Masusaelili's home; and starting off at a brisk run, the two were five
minutes later in the old man's house, standing outside his laboratory
door. As the two had hurried along, Peters would continue to murmur
against the project: 'What's the use,' he would growl; 'we'll only find
the old fellow roasting himself in front of a magic fire of burning snow
or ice. _He's_ all right, and we'd better be saving human people.'

"As several raps, increasing from the gentlest to the most vigorous,
elicited no response, Pym opened the laboratory door, and with Peters
entered. But the old man was nowhere to be seen. Pym hastily returned to
the hallway, and discovering a stair leading to a small cellar, he
descended. The cellar was filled with _debris_, two small window
casements opening to the exterior air were broken and decayed to the
last degree of dilapidation, and the icy wind whistled through the
rubbish of the doleful spot. He ran back to the laboratory, where Peters
was hunting about, hoping to find Masusaelili alive, yet fearing to find
his emaciated form lying lifeless amid the mass of chemical and
mechanical appliances which littered the room. Several of the large
vase-like objects before alluded to stood here and there; and as the
smaller of them might have hidden the body of a large-sized man, the
searchers even glanced into them. Each vase sat apart upon the floor,
flaring upward like a giant lily to a height of four or five feet; and
from each of them projected, within an inch of the floor, a faucet of
rude construction, through which passed a very primitive spigot. One of
these enormous vases, large enough to have secreted two small men, stood
inverted; and Pym, with no particular object in view, but simply because
he could not think of anything else to do, gave the vase a push, in such
a way as to raise for an inch or two from the floor its large rim,
flaring out to a diameter of probably four feet.