In Caverns Below

It is now five years since Philip Clay and I were given up by the world as lost, five years since we plunged into that appalling adventure from which, even today, we have barely begun to recover. During nine tenths of that time, we dwelt far from the sight of our fellow men in a remote and incredible land of wizardry and terror; we made discoveries which, we are certain, have never been surpassed since Columbus voyaged westward to the New World; we encountered perils that we still shudder to recall, and experienced triumphs that make us sigh regretfully in recollection. And it is only by the rarest of good fortune that we survive to tell the story to those who, long ago, wept at the news of our passing.

One fact in the case, and only one, will be remembered by the public. In the autumn of 1929, newspapers throughout the country reported that Philip Clay and Frank Comstock, mining engineers and boon companions, disappeared in the depths of a silver mine in Nevada. It was generally believed that a cave-in of unexplained origin had been responsible for their death, and that they had been crushed beyond recognition, for no trace of their mutilated bodies was ever found. The world, with its insatiable appetite for tragedy and horror, was naturally interested for a time, but as the days and weeks wore by and no further news was forthcoming, public attention was diverted to other affairs, and Comstock and Clay were forgotten....

Yet it is I, Frank Comstock, who write these words. It is I, Frank Comstock, who a few months ago returned as if from the grave, to announce that Clay and I had not been killed in the mine disaster. It is I, Frank Comstock, who have come back to record my experiences, and to proclaim that, even in this twentieth century, there are more worlds about us than our philosophy has ever taken into account.

Let me therefore go back over these harrowing five years and try to report, as simply and accurately as I can, each episode in the whole chain of extraordinary events.

It will be needless to linger over the preliminaries, to tell how Clay and I, chums at college, had been partners since our graduation from Western Institute of Mining twelve years before, how we had pooled our fortunes and joined our lives and spent all of our time in mutual experiments and enterprises in the back-regions of Montana, Idaho, and other states of the mountain belt. Passing over all this, let me tell how, in September, 1929, we were called to pass judgment upon the old Carlson Flat silver mine, which an eastern syndicate was just reopening in a particularly remote region of central Nevada. I recall how, for two days, we trailed with our pack-team over the desert mountains, our nostrils assaulted by the fine alkaline dust and our eyes wearied by the never-ending gray and yellow of the sagebrush. "A God-forsaken country!" muttered Clay, his fine blue eyes lighted with a reminiscent gleam, as he thought of the wooded mountains of the north. "Heavens, but I'll be thankful when we get out of here!"

Little, however, did he realize how long it would be before we would get out!

At last, to our relief, we reached Carlson Flat--as desolate a spot as was imaginable, at the edge of a narrow barren plateau just beneath a projecting stony ridge that beetled a thousand feet above us. Fortunately, the location mattered little, since we spent most of the time underground; but we did not particularly relish our task in that old, long-abandoned mine, whose shafts were not only unusually dank and narrow, but exceptionally deep. For some reason that I cannot explain, a premonition came to us both; it was as if some voice from within us cried out, "Flee! Flee, before it is too late!" We seemed to read some nameless menace in those dark sloping galleries, lighted only by the fluttering illumination of our torches; and, accustomed though we were to underground labyrinths, we somehow could not laugh away the sense of peril that confronted us in every foot-fall and shadow.

"Guess we're growing soft-headed in our old age!" suggested Clay, with a forced attempt at jocularity.

But I still recall how his rugged face, indistinctly visible in the glare of the flashlight, took on a troubled expression as he uttered these words; and I know how his unspoken fears communicated themselves to me in a shudder of apprehension.

None the less, being reasonable beings, we would not let our misgivings deter us from investigating the mine. Would that we had taken warning from our own sense of danger! For, on the third day, we were hurled into catastrophe.

It was then that we had decided to inspect the furthest and deepest section of the diggings. Accompanied by two or three workmen and an official of the company, we made our way tortuously through galleries that seemed miles long, and penetrated the dim, dank descent hundreds of feet beneath the desert floor. As we groped and fumbled silently downward, I was in far from a cheerful mood, for that weird, mysterious feeling of peril was still with me, the feeling of walking into a trap! Besides, as if to lend a basis of reason to my forebodings, what was that sudden faint trembling of the earth that I seemed to feel every now and then, that occasional rude jarring of the gallery floor, as if from the concussion of a distant explosion?--or was it only my imagination?

"Did you feel that?" I demanded of Clay, upon being shaken by the severest of the tremors. But he merely snapped, "Feel what?" and the pale light of the torches did not reveal the workings of his features.

"Seemed like an earthquake to me!" I muttered, as the ground beneath my feet once more gave a slight, almost imperceptible fluttering.

"Earthquake? Nonsense!" flung back Clay. "How could it be? We're way out of the earthquake belt, aren't we?"

I mumbled in the affirmative, but was not reassured.

Nevertheless, we said no more about the matter, and a few minutes later we had reached the lower limits of the mine. Forgetting my fears, I had pushed on with Clay ahead of our companions and was just turning my flashlight on an ore-producing ledge at the bottom of the gallery ... when suddenly there occurred that event which only too completely justified my alarm.

Like many of life's crises, it was all over in a minute. Yet it seemed infinitely prolonged, seemed packed with the experience of hours, of days, almost of years. I can still relive the dagger-shaft of terror that shot through me when the earth, without warning, gave a quick convulsive lurch, like the deck of a vessel in a storm at sea; I can still hear the sharp frightened exclamation from the throat of Clay and the startled shouts of our companions from down the tunnel. Once more I listen to the crunching, grinding, and groaning of the earth and the low rumbling from far subterranean depths; I am again pitched headlong to the floor as the ground beneath us heaves and threshes; I catch the panic-gleam in the eyes of my companion as he tries vainly to clutch a projecting spike of rock; then for an instant, as the commotion momentarily subsides, I almost succeed in regaining my feet, only to be hurled down again with a fury that leaves me bruised and bleeding.

As I strive for the second time to pick myself up, my ears ring with a tumult as of an avalanche. With terrorizing force, the crash and thunder of falling rock breaks upon my stunned senses; the roof of the gallery has collapsed, and Clay and I are cut-off from our companions in a chamber only a few yards across, at the extreme end of the tunnel!

Prisoners, both of us! By the wavering rays of a flashlight, we see ourselves entombed in a stone-walled cell deep underground! But even as this realization sweeps across our minds, still greater dread overwhelms us. Our world again sways like a drunken sailor, there is a fresh roaring in our ears, a huge rock is dislodged and crashes down from the roof with a howl of demoniac menace, and then, at our very feet, the tortured earth groans and opens, and a huge black fissure spreads out beneath us!

Desperately, like mountain climbers on a crumbling precipice, we strive to maintain our balance on the narrow floor of our prison. But we are as helpless as babes. We see the fissure widening, spreading out like the pitchy jaws of doom; we know that, in an instant, we will no longer have a foothold; then, at the moment of supreme horror, the light in Clay's flashlight flickers and goes out, and we are plunged into utter darkness....

At the same time, clutching instinctively at the overhanging rocks, which delay, but cannot halt our flight, we feel ourselves slipping. I hear once again Clay's cry of consternation; I hear the uproar of sliding earth and rock; I feel my arms and shoulders bruised and mangled; I have a sense of suffocation, a sense of being buried beneath tons of dead matter; then, all at once, a veil of quietness, of vacancy, of oblivion blots out my consciousness.