Edgar Rice Burroughs

At the Earth's Core Edgar Rice Burroughs

I WAS BORN IN CONNECTICUT ABOUT THIRTY YEARS ago. My name is DavidInnes. My father was a wealthy mine owner. When I was nineteen he died. All his property wasto be mine when I had attained my majority-provided that I had devoted the two yearsintervening in close application to the great business I was to inherit. I did my best to fulfil the last wishes of my parent-not because of the inheritance, butbecause I loved and honored my father. For six months I toiled in the mines and in the countingrooms, for I wished to know every minute detail of the business. Then Perry interested me in his invention. He was an old fellow who had devoted the betterpart of a long life to the perfection of a mechanical subterranean prospector. As relaxation hestudied paleontology. I looked over his plans, listened to his arguments, inspected his workingmodel-and then, convinced, I advanced the funds necessary to construct a full-sized, practicalprospector. I shall not go into the details of its construction-it lies out there in the desert now-abouttwo miles from here. Tomorrow you may care to ride out and see it. Roughly, it is a steelcylinder a hundred feet long, and jointed so that it may turn and twist through solid rock if needbe. At one end is a mighty revolving drill operated by an engine which Perry said generated morepower to the cubic inch than any other engine did to the cubic foot. I remember that he used toclaim that that invention alone would make us fabulously wealthy-we were going to make thewhole thing public after the successful issue of our first secret trial-but Perry never returnedfrom that trial trip, and I only after ten years.