caverns artificially let into the bowels of the earth, to which any
person may betake himself upon purchasing a printed sign which he must
display to the guardian of the gate. Once within the underneathmost
parts he is free to be carried from place to place by means of the
trains of carriages which I have already described to you, until he
would return to the outer surface, when he must again display his
talisman before he is permitted to pass forth. Nor is this an empty
form, for upon an occasion this person himself witnessed a very bitter
contention between a keeper of the barrier and one whose token had
through some cause lost its potency.

In the company of the experienced I had previously gone through the
trial without mischance, so that recently when I expressed a wish to
visit a certain Palace, and was informed that the most convenient
manner would be to descend into the nearest cavern, I had no
reasonable device for avoiding the encounter. Nevertheless,
enlightened sire, I will not attempt to conceal from your omniscience
that I was by no means impetuous towards the adventure. Owing to the
pugnacious and unworthy suspicions of those who direct their
destinies, I have not yet been able to penetrate the exact connection
between the movements of these hot-smoke chariots and the Unseen
Forces. To a person whose chief object in life is to avoid giving
offence to any of the innumerable demons which are ever on the watch
to revenge themselves upon our slightest indiscretion, this
uncertainty opens an unending vista of intolerable possibilities. As
if to emphasise the perils of this overhanging doubt the surroundings
are ingeniously arranged so as to represent as nearly as practicable
the terrors of the Beneath World. Both by day and night a funereal
gloom envelops the caverns, the pathways and resting-places are meagre
and so constructed as to be devoid of attraction or repose, and by a