"The Coming Race", Chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Bulwer-Lytton isn't going to give us much of a build up, he's taking us right to the main event in a big hurry!

The picture used is of a caver on rope at Stephens Gap, in Stephens Gap Cave, Limrock, Alabama, by wrcochran, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/).

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1951/1951-h/1951-h.htm#link2HCH0002