ted to look out across the
world, to see it in reality as he had seen it in his own mind when all
hope was gone. He wanted to look out once more across Tonah Basin and
let his eyes rest upon country he had known.

Loah and Smithy walked beside him, as the first-aid men carried him
toward that distant rim. The rocks there were cleft--it was the place
where he first had seen the inside of the crater's cup. There he had
them put him down; and, with the help of Loah and Smithy, he got
slowly to his feet. While they lifted him, he wondered at the sound in
this desert world where no sound should be. A terrific rushing, an
endless roar--and then his eyes found the clouds of steam.

* * * * *

Below him was the Basin, the tangled wreckage of his camp. And there,
where the derrick had stood, was a tall plume of white. It did not
begin close to the ground--superheated steam, until it cools and
condenses to water vapor, is invisible--but a hundred feet above the
sand. And, from there on up, two thousand feet sheer into the air, was
a straight shaft of vapor, rolling up for another thousand feet into
billowing clouds that the afternoon sun turned to glorious white.

"Power!" gasped Rawson. "Power--and it will be like that
indefinitely!" Then he laughed weakly. "I had to go down there to do
it, to make Erickson richer, but it was worth it. In there the ocean
will slowly subside. Gor and his people will find their lost lands;
the column of water in the shaft will hold the back-pressure of steam.
And here, I have Loah, and that's all--but that's enough!"

He put one arm, still with the bandages of the first-aid men, about
the girl. "I hope you'll be happy, dear," he said softly, and turned
back. But Smithy barred the way.

"That isn't all," said Smithy jubilantly. "You see, Dean, Erickson
fired you--Erickson thought you had run out on him. Instead of backing
you up, he quit. So I bought them all out. Whatever is there,
Dean--and it's worth more millions than I dare to think about--you own
half of! Now get back on that stretcher. Just because you've saved all
our necks up here on top of the earth, you mustn't think you can keep
an Army ship waiting all day!"

(_The End._)

End of Project Gutenberg's Two Thousand Miles Below, by Charles Willard Diffin

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO THOUSAND MILES BELOW ***

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