The greatest adventure
The air in the tunnel began to grow faintly smoky. They were not over
an hour from the entrance. Consequently at least a hundred and twenty
miles lay between them and daylight.
The same thought occurred to the pair: they should now be nearing the
vicinity of the smoke-filled crater which they had discovered first.
Theorizing rapidly Ole concluded that the tunnel joined these two,
the ruined crater and the vast depression still green as a paradise.
Doubtless the explosion of a huge reservoir of oil beneath the first
had sent its floor skyward to litter the surrounding desolation with
chunks of black rock. Then, he speculated, had the first also been a
den of prehistoric monsters--or, as Lane maintained, botched imitations
of such--before its destruction? It had.
The verification of Ole's speculation was twofold and twice convincing.
Like a dead memory from a forgotten existence a nauseating stench
assailed their nostrils. They remembered that moonlit night on the
Antarctic ocean and the soul destroying pollution of the winds from the
beach of monsters.
Presently through the thickening smoke they saw the shambles. The
tunnel was all but blocked by the rotting carcasses of huge brutes
which had trampled one another to pulp in their panic to escape the
fumes which finally suffocated their multitudes.
Cutting out the engine Ole glided toward the mountain of decay. Just as
he turned the plane to escape from the immense corruption he spied the
second confirmation of his theory.
Great, slow-moving brutes, each the bulk of three full grown
hippopotami, mailed in horn and with a ridge of jagged armor sticking
up along their spines from the flat, broad head to the tip of the
thirty-foot tail, were crawling like huge newts over the rotting
mountain, or splashing heavily through the foul brown ooze from its
base.
These gigantic scavengers took no notice of the intruders, continuing
with voracity their filthy feasts. The whole decaying pile crawled with
them. Their number could only be guessed, for the end of the tunnel was
invisible through the murky smoke. For all the explorers definitely
knew, they might be one mile or twenty from the ruined crater.
They decided it was time to fly. Both felt faint from the awful
stench. Ole let out the engine to its limit. The sudden roar startled
a flapping horde of lesser scavengers which they had not seen. Being
almost the color of their obscene food these had escaped notice in
the murky light. They now arose in thousands, cloud upon cloud of
long-necked reptilian "birds" with the wings of bats. From tip to tip
the spread of their leathery membranes averaged a good eight feet, and
on each six-foot neck a grinning head the size of a horse's stretched
hungrily forward. Hard round eyes like those of gigantic serpents
stared stonily at the intruders, estimating their value as food. The
six-inch teeth clashing aimlessly at nothing filled the air with a
hideous cacophony.
Either their own foul banquet was more to their taste or the reptilian
birds were by nature peace loving scavengers averse to combat, for they
contented themselves with flapping round and round this unknown bird
of the twentieth century. Their lineage went back millions of years;
this parvenu was an infant yesterday. With hard stares of contempt they
circled back in wide spirals to their interrupted repast.
Thanking Heaven for this deliverance, Edith breathed again. But her
thanks were premature. A strangely familiar rumbling was but the
prelude to a remembered thunder of subterranean explosions. She knew
what was coming.
So did Ole. Anticipating it he cut out the engine and dipped gradually.
Taking the desperate chance that no considerable mass of shattered rock
littered the floor immediately ahead he brought the plane down. Luck
favored him. They came to rest whole on the rocky floor.
They climbed hastily out. The jarring under their feet all but threw
them prostrate. They heard the sudden suction of the rushing whirlwinds
rushing down to the subterranean chambers, and saw what they dreaded.
As if struggling for their life with the demon winds the pillars of
descending flame quivered for an instant in mid-air. Then with a
knelling roar they disappeared in absolute night down the wells.
13
HADES
An hour in the impenetrable darkness of that suffocating stench was a
hundred years long. Unfortunately Ole had a liberal supply of matches.
Under ordinary trials these would have been a godsend. Here they proved
an exceedingly cunning gift from the devil.
The instant the terrific jarring ceased Ole lit his first match. It
was just half past eleven in the morning. Five hours before he and
Edith had been enjoying an extensive breakfast. For lunch they now had
nothing but the air, such as it was. They had given up the attempt to
eat their sandwiches after the first mouthful. The meat tasted like
carrion, and the bread had made of itself a sponge to soak up all the
noisomeness of that foul shambles.
They climbed back into the machine to await the next earthquake and the
rekindling of the gas wells. To pass the time Ole theorized and struck
matches every five minutes. The brief light showed him a set white
face, the large brown eyes with their dilated pupils almost black, and
the resolute, finely shaped mouth compressed in a firm bow. The kid, he
admitted to himself, was sticking it like a hero. He had expected her
to blubber.
"I have been wondering," she said about the fifth match, "how we are
to get out of this beastly tunnel if the darkness continues for, say
a week." She laughed ruefully. "'Beastly' is right in more ways than
one. The smell is beastly, there is a hideous den of prehistoric beasts
at the less obscene end of this filthy burrow, and a stinking mountain
of dead beasts blocking the back door. Suppose we do have to walk out,
which way shall we go? All those scavengers and hideous bird things are
behind us too."
