We clasped hands again, but were unable to cling together, being lifted high and thrown helter-skelter in all directions. Lightning flashed—such lightning as I have never seen before or since. It snapped and crackled overhead and ran like trailing serpents over the rocks. We were in a sea of flame. And the thunder! It seemed to split the heavens and crack open the lava-like hills. Rain came; yet not rain, for it turned to damp vapor in the red-hot atmosphere. The Mercurial elements were at war—wind, steam, thunder, and lightning all marshaling their hosts and charging to conflict. To regain the steel car was impossible. We were lost in the fearsome fury of darkness and storm, driven helplessly and with smashing force across the vast plain. I was hurled against something which I gripped with convulsive energy. The something gripped me in return. "Help!" I cried, bereft of my wits and eager only for rescue. "Munn!" shouted a voice. "Is this you?" "Quinn!" I exclaimed. "We must hang together." said Quinn. And then, tightly locked in each other’s arms, we were lifted high on a billow of fog and driven relentlessly I know not how far. When the blast released us, we fell to the rocks and rolled over and over; then the surface beneath us gave way and we dropped. The distance we fell could be only a matter of guesswork, and even guesswork was out of the question in the disordered state of our minds at that moment. Suffice to say the fall did not render us unconscious, and we struck on something that vibrated under the impact of our bodies. We were still in blank darkness, and the turmoil of the tempest no longer beat about us, but could be heard crashing somewhere overhead. "Thank Heaven!" murmured the professor, withdrawing himself from me. "Are you alive, Mr. Munn?" "I believe so," I answered. "What has happened to us, professor?" "We have been flung into some sort of a shelter, it seems to me," he replied. "But we are not on stable ground," he added. "We are sitting on an object that is descending with us, descending rapidly and—ah, wonder of wonders!" Abruptly we fell into broad day, surrounded by such sights and sounds that I thought myself dealing with the mysteries of a disordered dream. *CHAPTER VIII.* *THE MERCURIALS.* Professor Quinn and I were sitting on a large box constructed of metal that was polished to dazzling brilliancy. So far as our purposes were concerned, this box was nothing less than an elevator; we had fallen upon it and it had carried us down into the wonderful interior of the planet. Now, truly, we were in another world—a world that teemed with life—a smiling and pleasant region underlying a most barren and inhospitable shell. The scoriated exterior of the planet was the husk; here was the kernel.