Frank R. Stockton

“ At last there came a day when a message in cipher from Roland Clewe delivered itself on board the Dipsey, and from that moment a hitherto unknown sense of security seemed to pervade the minds of officers and crew. To be sure, there was no good reason for this, for if disaster should overtake them, or even threaten them, there was no submarine boat ready to send to their rescue; and if there had been, it would be long, long before such aid could reach them; but still, they were comforted, encouraged, and cheered. ”

“ The Dipsey had risen to the surface some twenty miles from the Cape and now came bravely on, Captain Hubbell on deck, his silver buttons shining in the sun. The sea was rough, but everybody was willing to bear with a little discomfort in order to be able to see the point of land which was the end of the voyage on the Dipsey, to let their eyes rest as early as possible upon a wreath of smoke arising from the habitation of human beings, and to catch sight of those human beings themselves. ”

“ It is not enough to merely find the pole; one should stay there and make observations which would be of service.”
“But if Sammy finishes the journey himself,” she said, “his will be the glory.”
“Let him have it,” replied Clewe. “If my method of arctic exploration solves the great problem of the pole, I shall be satisfied with the glory I get from the conception. The mere journey to the northern end of the earth's axis is of slight importance. I shall be glad to have Sammy go first, and have as many follow him as may choose to travel in that direction.” ”

“ It holds a love for you which is stronger than any fear or horror or dread. Roland, you must go down that shaft, you must know the great discovery you have made—even if you should never be able to come back to earth again, you must die knowing what it is. ”

“ In volcanic regions the fires rage; where my great shell went down it does not burn at all. Now you have my theory. It is crude and rough, for I have tried to give it to you in as few words as possible.”
“Oh, Roland,” she cried, “it is absurd! Diamond! Why, people will think you are crazy. You must not say such a thing as that to anybody. It is simply impossible that the greater part of this earth should be an enormous diamond.”
“Margaret,” he answered, “nothing is impossible. The central portion of this earth is composed of something; it might just as well be diamond as anything else. ”

“ As to a new shaft—that would require a new automatic shell, and this Clewe was not willing to construct. In fact, rather than make a new opening to the cave of light, he would prefer that people should doubt that any such cave existed. The more he thought of his own descent into that great cleft, the more he thought of the horrible danger of sliding down some invisible declivity to awful, unknown regions; the more he thought of the mysterious death of Rovinski, the more firmly did he determine that not by his agency should a human being descend again to those mysterious depths. ”

“ Margaret Raleigh, partner with Roland Clewe in the works at Sardis, and, in fact, the principal owner of that great estate. She was a widow, and her husband had been not only a man of science, but a very rich man; and when he died, at the outset of his career, his widow believed it her duty to devote his fortune to the prosecution and development of scientific works. She knew Roland Clewe as a hard student and worker, as a man of brilliant and original ideas, and as the originator of schemes which, if carried out successfully, would place him among the great inventors of the world. ”

“ It seemed as if a great ice mountain had sunk down from the midst of its companions, and had left this awful hole. This, however, was impossible. No law of nature would account for such a disappearance of an ice mountain. Mr. Gibbs thought, under some peculiar circumstances, a mass of ice might have broken away and floated from its surroundings, and that afterwards, increased in size, it had floated back again, and, too large to re-enter the opening it had made, had closed up the frozen walls of this lonely lake, accessible only to those who should rise up into it from the sea. ”

“ When flying-machines were brought to supposed perfection, some twenty years ago, it was believed that the pole would easily be reached, but there were always the wild and wicked winds, in which no steering apparatus could be relied upon. We may steer and manage our vessels in the fiercest storms at sea, but when the ocean moves in one great tidal wave our rudders are of no avail. Everything rushes on together, and our strongest ships are cast high upon the land. ”

