ILLUSTRATIONS.
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| Only Authentic Portrait of Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian von Troomp (from the oil painting) | [Frontispiece] |
| Departure from Castle Trump | [9] |
| Along a Highway of the Under World | [23] |
| Before her Majesty Galaxa, Queen of the Mikkamenkies | [35] |
| A Dinner easily provided for | [47] |
| Princess Crystallina uncovers her Heart | [59] |
| Crystallina’s Heart on a Screen | [71] |
| Bulger parts his Master from Princess Crystallina | [83] |
| The Formifolk try the Beat of the Baron’s Heart by Telephone | [95] |
| Barrel Brow engaged in reading Four Books at once | [107] |
| A Soodopsy Maiden reading her Favorite Poet | [119] |
| The Gigantic Tortoise that devoured Pouting Lip | [131] |
| Sailing away from the Land of the Soodopsies | [143] |
| The Battle for Life with the White Crabs | [155] |
| The Little Man with the Frozen Smile | [167] |
| Bulger shows the Baron Something Wonderful | [179] |
| The Baron’s Flight to the Ice Palace | [191] |
| Death of Fuffcoojah | [197] |
| Koltykwerpian Quarrymen hewing a Passage through the Wall of Ice | [203] |
| The Wonderful Ride on the Block of Ice | [207] |
| The Tropics of the Under World | [213] |
| Through the Revolving Door | [219] |
| Caught up in the Arms of the Torrent | [225] |
| Hurled out in the Sunshine | [231] |
A MARVELLOUS UNDERGROUND
JOURNEY
CHAPTER I
BULGER IS GREATLY ANNOYED BY THE FAMILIARITY OF THE VILLAGE DOGS AND THE PRESUMPTION OF THE HOUSE CATS.—HIS HEALTH SUFFERS THEREBY, AND HE IMPLORES ME TO SET OUT ON MY TRAVELS AGAIN. I READILY CONSENT, FOR I HAD BEEN READING OF THE WORLD WITHIN A WORLD IN A MUSTY OLD MS. WRITTEN BY THE LEARNED DON FUM.—PARTING INTERVIEWS WITH THE ELDER BARON AND THE GRACIOUS BARONESS MY MOTHER.—PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE.
Bulger was not himself at all, dear friends. There was a lack-lustre look in his eyes, and his tail responded with only a half-hearted wag when I spoke to him. I say half-hearted, for I always had a notion that the other end of Bulger’s tail was fastened to his heart. His appetite, too, had gone down with his spirits; and he rarely did anything more than sniff at the dainty food which I set before him, although I tried to tempt him with fried chickens’ livers and toasted cocks’ combs—two of his favorite dishes.
There was evidently something on his mind, and yet it never occurred to me what that something was; for to be honest about it, it was something which of all things I never should have dreamed of finding there.
Possibly I might have discovered at an earlier day what it was all about, had it not been that just at this time I was very busy, too busy, in fact, to pay much attention to any one, even to my dear four-footed foster brother. As you may remember, dear friends, my brain is a very active one; and when once I become interested in a subject, Castle Trump itself might take fire and burn until the legs of my chair had become charred before I would hear the noise and confusion, or even smell the smoke.
It so happened at the time of Bulger’s low spirits that the elder baron had, through the kindness of an old school friend, come into possession of a fifteenth-century manuscript from the pen of a no less celebrated thinker and philosopher than the learned Spaniard, Don Constantino Bartolomeo Strepholofidgeguaneriusfum, commonly known among scholars as Don Fum, entitled “A World within a World.” In this work Don Fum advanced the wonderful theory that there is every reason to believe that the interior of our world is inhabited; that, as is well known, this vast earth ball is not solid, on the contrary, being in many places quite hollow; that ages and ages ago terrible disturbances had taken place on its surface and had driven the inhabitants to seek refuge in these vast underground chambers, so vast, in fact, as well to merit the name of “World within a World.”