"It's all right, I am near the bottom." In a state of the highest nervous excitement, Clewe gazed about him.
He was no longer in a shaft; but where was he?
Look out on what side he would, he saw nothing but the light going out from his lamps, but which seemed to extend indefinitely all about him.

There seemed to be no limit to his vision in any direction.

Then he leaned over the side of his car and looked downward.

There was the great shell directly under him, but under it and around it, extending as far beneath it as it extended in every other direction, was the light from his own lamps, and yet that great shell, weighing many tons, lay as if it rested upon the solid ground! After a few moments Clewe shut his eyes; they pained him.

Something seemed to be coming into them like a fine frost in a winter wind.