Five Thousand Miles Underground; Or, the Mystery of the Centre of the Earth by - (best novels of all time txt) 📕

out:

“Oh what queer plants! They are giant Jacks-in-the-pulpit!”

The others hastened forward to see what the boy had discovered. Jack was too eager to wait, and pressed on. The hill which sloped away from the top of the little plateau on which he stood, was steeper than he had counted on. As he leaned forward he lost his balance and toppled, head foremost, down the declivity, rolling over.

“Look out!” cried Mark, who had almost reached his comrade’s side.

The scene that confronted the travelers was a strange one. Before them in a sort of hollow, were scores of big plants, shaped somewhat like a Jack-in-the-pulpit, or a big lily, with a curved top or flap to it.

The plants were about eight feet tall, three feet across the top, and the flap or covering was raised about two feet. They were nodding and swaying in the wind on their short stems.

“He’s headed right for one of them!” Mr. Henderson exclaimed. “I hope he’ll not fall into one of the openings.”

“Is there any danger?” asked Mark.

“I’m afraid there is,” the inventor added. “Those plants are a variety of the well-known pitcher plant, or fly-trap, as they are sometimes called. In tropical countries they grow to a large size, but nothing like these. They are filled, in the cup, with a sort of sticky, sweet mixture, and this attracts insects. When one enters the cup the top flap folds over, and the hapless insect is caught there. The plant actually devours it, nature providing a sort of vegetable digestive apparatus. These giant plants are the same, and they seem large enough to take in a man, to say nothing of Jack!”

With anxious faces the adventurers turned to watch the fate of their comrade. Jack was slipping, sliding and rolling down the hill. He could not seem to stop, though he was making desperate efforts to do so. He was headed straight for one of the largest of the terrible plants.

In vain, as he saw what was in front of him, did he try to change the course of his involuntary voyage. Over and over he rolled, until, at length, he struck a little grassy hummock, bounced into the air, and right into the opening of a monster pitcher plant.

“It has him!” cried Mark. “We must save him! Come on everyone!”

He raced down the hill, while the others came closely after him. They reached the plant into which Jack had bounced. The flap, or top piece, had closed down, tightly over the unfortunate boy.

“Quick! We must save him or he will be smothered to death or drowned in the liquid the cup contains!” Mr. Henderson exclaimed. “Attack the plant with anything you can find!”

“Let’s cut through the side of the flower-cup!” suggested Mark. “That seems softer than the stem.”

His idea was quickly put into operation. Andy’s long hunting knife came in very handy. While the sides of the long natural cup were tough, the knife made an impression on them, and, soon, a small door or opening had been cut in the side of the pitcher plant, large enough to enable a human body to pass through.

When the last fibre had been severed by Andy, who was chosen to wield the knife because of his long practice as a hunter, there was a sudden commotion within the plant. Then a dark object, dripping water, made a spring and landed almost at the feet of the professor.

It was Jack, and a sorry sight he presented. He was covered from head to foot with some sticky substance, which dripped from all over him.

With hasty movements he cleared the stuff from his eyes and mouth, and spluttered:

“It’s a good thing you cut me out when you did. I couldn’t have held on much longer!”

CHAPTER XIX

THE BIG PEACH

Jack soon recovered from his remarkable experience. The terrible plant that had nearly eaten him alive was a mass of cut-up vegetable matter which attracted a swarm of insects. Most of them were ants, but such large ones the boys had never seen before, and the professor said they exceeded in size anything he had read about. Some of them were as large as big rats. They bit off large pieces of the fallen plant and carried them to holes in the ground which were big enough for Washington to slip his foot into, and he wore a No. 11 shoe.

But the adventurers felt there were more important things for them to look at than ants, so they started away again, the professor telling them all to be careful and avoid accidents.

It was while they were strolling through a little glade, which they came upon unexpectedly, that Washington, who was in the lead called out:

“Gracious goodness! It must be Thanksgivin’!”

“Why so?” asked Jack.

“'Cause here’s th’ remarkablest extraordinary and expansionist of a pumpkin that ever I laid eyes on!” the colored man cried.

They all hurried to where Washington had come to a halt. There, on the ground in front of him, was a big round object, about the size of a hogshead. It was yellow in color, and was not unlike the golden vegetable from which mothers make such delicious pies.

“I allers was fond of pumpkins,” said Washington, placing his hand on the thing, which was almost as tall as he was, “but I never thought I’d come across such a one as this.”

The professor and the two boys went closer to the monstrosity. Mr. Henderson passed his hand over it and then, bending closer, smelled of it.

“That’s not a pumpkin!” he exclaimed.

“What is it then?” asked Washington.

“It’s a giant peach,” the inventor remarked. “Can’t you see the fuzz, and smell it? Of course it’s a peach.”

“Well I’ll be horn-swoggled!” cried Washington, leaning against the big fruit, which easily supported him.

“Hurrah!” cried Jack, drawing his knife from his pocket and opening the largest blade. “I always did like peaches. Now I can have all I want,” and he drove the steel into the object, cutting off a big slice which he began to eat.

“It may be poisonous!” exclaimed Mark.

“Too late now,” responded Jack, the juice running down from his mouth. “Taste’s good, anyhow.”

They all watched Jack while he devoured his slice of fruit. Washington acted as if he expected his friend to topple over unconscious, but Jack showed no bad symptoms.

“You’d better all have some,” the boy said. “It’s the best I ever tasted.”

