"TAKE care!" cried my conductor, "there's a step!"

Safely descending the step thus indicated to me, I entered a vast
room, illuminated by blinding electric reflectors, the sound of our
feet alone breaking the solitude and silence of the place. Where was
I? What had I come there to do? Who was my mysterious guide? Questions
unanswered. A long walk in the night, iron doors opened and reclosed
with a clang, stairs descending, it seemed to me, deep into the
earth--that is all I could remember. I had, however, no time for
thinking.

"No doubt you are asking yourself who I am?" said my guide: "Colonel
Pierce, at your service. Where are you? In America, at Boston--in a
station."

"A station?"

"Yes, the starting-point of the `Boston to Liverpool Pneumatic Tubes
Company.'"

And, with an explanatory gesture, the Colonel pointed out to me two
long iron cylinders, about a metre and a half in diameter, lying upon
the ground a few paces off.

I looked at these two cylinders, ending on the right in a mass of
masonry, and closed on the left with heavy metallic caps, from which a
cluster of tubes were carried up to the roof; and suddenly I
comprehended the purpose of all this.

Had I not, a short time before, read, in an American newspaper, an
article describing this extraordinary project for linking Europe with
the New World by means of two gigantic submarines tubes? An inventor
had claimed to have accomplished the task; and that inventor, Colonel
Pierce, I had before me.

In thought I realized the newspaper article.

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