But not a star showed above--only utter and impenetrable
darkness.
Then I glanced below me, and there I saw a rapidly diminishing
circle of light--the mouth of the opening above the phosphorescent
radiance of Omean. By this I steered, endeavouring to keep the
circle of light below me ever perfect. At best it was but a slender
cord that held us from destruction, and I think that I steered that
night more by intuition and blind faith than by skill or reason.
We were not long in the shaft, and possibly the very fact of our
enormous speed saved us, for evidently we started in the right
direction and so quickly were we out again that we had no time to
alter our course. Omean lies perhaps two miles below the surface
crust of Mars. Our speed must have approximated two hundred miles
an hour, for Martian fliers are swift, so that at most we were in
the shaft not over forty seconds.
We must have been out of it for some seconds before I realised that
we had accomplished the impossible. Black darkness enshrouded all
about us. There were neither moons nor stars. Never before had I
seen such a thing upon Mars, and for the moment I was nonplussed.
Then the explanation came to me. It was summer at the south pole.
The ice cap was melting and those meteoric phenomena, clouds, unknown
upon the greater part of Barsoom, were shutting out the light of
heaven from this portion of the planet.
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