EIGHT DAYS OF DARK
The three comrades were saved, indeed, but it was none too soon. Eight
days below ground without food or light and without any sure hope of
rescue, had brought them to a low ebb.
Clem, owing to his longer experience in the mine and his more prudent
conserving of the scanty supply of food that fell to his share, had
withstood the strain better than the two other survivors. He was badly
shaken, however, and his nerves were on the edge of collapse. His
efforts to help his companions had held him tense during those
unending hours of darkness and famine, and his optimism had kept him
from the ravages of despair.
Anton had received a terrible shock, both to body and mind. His hands
and feet had become deadened, as though frozen, and the most vigorous
treatment failed to restore the circulation. From time to time he was
seized by convulsive fits; resembling those of epilepsy, and
characteristic of white damp poisoning. His speech remained thick and
mumbling, and he repeated the same word over and over, a score of
times, without being conscious that he had spoken it.
Jim Getwood, the prospector, was in the weakest condition of the
three. He lacked the degree of immunity that Clem possessed through
his half-dozen years below ground, and that Anton possessed, in a
minor degree, through heredity. His former life of adventure in the
open air made him all the more susceptible to the poison gases.
Violent headaches brought him to the verge of madness, and alternated
with periods of delirium. He could retain little or no food, and,
several times, the doctor despaired of saving his life.
Yet, in the history of coal-mining, there are several cases on record
in which men have been even a longer time below ground and recovered.
In a French colliery, two out of thirty men who were buried for
fourteen days, recovered; in a Welsh colliery, one man survived out of
seventy who had been entombed for seventeen days.
A still more astonishing case occurred in a Scotch coal-mine. A big
roof-fall in a pit in Ayrshire had blocked off all the outlets to the
shaft, save one, by which all the miners were able to escape. One man,
however, finding that the way to the shaft was clear, returned to the
face of the coal where he had been working, in order to get his coat.
On his way back to the shaft, a second fall occurred, blocking him in.
This happened in 1835, when rescue work was still done in a primitive
fashion. It was not until the twenty-third day that the miner was
reached. He was alive, but in a dying state, his body being covered
with a species of fungus that grows upon decaying mine timbers. He
lived three days after being brought to the surface.
The longest record of endurance under such conditions occurred in
France, some years later. A well-digger, near Lyons, was buried alive
with a comrade, the sides of a deep well caving in after such a manner
that an air-space of 37 feet was left above the entombed men.
It was impossible to try to remove the obstruction, for any effort to
do so would only cause the earth and stones to fall on them and crush
the men. In order to attempt rescue, it was necessary to sink a well
as deep as the first, and, when the full depth was reached, to drive
an underground gallery from one to the other.
Up to the very last day, the rescuers were able to hear tappings, sure
sign that at least one of the men was alive. On the thirtieth day the
rescue was effected. The oldest of the two well-diggers was found
alive, but he was in a terrible condition because of the infection
caused by the corpse of his comrade, who had died two weeks before.
He, also, lived three days after his rescue, but the doctors were
unable to save his life.
None of these men, however, had to withstand the effects of white damp
in the air; on the other hand, none of them had any supply of food,
however small, to begin with.
Clem's account of the experiences of the three men in the mine was
awaited with a great deal of interest. Reporters from various
newspapers hung around the mine for several days, waiting for a chance
to get his story. The mine doctor refused permission, however, until
he was assured that the young miner was well on his way to health,
fearing that a reawakening of the memories of that terrible week might
bring about a relapse. Finally he admitted the reporters to the
hospital ward where the three survivors lay, though forbidding Anton
and Jim to speak.
Clem was willing enough to tell his tale.
He began with the incident in the cage, on the morning of the
accident, when he had joked with Otto, to the old miner's manifest
objection. He told of Otto's refusal to work that day, according to
the account given him by Jim. He described, also, how Anton had
gallantly abandoned his own chance of safety to come and warn him, and
explained how they had vainly searched an outlet in the direction of
the North Gallery.
"Right after we met Jim," he went on, "we ran as fast as we could
towards the old workings, to see if we could get out there. I didn't
think there was much chance, because, so far as I could make out, the
fall had happened between where we were working and the shafts. But it
was worth trying, anyway. When we found the wall down, in that
section, and the rock piled up clear to the roof, I knew we were
trapped, sure.
