Edgar Rice Burroughs

At The Earth's Core - Original Edition Edgar Rice Burroughs

I was born in Connecticut about thirty years ago. My name is David Innes. My father was a wealthy mine owner. When I was nineteen he died. All his property was to be mine when I had attained my majority-provided that I had devoted the two years intervening in close application to the great business I was to inherit. I did my best to fulfil the last wishes of my parent-not because of the inheritance, but because I loved and honored my father. For six months I toiled in the mines and in the counting-rooms, for I wished to know every minute detail of the business. Then Perry interested me in his invention. He was an old fellow who had devoted the better part of a long life to the perfection of a mechanical subterranean prospector. As relaxation he studied paleontology. I looked over his plans, listened to his arguments, inspected his working model-and then, convinced, I advanced the funds necessary to construct a full-sized, practical prospector. I shall not go into the details of its construction-it lies out there in the desert now-about two miles from here. Tomorrow you may care to ride out and see it. Roughly, it is a steel cylinder a hundred feet long, and jointed so that it may turn and twist through solid rock if need be. At one end is a mighty revolving drill operated by an engine which Perry said generated more power to the cubic inch than any other engine did to the cubic foot. I remember that he used to claim that that invention alone would make us fabulously wealthy-we were going to make the whole thing public after the successful issue of our first secret trial-but Perry never returned from that trial trip, and I only after ten years. I recall as it were but yesterday the night of that momentous occasion upon which we were to test the practicality of that wondrous invention.