"I have lived again," I said in bitterness.
"You have not lived at all as yet," he replied; "life is a dream, usually it is an unsatisfied nightmare."
"Then let me dream again as at the beginning of this slumber," I said; "and while I dream as a child, do you strangle the life from my body,—spare me the nightmare, I would not live to reach the Life of Man."
"This is sarcasm," he replied; "you are as changeable as the winds of the earth's surface. Now as you are about to approach a part of our journey where fortitude is necessary, behold, you waver as a little child might. Nerve yourself; the trials of the present require a steady mind, let the future care for itself; you can not recall the past."
I became attentive again; the depressing effects of that repulsive dream rapidly lifted, and wasted away, as I realized that I was a man, and was destined to see more than can be seen in the future of other mortals. This elevation of my spirit was evidently understood by my guide. He turned to the lake, and pointing to its quiet bosom, remarked:
"For five hours we have journeyed over this sheet of water at the average rate of nine hundred miles an hour. At the time you threw the fragments of cloth overboard, we were traveling at a speed of not less than twenty miles per minute. You remember that some hours ago you criticised my assertion when I said that we would soon be near the axis of the earth beneath the North Pole, and now we are beyond that point, and are about six thousand miles from where we stood at that time."
"You must have your way," I replied; "I can not disprove your assertion, but were it not that I have passed through so many marvelous experiences since first we met, I would question the reliability of your information."
My guide continued:
"The surface of this lake lies as a mirror beneath both the ocean and the land. The force effect that preserves the configuration of the ocean preserves the form of this also, but influences it to a less extent, and the two surfaces lie nearly parallel with each other, this one being one hundred and fifty miles beneath the surface of the earth. The shell of the earth above us is honeycombed by caverns in some places, in others it is compact, and yet, in most places, is impervious to water. At the farther extremity of the lake, a stratum of porous material extends through the space intervening between the bottom of the ocean and this lake. By capillary attraction, assisted by gravitation, part of the water of the ocean is being transferred through this stratum to the underground cavity. The lake is slowly rising."
At this remark I interrupted him: "You say the water in the ocean is being slowly transferred down to this underground lake less by gravity than by capillarity."