"Thanks to what I had learned in the night-school classes, I had a
pretty good idea of the general lay-out of the mine. I knew how the
faults lay, and miners, who'd been in this mine a long time, had told
me how gassy the old workings were.
"In a lesson I'd had on mine ventilation, we'd been told that the
ventilating plant, here, had been enlarged twice over to try to keep
the mine clear of gas. It wasn't hard to figure out that, with the
ventilation stopped, gas would soon begin to collect, and that would
be the end of us.
"There was a big-enough cap on our safety lamps, as it was, and it
seemed to me that the blue cone grew longer as I looked. I told Jim
that it wasn't safe for us to hang around those old workings, we'd get
poisoned before we knew it and lose any chance we had of rescue.
"Jim didn't see it my way, at first.
"'Might as well die here as anywhere!' he said.
"I didn't like that spirit. I'd read in a book, somewhere, that if a
chap gives up hope, he dies a whole lot quicker than if he keeps up
his spirits. It was about Anton that I was worrying most. I was bent
on trying to get the youngster cheerful if I could, because he was
moping over Otto's prophecy that there was going to be an accident.
You've heard about that, I suppose?"
The reporters nodded, and Owens, who was listening, added:
"We've heard a lot about it. The old man called the turn, all right.
But maybe you don't know that he told me, too, that you'd be rescued
and that you'd come out of it, alive?"
"Did he?" queried Clem, in amazement.
"Point-blank. It's a good thing for you he did, too, for a whole lot
of first-class men volunteered for the rescue work who couldn't have
been persuaded to enter the mine again, otherwise. The old man stuck
to his belief, even after most of us thought you would be dead. The
geophone expert backed him up, by saying he heard tapping, but it was
Otto's persistence that did the most."
"It's a queer thing he should guess so closely," commented Clem
thoughtfully.
But a reporter from a Pittsburgh evening paper, who was anxious to get
the survivor's story on the telegraph wires, broke in impatiently:
"What was the first thing you did, after you'd found you were
trapped?"
"We got busy and made a barricade," Clem answered. "I showed Jim and
Anton that, in the old workings where we were, there was a lot of gas.
Our lamps showed it up, good and strong. Now, back in the rooms where
Jim and I had been hewing, there wasn't any gas to speak of. We could
go back there, of course, and that was what Jim wanted to do.
"But I figured out that, since the ventilation was shut off from our
rooms, the gas which had accumulated in the old workings and which was
steadily seeping through the coal in that section would gradually
creep along the galleries our way. If that happened, we'd be down and
out, before the rescuers had a chance to cut their way through. We
could put up a barricade, though, and cut off the gassy part of the
mine.
"Jim didn't want to work, at first. If he was going to die, he said,
he might as well die of gas as of hunger. He talked a lot of rot about
its being the easiest death. I was that sore, I could have kicked him.
"Anton was willing enough to work, though, and when Jim saw the two of
us actually at work, he got over his grouch, went and got his pick and
shovel and slaved as hard as any of us. We piled up the coal and rock,
good and thick, and then scraped up all the fine dust we could find
and made a thick blanket of that to keep the gas from coming through,
as best we could.
"Putting up that barricade made us mighty hungry. We were working fast
because the gas there was bad, and we knew the quicker we got away
from it, the better for us. Being hungry didn't do us much good.
There wasn't much grub.
"We had only two pails of dinner, Jim's and mine. Anton's dinner pail
was out by the entry where he took the loaded cars. So we pooled the
food, and divided it into three exactly equal parts, each one of us to
hide his share, and to eat it as quickly or as slowly as he pleased.
"Jim ate his at once, said he'd rather have one good meal than a lot
of little bites which didn't mean anything. Anton made his last
longer, he still had some food left when the lamps burned out. I only
took a bite or two of mine, at that time, and managed to make eight
meals of it, though, of course, I couldn't tell how many hours or days
apart those meals were."
"How long did the safety-lamps burn?" asked the reporter.
"Eight hours after we were caught. They all went out within a few
minutes of each other--and we had them pretty well turned down, too. I
looked at my watch, just as the last one flickered out. It wasn't
quite a quarter past eight."
"You had no matches?" the reporter asked.