Encouraged by Jack’s example, Mark thought he, too, would have some of the fruit. He opened his knife and was about to take off some of the peach when suddenly the thing began to roll forward, almost upon him.

“Hi! Stop your shoving!” he exclaimed. “Do you want to have the thing roll over me, Jack?”

“I’m not shoving!” replied Jack.

“Some one is!” Mark went on. He dodged around the far side of the immense fruit and what he saw made him cry out in astonishment.

Two grasshoppers, each one standing about three feet high, were standing on their hind legs, and with their fore feet were pushing the peach along the ground. They had been attracted to the fruit by some juice which escaped from a bruise on that side, which was the ripest, and, being fond of sweets had, evidently decided to take their find to some safe place where they could eat it at their leisure. Or perhaps they wanted to provide for their families if grasshoppers have them.

“Did you ever see such monsters?” asked Jack. “They’re as big as dogs!”

At the sound of his voice the two grasshoppers, becoming alarmed, ceased their endeavors to roll the peach along, and, assuming a crouching attitude seemed to be waiting.

“They certainly are remarkable specimens,” Mr. Henderson said. “If the other animals are in proportion, and if there are persons in this new world, we are likely to have a hard time of it.”

This time the immense insects concluded the strangers were not to their liking. With a snapping of their big muscular legs and a whirr of their wings that was like the starting of an automobile, the grasshoppers rose into the air and sailed away over the heads of the adventurers. Their flight was more than an eighth of a mile in extent, and they came down in a patch of the very tall grass.

“Let’s go after them!” exclaimed old Andy. “I was so excited I forgot to take a shot at them. Come on!”

“I think we’d better not,” counseled the professor. “In the first place we don’t need them. They would be no good for food. Then we don’t know but what they might attack us, and it would be no joke to be bitten by a grasshopper of that size. Let them alone. We may find other game which will need your attention, Andy. Better save your ammunition.”

Somewhat against his will, Andy had to submit to the professor’s ruling. The old hunter consoled himself with the reflection that if insects grew to that size he would have some excellent sport hunting even the birds of the inner world.

“I wonder what sort of a tree that peach grew on,” Jack remarked, as he cut off another slice, when the excitement caused by the discovery of the grasshoppers had subsided. “It must be taller than a church steeple. I wonder how the fruit got here, for there are no trees around.”

“I fancy those insects rolled it along for a good distance,” Mr. Henderson put in. “You can see the marks on the ground, where they pushed it. They are wonderful creatures.”

“Are we going any farther?” asked Mark. “Perhaps we can find the peach tree, and, likely there are other fruit trees near it.”

At the professor’s suggestion they strolled along for some distance. They were now about three miles from the airship, and found that what they had supposed was a rather level plain, was becoming a succession of hills and hollows. It was while descending into a rather deep valley that Jack pointed ahead and exclaimed:

“I guess there’s our peach orchard, but I never saw one like it before.”

Nor had any of the others. Instead of trees the peaches were attached to vines growing along the ground. They covered a large part of the valley, and the peaches, some bigger than the one they first discovered, some small and green, rose up amid the vines, just as pumpkins do in a corn field.

“Stranger and stranger,” the professor murmured. “Peaches grow on vines. I suppose potatoes will grow on trees. Everything seems to be reversed here.”

They made their way down toward the peach “orchard” as Jack called it, though “patch” would have been a better name. Besides peaches they found plums, apples, and pears growing in the same way, and all of a size proportionate to the first-named fruit.

“Well, one thing is evident,” Mr. Henderson remarked, “we shall not starve here. There is plenty to eat, even, if we have to turn vegetarians.”

“I wonder what time it is getting to be,” Jack remarked. “My watch says twelve o’clock but whether it’s noon or midnight I can’t tell, with this colored light coming and going. I wonder if it ever sets as the sun does.”

“That is something we’ll have to get used to,” the professor said. “But I think we had better go back to the ship now. We have many things to do to get it in order again. Besides, I am a little afraid to leave it unguarded so long. No telling but what some strange beast—or persons, for that matter—might injure it.”

“I’m going to take back some slices of peaches with me, anyhow,” Mark said, and he and Jack cut off enough to make several meals, while Bill, Tom and Washington took along all they could carry.

As they walked back toward the ship the strange lights seemed to be dying out. At first they hardly noticed this, but as they continued on it became quite gloomy, and an odd sort of gloom it was too, first green, then yellow, then red and then blue.

“I believe whatever serves as a sun down here is setting,” the professor observed. “We must hurry. I don’t want to be caught out here after dark.”

They hurried on, the lights dying out more and more, until, as they came in sight of their ship, it was so black they could hardly see.

Mark who was in the rear turned around, glancing behind him. As he did so he caught sight of a gigantic shadow moving along on top of the nearest hill. The shadow was not unlike that of a man in shape, but of such gigantic stature that Mark knew it could be like no human being he had ever seen. At the same time it bore a curious resemblance to the weird shadow he had seen slip into the Mermaid that night before they sailed.

“I wonder if it can be the same—the same thing—grown larger, just as the peach grows larger than those in our world,” Mark thought, while a shiver of fear seemed to go over him. “I wonder if that—that thing could have been on the ship——”

Then the last rays of light died away and there was total darkness.

CHAPTER XX

OVERHAULING THE SHIP

“Keep together!” shouted the professor. “It will not do to become lost now. We are close to the ship, and will soon be there.