Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The World Above
Of this first edition of The WorldAbove there have been printed fivehundred copies on Van Gelderhand-made paper and twenty-fivecopies on Japan vellum, ofwhich this is number 171
THE WORLD ABOVE.
The scene is laid in a shadowy and mystic placeknown to the dwellers there as The Darker Realm. It hasbeen built and burrowed from time immemorial far downunderneath some great, beautiful, sunny, human metropolis,called The World Above, but of this light-crownedcity those who inhabit the subterranean retreats of TheDarker Realm know but little, of its happy days anddoings they can but dream.
The galleries of The Darker Realm are like an interminablenetwork—one could so easily be lost there!Some parts are new and are built up smoothly with polishedstone; other parts are old—so old and irregular thatit seems as if they must have been set there many, manycenturies ago. Perhaps the place has been an ancientmine where dim-eyed people sought the turquoise gemfor their devil-altars; perhaps it was once a human townover which volcanic ashes and desert sands have fallenand drifted for many a long century. Unexhumed andrediscovered, it lies there, and the dwellers in The WorldAbove find use for the water-way conduits that thread itsinterminable passages.
There are two persons in the story: Jean, a youngman, a workman in The Darker Realm, and Angelica, ayoung maiden, daughter of another workman in the same.
Scene I.
(A place in The Darker Realm. The backgroundforms a cave-like enclosure or gallery with an arched roofcomposed of massive blocks of fitted stone. At the centerof the enclosure is a tall well-sweep with other giganticstructures. Chains and tubes range along the walls andceiling. At the right there is an opening into one of thelarger conduits, and over the opening a trap-door is heldup diagonally by a long dusty rope with a pulley attachingit to the wall above. From above this opening danglesa cord that floats out tensely, showing that a strong currentof air is coming down through the conduit and isflowing out into the gallery. Near the front a foot-bridgecrosses a gulley in the floor of the passage; one can seethe glint of the water flowing below. At the left, high upon the wall, juts forth a crane and on this hangs an ironlantern from which a sickly light is given forth. This isalmost the only center of light in the place, though it ispossible to see that there is some kind of a lamp beyondthe half-open door of a windowless hut which is dimlyperceived at the back of the gallery. Also, above thefoot-bridge, there is a flue in the ceiling, and through thisflows downward a faint, pale light, almost imperceptible,like the dimmest twilight. At the back of the gallery,arched openings on either side lead to passages of impenetrableblackness.
From the door