters, no horizon raised mountain
high.  It seemed like a vast basin-shaped world, for all around me
the surface appeared to rise, and I was in what looked like a
depression; yet I knew that the basin and the depression were an
illusion, and that this appearance was due to the immense extent of
level surface with the environment of lofty mountains.  I had
crossed the antarctic circle; I had been borne onward for an
immense distance.  Over all the known surface of the earth no one
had ever seen anything like this; there were but two places where
such an immeasurable plain was possible, and those were at the
flattened poles.  Where I was I now knew well.  I had reached the
antarctic pole.  Here the earth was flat--an immense level with no
roundness to lessen the reach of the horizon but an almost even
surface that gave an unimpeded view for hundreds of miles.

  The subterranean channel had rushed through the mountains and had
carried me here.  Here came all the waters of the Northern ocean
pouring into this vast polar sea, perhaps to issue forth from it by
some similar passage.  Here, then, was the South Pole--a world by
itself: and how different from that terrible, that iron land on the
other side of the mountains!--not a world of ice and frost, but one
of beauty and light, with a climate that was almost tropical in its
warmth, and lands that were covered with the rank luxuriance of a
teeming vegetable life.  I had passed from that outer world to this
inner one, and the passage was from death unto life, from agony and
despair to sunlight and splendor and joy.  Above all, in all around
me that which most impressed me now was the rich and superabundant
life, and a warmth of air which made me think of India.  It was an
amazing and an unaccountable thing, and I could only attribute it
to the flattening of the poles, which brought the surface nearer to
the supposed central fires of the earth, and therefore created a
heat as great as that of the equatorial regions.  Here I found a
tropical climate--a land warmed not by the sun, but from the earth
itself.  Or another cause might be found in the warm ocean
currents.  Whatever the true one might be, I was utterly unable to
form a conjecture.

  But I had no time for such speculations as these.  After the
first emotions of wonder and admiration had somewhat subsided, I
began to experience other sensations.  I began to remember that I
had eaten nothing for a length of time that I had no means of
calculating, and to look around to see if there was any way of
satisfying my hunger.  The question arose now, What was to be done? 
After my recent terrible experience I naturally shrank from again
committing myself to the tender mercies of strange tribes; yet
further thought and examination showed me that the people of this
strange land must be very different from those frightful savages on
the other side of the mountains.  Everywhere I beheld the manifest
signs of cultivation and civilization.  Still, I knew that even
civilized people would not necessarily be any kinder than savages,
and that I might be seized and flung into hopeless imprisonment or
slavery.

  So I hesitated, yet what could I do?  My hunger was beginning to
be insupportable.  I had reached a place where I had to choose
between starvation on the one hand, or a venture among these people
on the other.  To go back was impossible.  Who could breast those
waters in the tremendous subterranean channel, or force his way
back through such appalling dangers?  Or, if that were possible,
who could ever hope to breast those mighty currents beyond, or work
his way amid everlasting ice and immeasurable seas?  No; return was
impossible.  I had been flung into this world of wonders, and here
would be my home for the remainder of my days; though I could not
now imagine whether those days would be passed in peace or in
bitter slavery and sorrow.  Yet the decision must be made and the
risk must be run.  It must be so.  I must land here, venture among
these people, and trust in that Providence which had hitherto
sustained me.

(End.)