Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders

“Look!” he shouted. “Isn’t that some sort of tunnel or underground passage?” and he pointed to a square opening, perhaps seven feet high and nearly as broad, which extended, no one knew where, downward and onward from the side of the hole made by the uprooting of the trees.

“It’s an underground passage all right,” said Professor Bumper eagerly; “and not a natural one, either. That was fashioned by the hand of man, if I am any judge. It seems to go right under the mountain, too. Friends, we must explore this! It may be of the utmost importance! Come, we have our electric torches, and we shall need them, for it’s very dark in there,” and he

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peered into the passage in front of which they all stood now. It seemed to have been tunneled through the earth, the sides being lined by either slabs of stone, or walls made by a sort of concrete.

“But what about the rescue work?” asked Mr. Damon.

“I am not forgetting Professor Beecher and his friends,” answered the scientist.

“Perhaps this may be a better means of rescuing them than by digging them out, which will take a week at least,” observed Tom.

“This a better way?” asked Ned, pointing to the tunnel.

“That’s it,” confirmed the savant. “If you will notice it extends back in the direction of the cave from which we were driven. Now if there is a buried city beneath all this jungle, this mountain of earth and stones, the accumulation of centuries, it is probably on the bottom of some vast cavern. It is my opinion that we were only in one end of that cavern, and this may be the entrance to another end of it.”