From that hour they both "gave it up"--in other words, resigned
themselves in a hopeless weary way to their fate, and went on in an
automatic fashion, resting, tramping on again over patches of sand and
clean hard places where the rock had been worn smooth. The pangs of
hunger attacked them more and more, and then came maddening thirst which
they assuaged by drinking from one of the clear pools lying in
depressions, the water tasting sweet and pure. From time to time the
candles were renewed in the lanthorn, and the rate at which they burned
was marked with feverish earnestness; and at last, in their dread of a
serious calamity, it was arranged that one should watch while the other
slept. In this way they would be sure of not being missed by a body of
searchers who might come by and, hearing no sound, pass in ignorance of
their position.
Gwyn kept the first watch, Joe having completely broken down and begun
to reel from side to side of the passage they were struggling along in a
hopeless way; and when Gwyn caught his arm to save him from falling, he
turned and smiled at him feebly.
"Legs won't go any longer," he said gently; and, sinking upon his knees,
he lay down on the bare rock, placed his hand under his face as he
uttered a low sigh, and Gwyn said quietly,--
"That's right; have a nap, and then we'll go on again."
There was no reply, and Gwyn bent over him and held the lanthorn to his
face.
"How soon anyone goes to sleep!" he said softly. "Seems to be all in a
moment."
The boy stood looking down at his companion for a few moments, and then
turned with the light to inspect their position.
They were in a curve of one of the galleries formed by the extraction of
the veins of tin ore, and there was little to see but the ruddy-tinted
walls, sparkling roof, and dusty floor. A faint dripping noise showed
him where water was falling from the roof, and in the rock a basin of
some inches in depth was worn, from which he refreshed himself, and then
felt better as he walked on for a hundred yards in a feeble, weary way,
to find that which gave him a little hope, for the gallery suddenly
began to run upward, and came to an end.
"But it may only be the end of this part," muttered Gwyn; "there are
others which go on I suppose, but one can't get any farther here, and
that's something."
He walked back to where Joe lay sleeping heavily, after convincing
himself of the reason why the turning had come to an end where it did,
for the vein had run upward, gradually growing thinner till, at some
thirty feet up, as far as he could make out by his dim light, the men
had ceased working, probably from the supply not being worth their
trouble.
Joe was muttering in his sleep when Gwyn reached his side, but for a
time his words were unintelligible. Then quite plainly he said,--
"Be good for you, father. The mine will give you something to do, and
then you won't have time to think so much of your old wounds."
"And if he has got out safely and they never find us, this will be like
a new wound for the poor old Major to think about," mused Gwyn. "How
dreadful it is, and how helpless we seem! It's always the same; gallery
after gallery, just alike, and that's why it's so puzzling. I wonder
whether any of the old miners were ever lost here and starved to death."
The thought was so horribly suggestive that the perspiration came out in
great drops on the boy's face, and he glanced quickly to right and left,
even holding up his lanthorn, fancying for the moment that he might
catch sight of some dried-up traces of the poor unfortunates who had
struggled on for days, as they had, and then sunk down to rise no more.
"How horrible!" he muttered; "and how can Joe lie there sleeping, when
perhaps our fate may be like theirs?"
But he had unconsciously started another train of thought which set him
calculating, and took his attention from the imaginary horrors which had
troubled him.
"Wandered about for days and days," he mused. "It seems like it, but
that's impossible. It can't be much more than one, or we couldn't have
kept on. We should have been starved to death. We couldn't have lived
on water."
He wiped his wet brow, and it seemed to him that the gallery they were
in was not so stifling and hot, unless it was that he had grown weaker.
Still one thing was certain; he could breathe more freely.
"Getting used to it," he thought; and, putting down the lanthorn, he
seated himself with his back close to the wall.
Joe slept heavily, and the lad looked at him enviously.
"I couldn't sleep so peaceably as that," he said half aloud. "How can a
fellow sleep when he doesn't know but what his father may be dying close
by from starvation and weakness. It seems too bad."
Gwyn opened the lanthorn and found that the candle was half burned down,
and for a moment he thought of setting up another in its place, for fear
he should go to sleep and it should burn out.
"Be such a pity," he said, "we don't want light while we're asleep; only
to wake up here in this horrible place is enough to drive anybody mad."
Then he closed the lanthorn again.
"I sha'n't go to sleep," he muttered. "In too much trouble." And he
began thinking in a sore, dreary way of his mother seated at home
waiting for news of his father and of him.
"It'll nearly kill her," he said. "But she'll like it for me to have
come here in search of poor dad. It would have been so cowardly if I
hadn't come, and she would have felt ashamed of me. Yes, she'll like my
dying like this."
He paused, for his thoughts made him ponder.
"We can't be going to die," he said to himself, "or we shouldn't be
taking it all so easily and be so quiet and calm. If we felt that we
really were going to die, we should be half mad with horror, and run
shrieking about till we dropped in a fit. No," he said softly, "it
isn't like that. People on board ship, when they know it's going to
sink, all behave quite calmly and patiently. There was that ship that
was being burned with the soldiers on board. They all stood up before
their officers, waiting for the end, and went down at last like men.
