“Perhaps you are right,” said Tanar, “but I am sure that we are nearing the end.”
“I am,” said Jude, “but not the end that I had wished.”
Even as they discussed the matter they were moving slowly along, when far ahead Tanar discerned a slight luminosity.
“Look,” he said, “there is light. We are nearing the end.”
The discovery instilled new strength into both the men and with quickened steps they hastened along the tunnel in the direction of the promised escape. As they advanced, the light became more apparent until finally they came to the point where the tunnel they had been traversing opened into a large corridor, which was filled with a subdued light from occasional patches of phosphorescent rock in walls and ceiling, but neither to the right nor the left could they see any sign of daylight.
“Which way now?” demanded Jude.
Tanar shook his head. “I do not know,” he said.
“At least I shall not die in that awful blackness,” wailed Jude, and perhaps that factor of their seemingly inevitable doom had weighed most heavily upon the two Pellucidarians, for, living as these people do beneath the brilliant rays of a perpetual noonday sun, darkness is a hideous and abhorrent thing to them, so unaccustomed are they to it.
“In this light, however slight it may be,” said Tanar, “I can no longer be depressed. I am sure that we shall escape.”
“But in which direction?” again demanded Jude.