Seated in the car, which was steadily ascending the great shaft, Roland
Clewe took no notice of anything about him. He did not look at the
brilliantly lighted interior of the shaft, he paid no attention to his
instruments, he did not consult his watch, nor glance at the dial which
indicated the distance he had travelled. Several times the telephone
bell rang, and Bryce inquired how he was getting along; but these
questions he answered as briefly as possible, and sat looking down at
his knees and seeing nothing.
When he was half-way up, he suddenly became conscious that he was very
hungry. He hurriedly ate some sandwiches and drank some water, and then,
again, he gave himself up entirely to mental labor. When, at last, the
noise of machinery above him and the sound of voices aroused him from
his abstraction, the car emerged upon the surface of the earth, Clewe
hastily slid back the door and stepped out. At that instant he felt
himself encircled by a pair of arms. Bryce was near by, and there were
other men by the engines, but the owner of those arms thought nothing of
this.
“Margaret!” cried Clewe, “how came you here?”
“I have been here all the time,” she exclaimed; “or, at least, nearly
all the time.” And as she spoke she drew back and looked at him, her
eyes full of happy tears. “Mr. Bryce telegraphed to me the instant
he knew you were going down, and I was here before you had descended
half-way.”
“What!” he cried. “And all those messages came from you?”
“Nearly all,” she answered. “But tell me, Roland--tell me; have you been
successful? What have you discovered?”
“I am successful,” he answered. “I have discovered everything!”
Mr. Bryce came forward.
“I will speak to you all very soon,” said Clewe. “I can't tell you
anything now. Margaret, let us go. I shall want to talk to you directly,
but not until I have been to my office. I will meet you at your house in
a very few minutes.” And with that he left the building and fairly ran
to his office.
A quarter of an hour later Roland entered Margaret's library, where she
sat awaiting him. He carefully closed the doors and windows. They sat
side by side upon the sofa.
“Now, Roland,” she said, “I cannot wait one second longer. What is it
that you have discovered?”
“Margaret,” said he, “I am afraid you will have to wait a good many
seconds. If I were to tell you directly what I have discovered, you
would not understand it. I am the possessor of wonderful facts, but I
believe also that I am the master of a theory more wonderful. The facts
I found out when I got to the bottom of the shaft, but the theory I
worked out coming up.”
“But give them to me quickly!” she cried. “The facts first--I can wait
for the theory.”
“No,” he said, “I cannot do it; I must tell you the whole thing as
I have it, arranged in my mind. Now, in the first place, you must
understand that this earth was once a comet.”
“Oh, bother your astronomy, I really can't understand it! What did you
find in the bottom of that hole?”
“You must listen to me,” he said. “You cannot comprehend a thing I say
if I do not give it to you in the proper order. There have been a great
many theories about comets, but there is only one of them in which I
have placed any belief. You know that as a comet passes around the sun,
its tail is always pointed away from the sun, so that no matter how
rapidly the head shall be moving in its orbit, the end of the tail--in
order to keep its position--must move with a rapidity impossible to
conceive. If this tail were composed of nebulous mist, or anything of
that sort, it could not keep its position. There is only one theory
which could account for this position, and that is that the head of
a comet is a lens and the tail is light. The light of the sun passes
through the lens and streams out into space, forming the tail, which
does not follow the comet in the inconceivable manner generally
supposed, but is constantly renewed, always, of course; stretching away
from the sun!”
“Oh, dear!” ejaculated Margaret. “I have read that.”
“A little patience,” he said. “When I arrived at the bottom of the
shaft, I found myself in a cleft, I know not how large, made in a vast
mass of transparent substance, hard as the hardest rock and transparent
as air in the light of my electric lamps. My shell rested securely upon
this substance. I walked upon it. It seemed as if I could see miles
below me. In my opinion, Margaret, that substance was once the head of a
comet.”
“What is the substance?” she asked, hastily.
“It is a mass of solid diamond!”
Margaret screamed. She could not say one word.
