Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 21 -- Boys Club Singles
Tom Curry's "Giants of the Ray" in Astounding Stories of
Super-Science, June 1930, concerns Super Science, but the
underground river is just worldly big one.
Madly the Three raced for their lives up the shaft of the
radium mine, for behind them poured a stream of hideous
monsters -- Giants of the Ray!
The mine spread out now, and began a steeper descent.
The air was poor, and it was hard to breathe through the
mask. Maget, his heart thumping mightily, listened to the
roaring within the depths of the mine.
Now the ground seemed to drop away before them. Maget
could hear the running of water, the underground river, and
every now and then there came an immense splash, as if
some great whale had thrown itself about in the water.
"Four Miles Within," Astounding Stories, April, 1931, by Anthony Gilmore is saga of terror.
They were standing on a narrow ledge that overhung an
underground river. A fetid smell of age-old, lifeless water
rose from it. Dimly, at least fifty feet across, they could see
the other side, shrouded in vague shadows. The inky stream
beneath did not seem to move at all, but remained smooth
and hard and thick-looking.
They could not go around it. The ledge was only a few feet
wide, and blocked at each side.
"Got to cross!" Phil said tersely.
Quade, sickly-faced, stared down. "There -- there might be
other things in that water!" he gasped. "Monsters!"
"Sure," agreed Phil contemptuously. "You'd better stay
here." He turned to the others. "I'll see how deep it is," he
said, and without the faintest hesitation dove flatly in.
Oily ripples washed back, and they saw his head poke through, sputtering. "Not deep," he said.
"Chest-high. Come on."
He reached for Sue, helped her down, and did the same for her father. Holding each by the
hand, Sue's head barely above the water, he started across. They had not gone more than
twenty feet when they heard Quade, left on the bank, give a hoarse yell of fear and dive into the
water. Their dread pursuer had caught up with them.
"Blond Goddess" was a lightening-paced adventure story by Herbert Jensen serialized in daily
newspapers in the mid 1930s. We'll extract from the passage in which Frank Grahame, the
explorer, may not escape a flooding Yucatan valley via an underground river to the coast. We'll
classify it as a single work, as it's just one adventure chopped up.
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