"Matches? What a fool idea!" exclaimed Clem, amazed at the reporter's
ignorance. "I should say not! Even the lamps are locked. We could
have had light three times as long, if it wasn't for that, burning
first one and then the other, but there's no way to light a lamp below
ground.
"Before the lamps went out, each of us had scraped up a pile of coal
dust to sleep on. It was plenty warm down there, and getting warmer
all the time. The lack of air made us all heavy and drowsy. We were
all asleep pretty soon after the lamps went out.
"We woke up in the dark. It was black as pitch, a blackness which
weighed on you. It hurt. One's eyes wanted to fight against it.
"How long had we been asleep? An hour, ten hours, or the whole
twenty-four? Not one of us could tell.
"But the sleep had done one good thing. It had helped Jim a lot. He
was full of pep, again. The old prospecting optimism had come back. He
was dead sure that he could find a way out. All it needed was looking
for, he thought.
"Anton wasn't awake yet, and I didn't want to wake him up. The longer
he slept, the better. I tried to reason with Jim that we'd already
gone to all the openings there could be, but he wouldn't listen to
reason. He wouldn't stay with us. He was restless. He just had to be
up and wandering.
"'How are you going to find your way back?' I asked him. 'It's easy to
get lost in the dark, and you don't know much about the mine.'
"'I'll be back with a full dinner-pail while you're sitting there
doing nothing!' he boasted, and off he started. I'd have gone with
him, quick enough, but I didn't want Anton to wake and find himself
alone.
"After a while Anton woke up. I heard him munching, so I knew he was
at his grub. I warned him not to finish it all at once, but he was so
hungry he couldn't stop. I couldn't blame him much, at that. I was so
ravenous that my stomach seemed to be tying itself up in knots, and
the flesh inside seemed to crawl.
"I had to tell him that Jim had gone off by himself. Anton didn't say
much to that. In fact, he didn't want to talk at all. He was brooding
all the time. Twice I overheard him muttering to himself, and both
times he was talking about Otto and his warning.
"I could see he was blaming me, but I'll say this for the boy--he
never once said that he regretted having come back to warn me."
"That," interrupted the superintendent emphatically, "shows the boy is
good stuff. It takes a good deal of moral courage to keep from blaming
some one else, when you're in a pinch. I remember, once, in West
Australia--" He checked himself. "Go ahead with your story, lad."
Clem resumed.
"Some time after--it seemed about an hour, though it may have been a
good deal less or a good deal more--we heard shouting.
"'Jim's found the way out!' cried Anton, and scrambled to his feet.
"I grabbed him as he rose.
"'Don't run off in that fool fashion,' I said to him. 'Make sure where
the shouts are coming from, first. You've been down in a mine long
enough to know that the echoes are apt to make a noise sound as if it
comes in a directly opposite direction from the right one.'
"'I'm going to find Jim!' he insisted.
"'If you must run chances, why, I suppose you must,' said I. 'But I'm
going to stay here, where the air's good. Try to get back here. Keep
in touch. You take ten paces forward, then stop and shout. I'll
answer. If you don't hear me, come back.'
"He promised and started off. For the first fifty yards or
so--supposing that he shouted at every ten paces--I heard him clear
enough.
"Then--not another sound! What had happened to him?
"I shouted again and again.
"No reply!
"What was I going to do? Both Jim and Anton were wandering around
loose in the mine galleries, and they might stray until they dropped,
without ever finding the way back. I yelled till I was hoarse.
"Then I got another idea. I took my pick, and kept on hitting the roof
in three regular strokes: 'Tap! Tap! Tap!' and then a pause--just like
that." He illustrated on the head-rail of his hospital bed. "I knew
that the vibration would carry along the rock, farther than the
voice."
"That's what the geophone man heard," Owens commented to the reporter.
"Go on, lad!"
"I kept that up," Clem went on, "until my arms ached. I was so tired
in my back and so weak with hunger that bright violet spots kept
dancing before my eyes. But I kept on, just the same.
"Then I heard a shout, and, presently, Anton came staggering along,
dead beat. He'd been guided back by the sound of the tapping.
"'No sign of Jim?' I asked
"'Nothing!'
"He lay down on the coal dust, and, pretty soon, I heard him breathing
hard. He'd gone right off to sleep, exhausted, poor kid!"
"How long do you suppose he'd been wandering?" queried the reporter.