But I don't feel despairing like, and as if we were going to die."
Then he began to think of his peaceful home life, and of the days at
school till about a year ago, when he had come home to study military
matters with his father and Major Jollivet, prior to being sent to one
of the military colleges in about a year's time.
"And now this mining has altered everything," mused Gwyn, "and--"
He started violently, sprang up, and looked about him, for his name had
been uttered loudly close to his ear.
But all was still now, and a curious creepy sensation ran through him
and made him shiver with apprehension--a strange, superstitious kind of
apprehension, as if something invisible were close to him.
"What a cowardly donkey!" he muttered, for his name was uttered again,
and plainly enough it came from Joe.
"Talking in his sleep; and I was ready to fancy it was something `no
canny.' Why I must have been dropping off to sleep, too, and it
startled me into wakefulness. This won't do. Sentries must not sleep
at their posts."
He began to do what the soldiers call "sentry go." But in a few minutes
he grew so weary and hot that he was glad to stop by his sleeping
companion, and stand looking down at him lying so peacefully there with
his head upon his hand.
"Just as if he were in a feather bed and with a soft pillow under his
cheek. Wish I could lie down and have a nap for half-an-hour. I will,
and then he can have another."
Gwyn bent down to waken his companion, who just then burst out with a
merry laugh.
"Oh, I say, father, you shouldn't," he said. "Just as if I didn't take
care. It isn't--"
"Isn't what, Joe?" said Gwyn, softly.
"The wrong bottle. You're always thinking I give you the wrong
medicine, and saying it tastes different. Hah!"
He ended with a long deep sigh of content, and lay perfectly silent.
"I can't wake him," muttered Gwyn; and with a weary groan he seated
himself once more, supporting his back against the side of the gallery,
for he was too weak and tired to stand, and in an instant he was out in
the bright sunshine, with the water making the boat he was in dance and
the sail flap, as he glided along out of the cave into the open sea.
Then with a violent start he was awake again, drawing himself up and
fighting hard against terrible odds, for Nature said that he was
completely exhausted, and must rest.
And as he set his teeth and stared hard at the faintly glittering wall
opposite, where the great vein of milk-white quartz was spangled with
grains of tin, his head bowed down and dropped forward till his chin
touched his chest.
Again he sprang up, to prop his head back against the rock, but it had
been hacked away so that it curved over and seemed to join Nature in her
efforts to master him and force him to sleep, bending down his head and
sending it in the old direction, so that his brow seemed heavier than
lead, and he bent it lower and lower, while once more he was out on the
glittering waters of the sea, the boat bounding rapidly along and all
trouble at an end. For the darkness of the cavernous mine was gone,
with all its weary horrors--there was nothing to mind, nothing to do,
but sink lower and lower in the boat, and rest.
Hard--angular--stony? The granite chipped by hammer and pick felt like
the softest down, as Gwyn swayed slowly over to his left, his shoulders
rubbing against the wall and his half-braced muscles involuntarily
acting in obedience to his will to keep him upright, so that he did not
fall, but gently subsided till he was lying prone close to the lanthorn,
which shed its faint yellowish light and cast dim shadows which, there
in that gloomy spot, looked like a couple of graves newly banked up to
mark the spots where the two lads had lain down to die or to be found
and live, whichever fate ordained.
Joe must have slept for what was guessed to be a couple of hours; but
they had passed, and he still slept on, with his rest growing more and
more sweet and restful, while for Gwyn there was nothing but profound
silence and vacancy. He did not dream--only plunged deeper and deeper
into the stupor till six hours had passed away, and then the dream came.
A terrible wild dream of being somewhere in great danger--a place from
which there was no escape from a dangerous wolf-like beast, which had
followed him for hours, and was slowly hunting him down.
And every moment the vision grew more real, and the fierce beast came
closer and closer in spite of his efforts to escape--mad, frantic
efforts--while every limb was like lead, and held him back so that he
might be the monster's prey.
He felt that it was a delusion, and that he must soon wake and find
relief; but when he did, the relief did not come for the horrors of the
dream were continued in the reality, and his lips parted to utter a wild
cry; but lips, tongue, and throat were all parched and dry, and he lay
there in an agony which seemed maddening.
There was no question now of where he was, for though it was intensely
dark he knew well enough, for he had awakened into full consciousness
with every sense unnaturally sharpened, and making things clear. His
limbs were like lead still, but it was not from nightmare, for they were
numbed and helpless. There was the unpleasant odour of the burnt-out
candle, and the sickly smoke hanging about him, as if the light had but
lately gone out, and he could hear Joe's stertorous breathing as if he
too were in trouble; and simultaneously with it came the knowledge that,
after all, the cavernous place out of which the water had been drained
was inhabited by strange beasts, one of which had attacked him.
For the moment he was ready to explain it as a form of nightmare, but it
was too real. It was the hard stern reality itself. There was the
weight upon his chest, but not the heavy inert mass of a hideous dream,
but that of some creature full of palpitating life extended upon him.
He could feel the motion as it breathed, the heavy pulsations of its
heart, and, worst horror of all, the hot breath from its panting jaws
not many inches from his brow.