r Bastin's fearless courage which enabled him
thus to beard this super-tyrant in his den. So indeed were we all, for I
read it in Yva's face and heard Bickley mutter:

"Bravo! Splendid! After all there is something in faith!"

Even Oro appreciated it with his intellect, if not with his heart, for
he stared at the man and made no answer. In the language of the ring, he
was quite "knocked out" and, almost humbly, changed the subject.

"We have yet a little while," he said, "before that happens which I have
decreed. Come, Humphrey, that I may show you some of the marvels of this
bubble blown in the bowels of the world," and he motioned to us to pick
up the lanterns.

Then he led us away from the wall of the cavern, if such it was, for a
distance of perhaps six or seven hundred paces. Here suddenly we came to
a great groove in the rocky floor, as broad as a very wide roadway, and
mayhap four feet in depth. The bottom of this groove was polished and
glittered; indeed it gave us the impression of being iron, or other ore
which had been welded together beneath the grinding of some immeasurable
weight. Just at the spot where we struck the groove, it divided into
two, for this reason.

In its centre the floor of iron, or whatever it may have been, rose, the
fraction of an inch at first, but afterwards more sharply, and this at
a spot where the groove had a somewhat steep downward dip which appeared
to extend onwards I know not how far.

Following along this central rise for a great way, nearly a mile, I
should think, we observed that it became ever more pronounced, till at
length it ended in a razor-edge cliff which stretched up higher than
we could see, even by the light of the electrical discharges. Standing
against the edge of this cliff, we perceived that at a distance from it
there were now two grooves of about equal width. One of these ran away
into the darkness on our right as we faced the sharp edge, and at an
ever-widening angle, while the other, at a similar angle, ran into the
darkness to the left of the knife of cliff. That was all.

No, there were two more notable things. Neither of the grooves now lay
within hundreds of yards of the cliff, perhaps a quarter of a mile, for
be it remembered we had followed the rising rock between them. To put it
quite clearly, it was exactly as though one line of rails had separated
into two lines of rails, as often enough they do, and an observer
standing on high ground betwe