“ Gibbs says this mountain, which is about twenty miles away, must be just about between us and the pole, but it does not cut us off. Far out to the right, as far as we can see, there is open water shining in the sun, so that we can sail around the cape. On the right and behind us, southward, are everlasting plains of snow and ice, which we have just come from under. They are so white that it dazzles our eyes to look at them. ”

“ Sarah Block screamed violently, and her husband exclaimed: “That infernal Pole! He has gone down to the pole, and I hope he may stay there!”
“What does all this mean, Mr. Marcy?” roared Captain Hubbell; “and why did you throw him overboard?”
“Never mind now,” cried Sammy, his voice rising above the confusion. “I will tell you all about it. I see what he was up to. He wanted to take possession of the pole in his own beastly name, most likely.”
“I don't understand a word of all this,” exclaimed Mr. Gibbs. “But there is the man; he has risen to the surface.” ”

“ But a great iron machine nearly twenty feet long could not rest upon air! He thought he might be dreaming; he sat up and shut his eyes; in a few minutes he would open them and see if he still saw the same incomprehensible things.
The downward passage of Rovinski had occupied a great deal more time than he had calculated for. He had stopped so much, and had been so careful to examine the walls of the shaft, that morning had now arrived in the upper world, and it was at this moment, as he sat with his eyes closed, that William Cunningham looked down into the mouth of the shaft. ”

“ That this application of light which he had discovered would be of the greatest possible service in surgery, Roland Clewe well knew. By totally eliminating from view any portion of the human body so as to expose a section of said body which it was desirable to examine, the interior structure of a patient could be studied as easily as the exterior, and a surgeon would be able to dissect a living being as easily as if the subject were a corpse. But Clewe did not now wish to make public the extraordinary adaptations of his discovery to the uses of the medical man and the surgeon. ”

“ So great was the anxiety to get the car to the surface of the earth that the engine which raised it was run at as high a speed as was deemed safe, and in a little more than an hour the car came out of the mouth of the shaft, and in it sat Ivan Rovinski, motionless and dead. ”

“ That is to say, he hoped to produce a long hole of light about three feet in diameter and as deep as it was possible to make it descend, in which he could see all the various strata and deposits of which the earth is composed. How far he could send down this piercing cylinder of light he did not allow himself to consider. With a small and imperfect machine he had seen several feet into the ground; with a great and powerful apparatus, such as he was now constructing, why should he not look down below the deepest point to which man's knowledge had ever reached? ”

“ We are working together, and it is both of us who must give this poor old world something to satisfy it for a while, until we can disclose to it that grand discovery, grander than anything that it has ever even imagined. I want to go on talking about it, but I shall not do it; we must keep our minds tied down to some present purpose. Now, Mr. Clewe, what is there that we can take up and carry on immediately? Can it be the great shell? ”

“ Nature is never mathematically correct. You must always allow for variations. In some parts of the earth its heated core, or whatever it is, must be very, very far down.”
At this moment a happy thought struck Margaret.
“How easy it would be, Roland, for you to examine this great hole! I can do it; anybody can do it. It's perfectly amazing when you think of it. All you have to do is to take your Artesian, ray machine into that building and set it over the hole; then you can light the whole interior, all the way down to the bottom, and with a telescope you can see everything that is in it.” ”

“ He then retired outside the screen. Professor Tippengray turned to the audience.
“It is all right, gentlemen,” she said; “there is nothing to be afraid of. I am going on with the investigation.”
Down, down, down went the light, and, telescope in hand, she stood close to the shining edge of the apparent shaft.
“Presently,” Clewe said, “you will see the end of the shaft which my Artesian ray is making; then you will perceive a vast expanse of lighted nothingness; that is the great cleft in the diamond which I described to you. ”

“ I admit, Margaret, that this proposed journey into the depths of the earth is a very peculiar one, but, after all, it is comparatively an easy and safe performance when compared to other things that men have done. The mountain-climbers of our fathers' time, who used to ascend the highest peaks with nothing but spiked shoes and sharpened poles, ran far more danger than would be met by one who would descend such a shaft as mine. ”