"Whatever happens," he replied with savage conviction, "I am not going
to walk. To the living devils it is a hundred and twenty miles. What
kind of a fool would walk that far to be torn to pieces? Especially on
an empty stomach?"
"Not my kind," she admitted ruefully enough.
"And do you think I'm going to swim through those miles of muck behind
us?"
She shuddered. "I couldn't go that way even if those vile bird
creatures and the huge crawling brutes weren't there."
"No more could I. No, I shall not walk."
"Then if the wells have gone out for good we must stay here forever."
"We can fly," he asserted.
"And smash ourselves in the dark like a pair of goose eggs. I can think
of nothing stupider than two unhatched geese unless it be three."
"Well, isn't a quick smash better than slow rotting? It wouldn't be
suicide," he added to pacify his conscience, "because we should be
doing it on the chance of saving our lives."
"Yes, a quick death is better. I wonder if I shall ever see my father
again. And my garden, and the dear cats in San Francisco...."
Ole was touched. The poor kid was going to cry. He struck a match. Her
eyes had grown larger and darker, but there were no tears. After all
she was a brick.
"Listen," he said confidently. "I have a theory."
"If it's as depressing as the rest of this nightmare please keep it to
yourself."
"But it isn't. You remember how long it was between blow-offs at those
holes the other day?"
"About thirteen minutes."
"And the flames only lasted a few minutes after they caught. Now those
jets in here were going full blast for over an hour. Suppose they had
been going for a full day when we flew in."
"I'll suppose it. What then?"
"They will light up again as the others did. But not for a much longer
time."
"A week, perhaps? We shall suffocate long before we see."
"No. The same cause must be at the bottom of those flame holes and
these."
"And that cause may operate only once a month, once a year, or once a
century for all we know. The next flare may light our bones."
"For two reasons I say no. The first is practical, the second is
theory. First, those bat birds have eyes. They can see. I know that is
so from the way they glared at us. Now animals that can see don't stay
long away from the light."
"The encyclopaedia has fooled you, Ole. All that you say may be true.
But there is probably a back door to this tunnel, and those filthy
things just swoop in here to feed. When they are gorged they flap out
again to roost in their dens. They get all the fresh air and sunshine
they need for perfect health in their rookeries."
"I hadn't thought of that. Still, having eyes they must be used to
seeing their food."
"Eyes for such creatures in this stinking place are an ornament of
luxury. They have nostrils. I saw them myself--two holes on the snout
like a snake's."
"Well, listen now to my theory. You can't knock out that, any way,
because it is all pure reason."
He lit another match. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead on the
impenetrable soot. The match died.
"Why do these blowholes come and go?" he continued. "Why don't they
shoot off burning gas all the time?"
"Is it a riddle?"
"Not to me," Ole replied proudly, lavishing two matches on the
invisible stench.
"I give it up. What's the answer?"
"The moon."
She wondered if she could climb out unnoticed by the theorizer. Poor
Ole; his mind must suddenly have given way. She was sorry for him, but
sorrier for herself. A lunatic on top of her other troubles would be
too much.
"Where are you going?" Ole demanded.
The flaring match revealed a scared pair of eyes searching his. Edith
had started to climb down.
"I thought you had gone crazy," she said, climbing back just as the
match expired and burnt Ole's fingers. "But you seem no more insane
than usual. Go on with your theory."
"The moon does it all. Really it is quite simple when you get the idea.
As a practical seaman I know how the moon raises the tides--they follow
it round the earth. The moon attracts the water. Then a big heap of
water gathers in the middle of the sea, and the bulge follows the moon."
"I wish I could follow you."
"When the moon gets so far ahead that the bulge can't keep up the tide
falls. When the bulge sweeps over a place it is high tide there. Anyhow
that's something like it."
Ole proceeded to elaborate his account by an obscure reference to that
bane of all amateur theorizers, centrifugal force. With the squaring
of the circle and perpetual motion this mystical conception forms the
unholy trinity of the born paradoxer. Not one of them knows what it
means, yet by invoking its magic powers they explain everything from
germs to God. Edith, trying not to listen, felt like a quart of milk in
a cream separator. Centrifugal force was separating her mind from her
body, but which was which she could not have told. Mercifully it did
not last long, and Ole soon reached the practical application of his
moonshine.
"Now my theory is," he said more rationally, "that there is a vast
tank of oil--perhaps several--under the whole region."
"Won't Captain Anderson be pleased to hear that? I'm glad somebody will
be happy in all this mess."
"Not all oil, perhaps. I think it may be floating on salt water."
"I wish it were carbolic acid."
"Now when the moon raises a tide on all that oil it rushes through the
underground galleries of this continent and forces up all the collected
gases of twenty-four hours through the blowholes."
"And somebody is waiting to set a match to it, I suppose?"
"You mean how does it catch fire?"
For a moment the inventive Ole was badly stumped. Then his chambered
mind gave up its buried reminiscences: all gases when compressed get