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[] The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which rushed an effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started back in horror.

[] After an interval, however, we approached the pit again, and found the exhalations less unbearable.

[] Our lanterns disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps, dripping with some detestable ichor of the inner earth, and bordered by moist walls encrusted with niter.

[] And now for the first time my memory records verbal discourse, Warren addressing me at length in his mellow tenor voice; a voice singularly unperturbed by our awesome surroundings.

[] "I'm sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface," he said, "but it would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there.

[] You can't imagine, even from what you have read and from what I've told you, the things I shall have to see and do. It's fiendish work, Carter, and I doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive and sane.

[] I don't wish to offend you, and Heaven knows I'd be glad enough to have you with me; but the responsibility is in a certain sense mine, and I couldn't drag a bundle of nerves like you down to probable death or madness.

[] I tell you, you can't imagine what the thing is really like!

[] But I promise to keep you informed over the telephone of every move—you see I've enough wire here to reach to the center of the earth and back!"

[] I can still hear, in memory, those coolly spoken words; and I can still remember my remonstrances.

[] I seemed desperately anxious to accompany my friend into those sepulchral depths, yet he proved inflexibly obdurate.

[] At one time he threatened to abandon the expedition if I remained insistent; a threat which proved effective, since he alone held the key to the thing.

[] All this I can still remember, though I no longer know what manner of thing we sought.

After he had obtained my reluctant acquiescence in his design, Warren picked up the reel of wire and adjusted the instruments.

[] At his nod I took one of the latter and seated myself upon an aged, discolored gravestone close by the newly uncovered aperture.

[] Then he shook my hand, shouldered the coil of wire, and disappeared within that indescribable ossuary.

[] For a minute I kept sight of the glow of his lantern, and heard the rustle of the wire as he laid it down after him; but the glow soon disappeared abruptly, as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered, and the sound died away almost as quickly.

[] I was alone, yet bound to the unknown depths by those magic strands whose insulated surface lay green beneath the struggling beams of that waning crescent moon.

[] I constantly consulted my watch by the light of my electric lantern, and listened with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone; but for more than a quarter of an hour heard nothing.