let the
engines move faster; there was no reason why the car should go so
slowly.

The windlasses moved with a little more rapidity, and Clewe now turned
and looked at an indicator which was placed on the side of the car, a
little over his head. This instrument showed the depth to which he had
descended, but he had not looked at it before, for if there should
be anything which would make him nervous it would be the continual
consideration of the depth to which he had descended.

The indicator showed that he had gone down fourteen and one eighth
miles. Clewe turned and sat stiffly in his seat. He glanced down and saw
beneath him only an illuminated hole, fading away at the bottom. Then he
turned to speak to Bryce, but to his surprise he could think of nothing
to say. After that he lighted another cigar and sat quietly.

Some minutes passed--he did not know how many--and he looked down
through the gratings at the floor of the car. The electric light
streamed downward through a deep orifice, which did not fade away and
end in nothing; it ended in something dark and glittering. Then, as he
came nearer and nearer to this glittering thing, he saw that it was his
automatic shell, lying on its side, but he could see only a part of it
through the opening of the bottom of the shaft which he was descending.
In an instant, as it seemed to him, the car emerged from the narrow
shaft, and he seemed to be hanging in the air-at least there was nothing
he could see except that great shell, lying some forty feet below him.
But it was impossible that the shell should be lying on the air! He rang
to stop the car.

"Anything the matter?" cried Bryce, almost at the same instant.

"Nothing at all," Clewe replied. "It's all right, I am near the bottom."

In a state of the highest nervous excitement, Clewe gazed about him.
He was no longer in a shaft; but where was he? Look out on what side he
would, he saw nothing but the light going out from his lamps, but which
seemed to extend indefinitely all about him. There seemed to be no limit
to his vision in any direction. Then he leaned over the side of his car
and looked downward. There was the great shell directly under him, but
under it and around it, extending as far beneath it as it extended in
every other direction, was the light from his own lamps, and yet that
great shell, weighing many tons, lay as if it rested upon the solid
ground!

After a few moments Clewe shut his eyes; they pa