"No way of knowing. But I'm pretty husky, and I can stand an eight
hours' shift of coal hewing without getting too tired. And, I tell
you, I was about done out, just from reaching up and tapping that roof
with a pick. Of course, I was weak. But I reckon it must have been
eight hours, good, that the youngster was straying in those mine
galleries, in the dark, alone. Maybe it was more.
"I must have gone to sleep, too, but it didn't seem for long.
Half-asleep, I heard Anton say,
"'There's a rat gnawing at my stomach!'
"I woke up right quick, at that, for though mine rats are ugly
customers, I thought if we could catch a rat or two, that might give
us food. But what the boy meant was that he was so hungry that it felt
as if a rat were there.
"I wasn't exactly hungry, leastways, not all the time. The pain came
in cramps, that were bad enough while they lasted, but I didn't feel
anything much between. My tongue was getting swollen, though. I knew
what that meant. Drink of some sort we must have.
"'Look here, Anton,' I said, 'you tap on the rock, in threes, the same
as I did, and I'll go try to find water. I know the lay-out of this
mine better than you do, and there used to be a sump (hole) near the
goaf (waste rock taken from the main gallery roofs). Maybe there'll be
water there.'
"I started off, cheerfully enough. I reckoned I knew the mine. So I
do, with a lamp, but I didn't have any idea what it meant to wander in
the pitch-dark. The galleries were low there, too, not more than four
feet high. I had to keep one hand stretched out in front of me to keep
from going headlong into the wall, and the dinner pail that I was
carrying in that hand struck the side more times than I could count; I
kept the other hand above my head, to keep me from cracking my skull
against the cross-timbers holding up the low roof.
"Before I'd gone a hundred yards, I was so mixed up that I didn't know
which way I was going or where I'd come from. It's a horrible feeling.
The dark is like a trap that you can't feel and you can't see, but you
know it's there. It's being blind with your eyes open.
"Then it was so ghastly silent, too. A blind man can always hear
something. There's life around him. Down there, not a sound! I'd lost
all hearing of the 'Tap! Tap! Tap!' I'd told Anton to make.
"All sorts of nasty things came into my head. I might step into a hole
and get crippled. I might walk straight into a pocket of gas, and,
without any safety lamp to tell me of the danger, be poisoned then and
there. The roof might be bulging down, right over my head, ready to
fall and I'd have no warning.
"I tried to reason it out that all these ideas were just imagination.
Reasoning didn't do much good. Fright got a grip of me. I was in a
cold sweat all over. My heart thumped so that it hurt. I was just
horribly scared, right through, and I had to bite my lips till they
were raw to keep from screaming.
"I'd have gone under, sure, if I'd been alone, but I had the kid to
think of, and every time the tin dinner pail banged against the wall,
it reminded me of what I'd come to look for. Anton would die of thirst
in a few hours, if I didn't find water. As for Jim, I reckoned he was
probably done for, anyway.
"I think--I'm not sure but I think so--I had a spell of running
crazily round and round in a circle, trying to get away from
something--I don't know what. It was then I gave my head a bang," he
pointed to the bandage still on his head, "and while that stunned me a
bit, it steadied me, too.
"By that time, I was lost for fair. I couldn't hear Anton's tapping. I
couldn't hear anything. I tried to turn back and got all mixed up in
the run of the galleries. I wandered this way and that, as blindly as
if I'd never been in the mine before.
"And then I heard a sound like the ticking of a big clock.
"That scared me more than anything.
"I remembered all Otto's' stories about the 'knockers,' and, though I
didn't believe them, I couldn't get them out of my head. Somebody,
something, was knocking softly underground!
"It wasn't human, that was sure!
"It couldn't be Anton, because he'd been told to tap in threes. It
couldn't be Jim, for the ticks were too close together to be the
strokes of a pick; besides, I knew that Jim had left his tools behind.
It couldn't be rescuers, because the sound was near me. Near me? It
was almost at my ear.
"Sometimes breaking timber cracks. It might be a prop gradually giving
way, I thought, just ready to let down a new fall of rock on my head.
But a creaking timber is sometimes loud, sometimes soft, and this
ticking, as I said, was regular, like a big clock.
"Then I guessed!
"It was drops of water falling!
"I could have shouted with relief, but down there, in the dark and the
stillness, the silence was so heavy that I was afraid to shout.
