Suddenly it grew dark. The sun, in throwing its light into the crater had been cut off by the slight rotations of the moon. It was a gloom that caused Joan to close her eyes, and hold her breath.
Miles dropped away, and still the air held them up, and they sailed in circles. That his companion might follow, Epworth turned on his flash light, and attached it to the wing of his glider.
It was a flight like Mercury speeding as a messenger through inscrutable space. Two little planes, with operators wearing air helmets that dimmed vision, were slipping softly, silently, into the bowels of the moon, hunting a strange land in an unknown world.
It necessitated matchless courage, and steady nerves. These two went on seeking to save.
They went on until complete darkness engulfed them—a darkness that grew steadily murky, oppressive, frightful. Still they continued. Where Epworth led, Joan was determined to follow. Would they ever be able to climb out? Would their small, inefficient gliders, the invention of a moment, notwithstanding their propelling power, be able to ascend that dizzy height? True that when they entered, the air was so rare that they had to wear air helmets, and that now they put them aside to find heavier and better breathing; but the space was limited, there was no wind to get beneath the plane and elevate it; the whole mysterious dark world was as still as death, and as creepy as the grave.
Joan was on the verge of screaming aloud. Epworth was beginning to get nervous.
He looked down, and thought he saw a light. Before he could settle his mind on this point he bumped against the ground. It was a light shock, and he felt no injury but it served to stop the flight of his glider. The next moment Joan bumped into him and also came to a stop. The contact came before he had an opportunity to call out to her to be on guard.
“Julian! Julian!” she cried. “Where are you?”
“Do not be alarmed,” he reassured. “I am here.”
Disengaging the plane from her shoulders, and leaving the straps that held it tight on the wing, she advanced toward him. When she came to him he was stepping out of the glider.
“What now?” she inquired dryly. “We are in the bottom of Mount Agrippa, and, if you will excuse the slang, it certainly has a grip I do not like.”