“Very well,” Kit assented; “I should rather like to see Buckingham Palace, too, and we can have a look at the Thames Embankment at the same time. We can walk over to Gower Street station and take the underground road to St. James Park station, and that is near the Palace. We both want to see the great underground railway, of course.” Feeling surer of making his way in the main streets, Kit led Harry to Tottenham Court Road, and turned up Euston Road to the Gower Street station. In Euston Road they found a great many openings in the street and in the yards on each side, through which poured clouds of sulphurous smoke. “Bah!” Harry cried, as one of the dirty clouds enveloped and half choked them; “there must be a sulphur mine underneath here, and it’s caught fire. Or do you suppose it’s a match factory?” “I suppose these must be airholes for the underground road,” Kit replied; “for it runs under this street. But I don’t see how the people can stand such rank smoke, that’s a fact. And it’s cheerful to think that that’s the air we will have to breathe in the underground train.” They bought their tickets for St. James Park station and went down two long and dirty stairways into the bowels of the earth, where they found a long cave arched with smoky bricks, dimly lighted with a half-dozen gas-jets, with a very dirty platform on each side and two tracks between them. Twenty or thirty other persons were waiting for the train, all breathing the thick smoky atmosphere, that coated their throats and made them cough. In two or three minutes a faint rumbling began in one of the dark tunnels leading out of each end of the cave; and the rumbling grew louder and louder till it became a roar, and the train drew up. There was a great banging of doors, people got out and others got in, Kit and Harry scrambled into an empty compartment, and in a few seconds the lights of the platform faded away and they were in darkness save for a very dim gas-jet in the roof of the car. “Now this is real luxury!” Harry laughed. “Everything you touch is black as a chimney, and the air you breathe is thick enough to cut. These tunnels would make good sewers, Kit. But do you think our folks would believe the Londoners really ride through such holes in the ground? Ain’t it simply frightful?” “I shall have to agree with you this time,” Kit answered. “I had no idea the underground roads were as bad as this. It would be a terrible place for an accident, wouldn’t it, in these dark caves?” They went on and on past station after station, and after half an hour of jolting and half suffocating Kit began to suspect that he must have made some mistake, for it was less than a mile from Gower Street to St. James Park. He took out his map and examined it as well as he could under the feeble light.