it not been for the wonder of the scene, my mind would have cast itself back to the method of our entry, and that, I think, would have affrighted me beyond any ordinary curiosity concerning the place.
Recall how we had sunk below the waters of the outer basin, then risen as quickly to find ourselves in the first of the caves. Passing, I suppose, through a natural tunnel, we had come to this black bower of the sea. Had we happed upon such a cave by accident—as lads will by any seashore—we should have found it dank, and dark, and dripping. Not so at Vares. Here a master-magician had been at work, I doubt not for many years. Great arc lamps flooded the water as with beams of unearthly light. There was a wide landing-stage with steps leading to a kind of natural platform which ran quite round this vast dungeon of the deep. I saw countless tunnels radiating outward from a common centre; while high above me, as upon the roof of an unimagined cathedral, star-like clusters of lamps dazed the senses with their suggestion of altitude.
A circular cave with an infinity of tunnels radiating from it. A glorious flood of the purest light—a platform to step upon, and, at the stairs' head, the figures of twenty wild men who shouted and huzza'd at Black's coming as at the welcome of a king. This was my first impression of Vares. When we had made the Zero fast at the quay prepared for her, we followed the leader of the men through the central tunnel, and again I shrank at the wonder of it. A palace had been revealed to me as at the touch of a wizard's wand. I stood n wonderland, and my tongue could utter no word.
Here was a room of vast size, square in shape, but with a natural apse as its western end. I judged that it would have been in black darkness but for the number of the electric lamps which glowed in every nook and cranny. So many were they that the stupendous apse seemed nothing else than an arch of golden light, while there was not a ledge of the schist-like walls which had not its ornaments of balls. Trembling in the air with all its suggestion of reserve power, was the hum of a dynamo which fed this abundance—and even a stranger might imagine that the rise and fall of the tides in the caverns was the motive force Black had employed so cleverly. The same force drove the fans by which the cavern was ventilated, and the air came in as pure and sweet as from the morning sea.
Of the furniture of the great cave I could get but a vague notion upon my entry. Not only was there much of it, but it was so fantastic, and had come from so many countries, that the eye was confused and all sense of proportion clean gone from me. A table, to be sure, ran down the centre of the cavern and glimmered with gold and silver plate. I saw piles of bear-skins, chiefly of the polar bear, just as I had seen them years ago in the Rue Joubert at Paris. There were cabinets a-many, and few that were not filled with rare china of the cloisonné enamel of Japan. From China had come vases and porcelain of the Ming and Kang-Hi periods; and in contrast to this patronage of art, there stood a long open table covered from end to end with models of ships and guns, which would have delighted any boy.
Black had spoken to me of his love of pictures, and I was surprised to see so few of them in the cavern. One gruesome thing, in which a ship's crew was about to roll their captain in a spiked barrel, hung in a niche above a considerable fireplace; but it was meretricious and quite unworthy of the Captain's keen judgment; while the others were mere chromos and not to be named at all. It occurred to me, even at this time, that the atmosphere of the place must be unsuitable to any work of art; and yet against that stood the fact that the cave seemed as dry as a bone. When I detected an electric heater with twenty bulbs standing where the fire should have stood, I began to understand how this great brain had solved the riddle, and what science had done to link the nineteenth century to B.C. 7000.
Now, all this was the mental note I made upon my entry into the cavern. I have told you of the uncouth company of Spaniards which received us there, and of the resounding cheers with which they hailed the Captain; but presently I discovered that cheering was not the chief business of their lives, for they began to wait upon us all directly we had passed the door—and one of them, a burly man with a Jew's nose and ear-rings, called out our names from a slip of paper and doffed his sombrero hat as each man answered him Mine was the third name on the list and when I cried "Here," a Spaniard of the company at once stepped up to me and said he was my servant.