His right palm was resting upon a rounded protuberance, on the side of which were three small circular indentations.
"A queer one--" he repeated--and pressed his fingers upon the circles.
There was a sharp click; the slabs that had opened to let us through swung swiftly together; a curiously rapid vibration thrilled through us, a wind arose and passed over our heads--a wind that grew and grew until it became a whistling shriek, then a roar and then a mighty humming, to which every atom in our bodies pulsed in rhythm painful almost to disintegration! The rosy wall dwindled in a flash to a point of light and disappeared! Wrapped in the clinging, impenetrable blackness we were racing, dropping, hurling at a frightful speed--where?
And ever that awful humming of the rushing wind and the lightning cleaving of the tangible dark--so, it came to me oddly, must the newly released soul race through the sheer blackness of outer space up to that Throne of Justice, where God sits high above all suns! I felt Marakinoff creep close to me; gripped my nerve and flashed my pocket-light; saw Larry standing, peering, peering ahead, and Huldricksson, one strong arm around his shoulders, bracing him.

And then the speed began to slacken.
Millions of miles, it seemed, below the sound of the unearthly hurricane I heard Larry's voice, thin and ghostlike, beneath its clamour.
"Got it!" shrilled the voice.

"Got it! Don't worry!" The wind died down to the roar, passed back into the whistling shriek and diminished to a steady whisper.

In the comparative quiet O'Keefe's tones now came in normal volume.
"Some little shoot-the-chutes, what ?" he shouted.

"Say--if they had this at Coney Island or the Crystal Palace! Press all the way in these holes and she goes top-high.