But when I, in my turn, called out to them as a test, "Who are you? Where am I?" they answered with a round of such unpleasant, grating laughter that I resolved to hold my tongue thenceforth. Evidently English was not spoken in the caverns beneath the earth.
I do not know whether the people interpreted my words as mockery, or were incensed by my failure to answer them intelligibly. In any case, I could see an expression of hostility, of suspicion deepening in their salmon eyes, and knew that I had provoked their disfavor. But I was little prepared for their next action. From a rifle-like machine in the hand of the foremost man, a coil of wire leapt forth; and, before I realized the intention or had had a chance to evade it, the coil had fallen over my neck and was tightening about my shoulders, drawing my arms together against my sides and binding me as helplessly as a lassoed steer.
Naturally, I struggled, but the chief effect was to provoke more of that unpleasant grating laughter. The metal, which was thick as my index finger, would not yield to my most frantic efforts. The more I writhed, the more deeply it cut into my flesh; and the more deeply it cut into my flesh, the more heartily the chalky-faced folk laughed at my groans.
Then after a minute or two, my captors began pulling at the wire. While some of the little coaster-like machines rolled behind me, and some rolled ahead, but none approached within ten yards, I was led away down one of the side-galleries, like a dog at the end of a string, toward a fate I could hardly conjecture.
CHAPTER VII
Deeper and Darker
In the course of my thirty-eight years, I have made more than one hair-raising expedition. I have clung to the slippery sides of precipices; I have rolled in a ship at sea, with the decks all awash beneath the mountainous waves; I have been lost in the burning desert and all but blistered to death; I have roamed glacial barrens, and remote caves, and serpent-infested jungles. But never have I been stricken with such fear, never have I suffered such nightmare agonies as during that journey at the end of a wire, among the clattering groups of pit-dwellers.
So bewildered was I, so frightened, and at the same time so angered, that for a long while I kept little track of where we went. I only knew that we were making our way down, down, down, among a multitude of galleries that curved, and curved again, and branched and inter-branched with baffling intricacy—galleries illuminated with a greenish-yellow glow by the multitudes of orbs placed at regular intervals along the walls and ceiling. It seemed that we travelled for miles, while my captors, on their queer wheeled machines, rolled ahead of me and behind, but never came within yards of personal contact; and minute by minute the wire cut more deeply into my skin, checking the circulation and making it hard for me to hold back a cry of pain.
After a time, however, I began to take closer note of my surroundings. I remember, for example, catching a glimpse of a huge, rapidly revolving wheel, larger than a barn-door, from which a strong draft of cool air was blowing; I saw through a half-closed door into a hall filled with machines as high as a five-story building; I was dazzled by flashes of sun-brilliant lights, and once or twice my ears were smitten with thunderblasts; I crossed a bridge over a subterranean torrent, in which I could see half-submerged, illuminated vessels; I passed walls lined with little round lighted windows, within which I could distinguish shadowy figures moving; I shuffled along corridors where long pipes, coils, and strands of wire ran along the walls for great distances.