He looked, and sure enough there _was_ an opening, and a dim passage
running down through the solid rock. Up he jumped, fired at the
prospect of seeing new and wonderful things, and without looking any
more to see who had spoken to him, he ran over to it. The passage
had a smooth floor of stone, and sloped downward into the earth, and
went round and round in an immense spiral; but the circles were so
wide that Martin scarcely knew that he was not travelling in a
straight line. Have you by chance ever seen a buzzard, or stork, or
vulture, or some other great bird, soaring upwards into the sky in
wide circles, each circle taking it higher above the earth, until it
looked like a mere black speck in the vast blue heavens, and at
length disappeared altogether? Just in that way, going round and
round in just such wide circles, lightly running all the time, with
never a pause to rest, and without feeling in the least tired,
Martin went on, only down and down and further down, instead of up
and up like the soaring bird, until he was as far under the mountain
as ever any buzzard or crane or eagle soared above it.

Thus running he came at last out of the passage to an open room or
space so wide that, look which way he would, he could see no end to
it. The stone roof of this place was held up by huge stone pillars
standing scattered about like groups of great rough-barked trees,
many times bigger round than hogsheads. Here and there in the roof,
or the stone overhead, were immense black caverns which almost
frightened him to gaze up at them, they were so vast and black. And
no light or sun or moon came down into that deep part of the earth:
the light was from big fires, and they were fires of smithies
burning all about him, sending up great flames and clouds of black
smoke, which rose and floated upwards through those big black caverns
in the roof. Crowds of people were gathered around the smithies, all