“Yes,” said he, “I believe the whole central portion of the earth is
one great diamond. When it was moving about in its orbit as a comet, the
light of the sun streamed through this diamond and spread an enormous
tail out into space; after a time this nucleus began to burn.”
“Burn!” exclaimed Margaret.
“Yes, the diamond is almost pure carbon; why should it not burn? It
burned and burned and burned. Ashes formed upon it and encircled it;
still it burned, and when it was entirely covered with its ashes it
ceased to be transparent, it ceased to be a comet; it became a planet,
and revolved in a different orbit. Still it burned within its covering
of ashes, and these gradually changed to rock, to metal, to everything
that forms the crust of the earth.”
She gazed upon him, entranced.
“Some parts of this great central mass of carbon burn more fiercely
than other parts. Some parts do not burn at all. In volcanic regions the
fires rage; where my great shell went down it does not burn at all. Now
you have my theory. It is crude and rough, for I have tried to give it
to you in as few words as possible.”
“Oh, Roland,” she cried, “it is absurd! Diamond! Why, people will think
you are crazy. You must not say such a thing as that to anybody. It
is simply impossible that the greater part of this earth should be an
enormous diamond.”
“Margaret,” he answered, “nothing is impossible. The central portion of
this earth is composed of something; it might just as well be diamond as
anything else. In fact, if you consider the matter, it is more likely to
be, because diamond is a very original substance. As I have said, it is
almost pure carbon. I do not intend to say one word of what I have told
you to any one--at least, until the matter has been well considered--but
I am not afraid of being thought crazy. Margaret, will you look at
these?”
He took from his pocket some shining substances resembling glass. Some
of them were flat, some round; the largest was as big as a lemon, others
were smaller fragments of various sizes.
“These are pieces of the great diamond which were broken when the shell
struck the bottom of the cave in which I found it. I picked them up as I
felt my way around this shell, when walking upon what seemed to me like
solid air. I thrust them into my pocket, and I would not come to you,
Margaret, with this story, until I had gone to my office to find out if
these fragments were really diamond. I tested them; their substance is
diamond!”
Half dazed, she took the largest piece in her hand.
“Roland,” she whispered, “if this is really a diamond, there is nothing
like it known to man!”
“Nothing, indeed,” said he.
She sat staring at the great piece of glowing mineral which lay in her
hand. Its surface was irregular; it had many faces; the subdued light
from the window gave it the appearance of animated water. He felt it
necessary to speak.
“Even these little pieces,” he said, “are most valuable jewels.”
She still sat silent, looking at the glowing object she held.
“You see, these are not like the stones which are found in our
diamond-fields,” he said. “Those, most likely, were little, unconsumed
bits of the original mass, afterwards gradually forced up from the
interior in the same way that many metals and minerals are forced up,
and then rounded and dulled by countless ages of grinding and abrasion,
due to the action of rocks or water.”
“Roland,” she cried, excitedly, “this is riches beyond imagination!
What is common wealth to what you have discovered? Every living being on
earth could--”
“Ah, Margaret,” he interrupted, “do not let your thoughts run that way.
If my discovery should be put to the use of which you are thinking,
it would bring poverty, not wealth, to the world, and not a diamond on
earth would be worth more than a common pebble. Everywhere, in civilized
countries and in barbaric palaces, people would see their riches
vanish before them as if it had been blighted by the touch of an evil
magician.”
She trembled. “And these--are they to be valued as common pebbles?”
“Oh no,” said he; “so long as that great shaft is mine, these broken
fragments are to us riches far ahead of our wildest imaginations.”
“Roland,” she cried, “are you going down into that shaft for more of
them?”
“Never, never, never again,” he said. “What we have here is enough for
us, and if I were offered all the good that there is in this world,
which money cannot buy, I would never go down into that cleft again.
There was one moment when I stood in that cave in which an awful terror
shot into my soul which I shall never be able to forget. In the light
of my electric lamps, sent through a vast transparent mass, I could see
nothing, but I could feel. I put out my foot and I found it was upon a
sloping surface. In another instant I might have slid--where? I cannot
bear to think of it!”
She threw her arms around him and held him tightly.