Portland is known as one of the most bicycle friendly cities

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But to my astonishment
I discovered that with death staring him in the face Abner Perry was
transformed into a new being. From his lips there flowed—not prayer—but a
clear and limpid stream of undiluted profanity, and it was all directed at
that quietly stubborn piece of unyielding mechanism.
"I should
think, Perry," I chided, "that a man of your professed religiousness would
rather be at his prayers than cursing in the presence of imminent
death."

"Death!" he cried. "Death is it that
appalls you? That is nothing by comparison with the loss the world must
suffer. Why, David within this iron cylinder we have demonstrated
possibilities that science has scarce dreamed. We have harnessed a new
principle, and with it animated a piece of steel with the power of ten
thousand men. That two lives will be snuffed out is nothing to the world
calamity that entombs in the bowels of the earth the discoveries that I
have made and proved in the successful construction of the thing that is
now carrying us farther and farther toward the eternal central
fires."

I am frank to admit that for myself I was
much more concerned with our own immediate future than with any
problematic loss which the world might be about to suffer. The world was
at least ignorant of its bereavement, while to me it was a real and
terrible actuality.

"What can we do?" I asked,
hiding my perturbation beneath the mask of a low and level voice. />"We may stop here, and die of asphyxiation when our atmosphere tanks
are empty," replied Perry, "or we may continue on with the slight hope
that we may later sufficiently deflect the prospector from the vertical to
carry us along the arc of a great circle which must eventually return us
to the surface. If we succeed in so doing before we reach the higher
internal temperature we may even yet survive. There would seem to me to be
about one chance in several million that we shall succeed—otherwise we
shall die more quickly but no more surely than as though we sat supinely
waiting for the torture of a slow and horrible death."
/>I glanced at the thermometer. It registered 110 degrees. While we
were talking the mighty iron mole had bored its way over a mile into the
rock of the earth's crust.

class="tr_bq">"Let us continue on, then," I replied. "It should soon be
over at this rate. You never intimated that the speed of this thing would
be so high, Perry. Didn't you know it?" />"No," he answered. "I could not figure the speed exactly, for I had
no instrument for measuring the mighty power of my generator. I reasoned,
however, that we should make about five hundred yards an hour."