evils in mines. I had myself snaked through just such passages in
coal-mines. Still, I confess that the choking sense of being shut in
this earth-smelling tube, like a fox in a drain, and the sudden
realisation of the appalling tonnage of superincumbent earth above
me--liable at any moment to loosen, and, as with a giant thumb, press
out my poor little insect existence--made the sweat pour from me and my
heart stand still. I had to shut my eyes for a moment and command myself
back to calmness and courage, before I could go on. Above all things I
had to blindfold my imagination, the last companion for such a
situation.

After this first flurry of fear, I went on crawling in a methodical way,
allowing no thought to enter my mind that did not concern the yard or
two of earth immediately ahead of me. So I progressed, I should say, for
some twenty or thirty yards when, to my inexpressible relief, I came
out, still on all fours, onto a spreading floor; then, standing up, I
perceived that I was in a cave of considerable loftiness, and some forty
feet or so across. It was good to breathe again such comparatively free
air; yet, as I looked about and made the circuit of the walls, I saw
that I had but exchanged one prison for another. There was this
difference, however: whereas there had only been one passageway from the
cave I had just left, there were several similar outlets from that in
which I now stood. Two or three of them proved to be nothing but alcoves
that ran a few yards and then stopped.

But there were two close by each other which seemed to continue on.
There was not much choice between them, but, as both made in the same
direction, as far as I could judge the direction in which I had so far
progressed, I decided to take the larger one. It proved to be a passage
much like the tunnel I had already traversed, only a little roomier,
and therefore it was easier going, and it, too, brought me out, as had
the other, on another cavern--but one considerably larger in extent.

Here, however, I speedily perceived that it was not a case of one
cavern, but several--opening out, by natural archways one into another.
I walked eagerly through them, scanning their ceilings for sign of some
outlet into the upper air; but in vain. Still, after the strangling
embrace of those tunnels, it was good to have so much space to breathe
and walk about in. In fact, I had stumbled on something like a Monte
Cristo suite of underground apartmen