we would approach it feasting like kings.

He seemed as cheerful and confident as myself. Now that the issue was determined, the uncertainty of action was removed, and we both felt oddly relieved. After we had eaten, we started the engines and drove the machine back to the hilltop where the cottage had been. We got out and examined the surface of the ground that had been acted upon by the strange red dissolution.

The earth had evidently been eaten away to a depth of several feet, and the surface was left covered with a hard, greenish vitrified crust, smooth and hard as glass. It was unpleasant to think what would have happened if Sam had failed to intercept the warning of the approach of that amazing machine--if it had been a machine.

CHAPTER IX 
Into the Mangar Deep

We hurried back into the Omnimobile, climbed into the conning-tower, and started the engines again. Sam turned the bow toward the sea, and the great machine crawled slowly down to meet the lapping white waves. In a few moments they were slapping and splashing against her sides.On we drove, down the sloping sand. The green water rose about the windows. In a moment the periscope screen showed that we were entirely under water. We crawled steadily over the bottom of the sea, deeper and deeper. All the wonders of the hidden sea-life lay about us, bright corals and strange shrubs, curious rocks, and beautiful dells between them, through which silvery fishes and stranger monsters of the deep were moving. It grew darker, and Sam turned on the powerful searchlights. We moved on down into stranger regions. But I must not take space for that, for we were hastening toward a world that was weirder by far!

In half an hour we closed the valves, which had been left open to let the water flood the tanks, and started the pumps. We were lifted above the ocean floor. We stopped the caterpillar tread, and set the screws into motion. In a few minutes the Omnimobile rose above the surface and splashed back into the blue waves like a gigantic dolphin of silver metal!

I climbed out on the deck. The Florida coast was a bright green line in the west. The serene blue vault of the heavens was illimitable above us, and the deeper blue expanse of waters lay about in a flat, measureless plain. The machine throbbed almost imperceptibly with the motors, and the prow sent out two white wings of water. The plates were wet and slippery with the spray. I thrilled to feel again the motion of a powerful craft beneath me, to smell the salty 

 Prev. P 22/94 next