They bought their tickets for St. James Park station and went down two long and dirty stairways into the bowels of the earth, where they found a long cave arched with smoky bricks, dimly lighted with a half-dozen gas-jets, with a very dirty platform on each side and two tracks between them. Twenty or thirty other persons were waiting for the train, all breathing the thick smoky atmosphere, that coated their throats and made them cough.
In two or three minutes a faint rumbling began in one of the dark tunnels leading out of each end of the cave; and the rumbling grew louder and louder till it became a roar, and the train drew up. There was a great banging of doors, people got out and others got in, Kit and Harry scrambled into an empty compartment, and in a few seconds the lights of the platform faded away and they were in darkness save for a very dim gas-jet in the roof of the car.
“Now this is real luxury!” Harry laughed. “Everything you touch is black as a chimney, and the air you breathe is thick enough to cut. These tunnels would make good sewers, Kit. But do you think our folks would believe the Londoners really ride through such holes in the ground? Ain’t it simply frightful?”
“I shall have to agree with you this time,” Kit answered. “I had no idea the underground roads were as bad as this. It would be a terrible place for an accident, wouldn’t it, in these dark caves?”
They went on and on past station after station, and after half an hour of jolting and half suffocating Kit began to suspect that he must have made some mistake, for it was less than a mile from Gower Street to St. James Park. He took out his map and examined it as well as he could under the feeble light.
“See here, I’ll tell you what we’ve done,” he explained, “we’ve taken an outer circle train. You know this underground road runs in a small inner circle and a big outer circle. And we’re in the wrong train, that is carrying us away round the city. But no matter, it will bring us to St. James after a while. That’s rather a good joke on us, Harry, for a hansom would have taken us across in half the time and for half the money.”
“Oh, well,” Harry answered, “no matter. It’s just as well to get a good dose of the underground this time, for I never want to see the thing again. One dose is enough, well shaken and taken.”
It took them fifty minutes to reach the St. James Park station; and after they had climbed the long stairs to the surface they stood awhile on the edge of the park to get some fresh air into their lungs.
“It’s just as I expected,” Harry declared, “only a good deal worse. They don’t half know how to do things over here. And that’s Buckingham Palace, is it, where the Queen lives? Why, it’s only two stories high, and a basement! Now, Kit, you know as well as I do that this palace ain’t a patch to Mr. Barnum’s house out in Seaside Park, in Bridgeport. No, sir, it doesn’t compare with it.”
“Oh, Harry, you can’t please a fellow who’s determined not to be pleased,” Kit laughed. “When you come to London, you must make up your mind that things are better than anywhere else, and tell the people so. Then they’ll pat you on the back and say the Americans are their cousins.”