Below him was the Basin, the tangled wreckage of his camp. And there, where the derrick had stood, was a tall plume of white. It did not begin close to the ground--superheated steam, until it cools and condenses to water vapor, is invisible--but a hundred feet above the sand. And, from there on up, two thousand feet sheer into the air, was a straight shaft of vapor, rolling up for another thousand feet into billowing clouds that the afternoon sun turned to glorious white. "Power!" gasped Rawson. "Power--and it will be like that indefinitely!" Then he laughed weakly. "I had to go down there to do it, to make Erickson richer, but it was worth it. In there the ocean will slowly subside. Gor and his people will find their lost lands; the column of water in the shaft will hold the back-pressure of steam. And here, I have Loah, and that's all--but that's enough!" He put one arm, still with the bandages of the first-aid men, about the girl. "I hope you'll be happy, dear," he said softly, and turned back. But Smithy barred the way. "That isn't all," said Smithy jubilantly. "You see, Dean, Erickson fired you--Erickson thought you had run out on him. Instead of backing you up, he quit. So I bought them all out. Whatever is there, Dean--and it's worth more millions than I dare to think about--you own half of! Now get back on that stretcher. Just because you've saved all our necks up here on top of the earth, you mustn't think you can keep an Army ship waiting all day!" (_The End._) End of Project Gutenberg's Two Thousand Miles Below, by Charles Willard Diffin