“ He had with him a dark lantern, and he made the most thorough examination of the machinery at the mouth of the shaft. He was a man of great mechanical ability and an expert in applied electricity. He understood that machinery, with all its complicated arrangements and appliances, as well as if he had built it himself. In fact, while examining it, he thought of some very valuable improvements which might have been made in it. He knew that it was an apparatus for lowering the car to a great depth, and, climbing into the car, he examined everything it contained. ”

“ Don't you want a cup of tea?”
“It's a great pity,” thought Sammy to himself, “that it wasn't that Pole that had his feet frozen to the deck. The rest of us might have been lucky enough not to have noticed him as the boat went down.”
“We ought to get a name for that body of water up there,” said Mr. Gibbs, as he was writing out his report of the day's adventures. “Shall we call it 'Lake Clewe'?”
“Oh, don't do that!” exclaimed Sammy Block. “Mr. Clewe's too good a man to have his name tacked on to that hole. If you want to name it, why don't you call it 'Lake Shiver'?” ”

“ That is the crushing truth. I can find out nothing at all. When I look down through the earth by means of the Artesian ray I reach a certain depth and then I see a void; when I look down through a perfectly open passage to the same depth, I still see a void.”
“But, Roland,” said Margaret, holding in her hand the view taken of the bottom of the shaft, “what is this in the middle of the proof? It is darker than the rest, but it seems to be all covered up with mistiness. ”

“ As to the Artesian ray itself, there could be no doubt whatever, for when Clewe, in one of his experiments, directed it horizontally through a small mountain and objects could be plainly discerned upon the other side, discussions in regard to the genuineness of the action of the photic borer were useless.
In medicine, as well as surgery, the value of the Artesian ray was speedily admitted by the civilized world. To eliminate everything between the eye of the surgeon and the affected portion of a human organism was like the rising of the sun upon a hitherto benighted region. ”

“ There are no storms in the quiet depths in which the Dipsey is sailing. Ice does not sink down from the surface, and even if a floating iceberg should turn over, as they sometimes do in the more open sea, the Dipsey will keep low enough to avoid such danger. In fact, I feel almost sure that if she should meet with any obstacle which would prevent her from keeping on her course to the pole, all she would have to do would be to turn around and come back. ”

“ Roland Clewe was the real discoverer. Consequently he considered that the direct representative of the interests of Mr. Clewe should take possession, and it was decided that Samuel Block should add the north pole to the territory of his native land.
When this had been settled, a very great change came over the mind of Sarah Block. That her husband should be the man to do this great thing filled her with pride and alert enthusiasm.
“Sammy,” she exclaimed, “when you are doin' that, you will be the greatest man in this world, and you will stand at the top of everything.” ”

“ Then his eyes fell upon the sides of this cylindrical opening, and these, illuminated, but not otherwise acted upon by the volume of Artesian rays, showed, in all their true colors and forms, everything which went to make up the sides of the bright cavity into which he looked. He saw the various strata of clay, sand, gravel, exactly as he would have seen them in a circular hole cut accurately and smoothly into the earth. No stone or lump protruded from the side of this apparent excavation, the inner surface of which was as smooth as if it had been cut down with a sharp instrument. ”

“ Of course everybody was very happy, now that they were returning homeward from a voyage successful beyond parallel in history, and even Rovinski was beginning to assume an air of gratified anticipation. He had been released from his confinement and allowed to attend to his duties, but the trust which had been placed in him when this kindness had been extended to him on a previous occasion was wanting now. Everybody knew that he was an unprincipled man, and that if he could gain access to the telegraph instrument at Cape Tariff he would make trouble for the real discoverer of the north pole ”

“ Doubtless the two birds who had made that nest sincerely loved each other; and there were at that moment a great many other birds, and a great many men and women, in the same plight, but never anywhere did any human being possess a soul so happy as that of Margaret at that moment. ”