"Gentlemen, I don't say that I hesitated in a physical sense: I
went right on walking ahead. But a voice somewhere deep down
inside me was whispering that this was the road to hell.
"At a point where the heat and the smell were almost unendurable
the corridor was blocked by massive iron bars beyond which the
reflection of some gigantic fire danced upon the walls of a vast
cavern.
"The heat was so great that my garments, saturated by the curtain
of water through which I had passed, were now bone dry, and I
stood peering through those bars at a spectacle which will remain
with me to the merciful day of my death.
"A hundred feet beneath me was a lake of fire! That is the only
way I can describe it: a seething, bubbling lake of fire. And
above, where the roof of the cavern formed a natural cone, was a
square section formed of massive stone blocks, and quite
obviously the handiwork of man. The bars were too hot to touch,
and the heat was like that of a furnace, but while I stood,
peering first upward and then downward, a thing happened which I
almost hesitate to describe, for it sounds like an incident from
a nightmare.
"Heralded by a rumbling sound which was perceptible above the
roar of the fire below, the centre block in the roof slid open. A
tremendous draught of air swept along the passage in which I was
standing, and doubtless along other passages which opened upon
this hell-pit.
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