"Halt!" cried Ivan. "Here is the pump. Give me the pipe."
In the half-darkness a little machine three feet high was discernible; it was provided with a spring wheel. This suction-pipe had been brought here only the day before. Ivan took the caoutchouc coil from his companion's shoulder, and screwed the pipe to the aperture of the machine; then he set the wheel in motion, and in a few seconds it, with the heavy balls attached, was revolving with velocity. Then he took the end of the pipe and gave the coil back to Spitzhase with this difference: instead of putting it over his arm he hung the hose over his neck. Spitzhase felt as if the pipe were about a hundredweight heavier, and that it had grown suddenly stiff.
"Forward! quick march!" shouted Ivan into his helmet.
"It begins to be hot as hell itself," grumbled Spitzhase, who was suffering horribly.
"Because we are in a part of the mine where the fire has been put out."
Both the men wore on their feet glass slippers, otherwise they would have felt that the ashes through which they were wading were glowing with heat.
The india-rubber hose hung round Spitzhase's neck. It grew darker and darker, until at last it was as dark as Erebus.
"I can see nothing," shouted Spitzhase.
"You are safe if you follow me," returned Ivan.
It began to grow somewhat lighter. The light, however, was rose color; there was twilight, then, in the bowels of the earth.