"I believe, however," he went on, "that we ought to leave the world, our world, a record of the discovery. I will set down to the extent that time permits those things which, in my opinion, will interest the scientific world. As for the discovery itself, the journey and our adventures, yours, Bill, is the hand to record that." "A record?" I exclaimed. "Then why all this secrecy, this moving under cover of darkness and pussy-footing around if you are going to broadcast the discovery of Drome to the whole world?" "Because we will then have left that world and the way to this will have been blasted up and otherwise closed." "That," I told him, "will never keep them out." "I believe that it will. And, if any one ever does find his way down, he'll never return to the surface; he'll spend the rest of his days here in Drome, even if he lives to be as old as Methuselah. Be sure that you put that into the record! The Dromans are human, and so they are not quite saints. But their land is never going to be infested with plunderers or any of our sons of Proteus if I can prevent it, and I feel confident that I can. "This closing of the way will not mean complete isolation. At any rate, I hope that it will not. For I feel confident that ere very long the two worlds will communicate with each other by radio. There is a possibility, too, though that possibility is indeed a very remote one, that each will even _see_, by means of television, the inhabitants and the marvels of the other." One or two weird things befell us during our return journey, but time presses and I can not pause to record them here. The party was composed of picked men, one of whom was Ondonarkus. We had one ape-bat. This going up was a more difficult business, I want to tell you, than our going down had been. There was one consolation: we did not get lost. Onward and upward we toiled, and at last, on the 28th of June, we reached the Tamahnowis Rocks. Thanks to Rhodes' chronometer-watch and the very careful record which he had kept, we knew the very hour. This was about ten o'clock in the morning. The way out was completely blocked by the ice. Cool air, however, was flowing in through fissures and clefts in the walls and the roof of the tunnel. We waited until along towards midnight, for fear some one might be about, that some sound might reveal the secret of the rock. It was about ten o'clock when we began to dig our way out through the ice. The tunnel was not driven out into the glacier but up alongside the rock wall, through the edge of the ice-stream. Hurrah! At last our passage was through! And, as old Dante has it, "_Thence issuing we again beheld the stars._"