Behind us rose a dark and forbidding wood of giant arborescent
ferns intermingled with the commoner types of a primeval tropical
forest. Huge creepers depended in great loops from tree to tree,
dense under-brush overgrew a tangled mass of fallen trunks and
branches. Upon the outer verge we could see the same splendid
coloring of countless blossoms that glorified the islands, but
within the dense shadows all seemed dark and gloomy as the grave.
And upon all the noonday sun poured its torrid rays out of a
cloudless sky.
"Where on earth can we be?" I asked, turning to Perry.
For some moments the old man did not reply. He stood with bowed
head, buried in deep thought. But at last he spoke.
"David," he said, "I am not so sure that we are ON earth."
"What do you mean Perry?" I cried. "Do you think that we are dead,
and this is heaven?" He smiled, and turning, pointing to the nose
of the prospector protruding from the ground at our backs.
"But for that, David, I might believe that we were indeed come to
the country beyond the Styx. The prospector renders that theory
untenable--it, certainly, could never have gone to heaven. However
I am willing to concede that we actually may be in another world
from that which we have always known. If we are not ON earth,
there is every reason to believe that we may be IN it."
"We may have quartered through the earth's crust and come out upon
some tropical island of the West Indies," I suggested.
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