"TAKE care!" cried my conductor, "there's a step!"Safely descending the step thus indicated to me, I entered a vastroom, illuminated by blinding electric reflectors, the sound of ourfeet alone breaking the solitude and silence of the place. Where wasI? What had I come there to do? Who was my mysterious guide? Questionsunanswered. A long walk in the night, iron doors opened and reclosedwith a clang, stairs descending, it seemed to me, deep into theearth--that is all I could remember. I had, however, no time forthinking."No doubt you are asking yourself who I am?" said my guide: "ColonelPierce, at your service. Where are you? In America, at Boston--in astation.""A station?""Yes, the starting-point of the `Boston to Liverpool Pneumatic TubesCompany.'"And, with an explanatory gesture, the Colonel pointed out to me twolong iron cylinders, about a metre and a half in diameter, lying uponthe ground a few paces off.I looked at these two cylinders, ending on the right in a mass ofmasonry, and closed on the left with heavy metallic caps, from which acluster of tubes were carried up to the roof; and suddenly Icomprehended the purpose of all this.Had I not, a short time before, read, in an American newspaper, anarticle describing this extraordinary project for linking Europe withthe New World by means of two gigantic submarines tubes? An inventorhad claimed to have accomplished the task; and that inventor, ColonelPierce, I had before me.In thought I realized the newspaper article.