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Updated: May 2, 2025
For several minutes he seemed to be inspecting it critically, both inside and out; then he stood away from it, a bold, black silhouette on a background of flame, and motioned the American to come to him. Johnston promptly, but not without many misgivings, obeyed his signal. "What are you up to?" asked he, as the Alphian assisted him to rise from his hands and knees.
"We can see nothing of Alpha from here," remarked Johnston disappointedly, "we can see nothing beyond our circle of light." "I should like to look down from this height at night," said the Alphian. "It would be a great view." "What is this?" Johnston went to one side of the platform and laid his hand on the spokes of a polished metal wheel shaped like the pilot-wheel of a steamboat.
"They are cleaning the glass and adjusting the lights," said the Alphian; "wait till they go round to the other side. Don't you see that square opening near the ground?" The American nodded. "It is the door," said Branasko, "and we must try to enter it while they are on the other side. Let us slip nearer; there is another rock ahead that we can hide behind."
At times, the roof of the cavern sank so low that they had to stoop to pass under it, and again it rose sharply like the roof of a cathedral, and the rays of the far-away, but ever-increasing light, shone upon glistening stalactites that hung from the darkness above them like daggers of diamonds set in ebony. "It is not so near as I supposed," said the Alphian wearily.
In the darkness they slowly made their way down the stairs to the great room. "There ought to be some way of making a light," said the Alphian, and his voice sounded loud and hollow in the empty chamber. After several failures to find the stairs they descended to the door they had entered. Branasko opened it a little, and a breeze came in.
He moved a few steps forward and then happening to look over his shoulder he stopped abruptly, and uttered an exclamation of surprise. "What is it?" And Johnston followed the eyes of the Alphian. "Our shadows on the crystal cliff," said Branasko in an awed tone; "only the light from the changing sun could make them so."
They had walked along in silence for several minutes when the Alphian stopped abruptly and turned to his companion. "What is the matter?" asked Johnston. "It cannot come from the internal fires," replied Branasko, "for the atmosphere grows cooler as we get nearer the light and away from the chasm."
The combined roar of the pit and the fountain of lava had sunk to a low murmur, but ahead of them they now heard a rushing sound like a distant tornado. "Come on," said the Alphian, and he drew his companion after him with an eagerness the American was slow to understand. The light in the cavern gradually grew brighter.
He looked at the Alphian in alarm. The latter was whirling the wheel first one way and then another with a startled look of fear in his eyes, and then Johnston noticed that the walls of the pit were rising about them, and the black canopy overhead rapidly receding. They were sinking down into the fire.
"And we have no light to find the cause of the trouble," added the Alphian, who had knelt down and was feeling about the wheel. Presently he rose. "I give it up," he sighed, "I cannot understand it. The machinery is somewhere inside." "It has grown colder," shuddered Johnston. "We were warmed by the light, of course," remarked Branasko, "and now we feel the dampness more.
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