"I felt my way forward, one step and then a second, and the ticking
stopped.
"I took a third step and it began again. I stepped backward, and a
little to one side, and the drop fell on my bare shoulder.
"I took my dinner-pail, moved it forward, backward, this way and that,
until at last I heard the drops falling in the tin.
"I was too thirsty to wait long. As soon as there was a teaspoonful of
water in the pail, I moistened my tongue with it. That was a relief! I
was able to hold out the tin pail, the next time, until there was a
reasonable drink.
"Ugh, it was bitter! It tasted coppery and twisted up my mouth, but it
was liquid, at least. After I had a drink or two, I felt better. My
scare passed away.
"Then I began to think a bit. If water was dropping as quickly as
that, it must be running somewhere. But where? I got down on my hands
and knees and began to feel along the floor. Here it was damp; there,
dry. I crawled along for a few minutes, following the line of the damp
floor, and, sure enough, came to a hollow where a good-sized puddle
had collected. There I was able to half-fill the pail.
"So far, I was all right. I'd found the water. But how was I to get
back to Anton? And where was Jim, if he were still alive? I hadn't any
idea, any more, of which way to turn.
"Then I got a scheme. Suppose I just walked straight ahead, keeping my
right hand against the wall, and turning to the right at every opening
I came to? I knew that we were hemmed in at every point. Therefore, I
figured, we must be inside some kind of an irregular circle. The place
where we had made our beds was in the room where I had been working,
which was in the end gallery, and, at that rate, somewhere on the
circumference of that circle. If I kept on going, long enough, I'd be
bound to strike the place.
"Off I started with the pail half-full of water. I walked, in and out,
up one gallery and down another, coming back to the rock falls which
had blocked the way, and on again. I tried to count my paces, and,
though I forgot sometimes, I figured that I'd done about seven
thousand paces when I heard, faintly:
"'Tap! Tap! Tap!'
"It seemed to come from behind me.
"I wasn't to be fooled by the echoes, though, and so I kept on as I
had been going. Just a little further and I turned a corner and came
to the place where we had made our beds.
"Anton was down.
"He hadn't been able to keep on tapping on the roof, as I had told him
to. He hadn't the strength. But the kid's pluck was holding, though
his vitality wasn't. He'd taken his maul (a large hammer used for
driving wedges in the coal) and was lifting this from the ground and
then dropping it, three strokes at a time, like I'd told him to do.
"When I spoke to him he couldn't answer. His tongue was so swollen
that it just about filled up his whole mouth.
"I gave him some water, a sip or two at a time, and then, when I
thought he could stand it, a real drink. Even then, I had to go slow,
for my dinner pail was only half-full.
"I still had a few bites of food left, but I wasn't hungry, I'd gone
too far for that. My mouth was sore, too. The copperas water screwed
up my palate and my tongue like eating unripe bananas does, only a lot
worse. It worked the same way on Anton."
"It was that water that helped you, though," put in the mine doctor.
"The sulphate of iron in it lowered the activity of the body, drying
it up, so that you could go on with less loss of tissue."
"It tasted nasty enough to have anything in it! Just the same, it was
water. When I woke up from a nap, I found the pail empty. The
youngster had finished it, but when I rowed him for doing it, he
couldn't remember having drunk it at all. He was only half-conscious,
any way.
"My tongue was beginning to swell again. I saw we'd have to shift our
headquarters so as to be near that water, or the time would come when
we'd be too weak to go hunting it. So, following the same scheme of
making a whole circle of the part of the mine where we were trapped, I
went back the way I'd come, making sure that Anton was following right
behind me.
"It seemed a whole lot farther off than I'd thought, I suppose because
I was afraid of passing the place. After a couple of hours, though, I
heard the sound of the dropping water. It was great to hear it again!
We took some long drinks there, I can tell you. Then we scooped up
with our hands some coal dust to lie on, and slumped down again. I was
beginning to feel pretty weak."
"About what day do you suppose that was?" the reporter asked.
"I haven't any idea. Sometimes I thought we'd only been down there a
few hours, sometimes it seemed like weeks. I suppose, really, it was
about the third or the fourth day.
"I woke up suddenly.
"Somebody was laughing!
"It was a queer high-pitched laugh, and half-choked, something like
the neighing of a horse.
"Anton heard it, too.
"'The knockers are coming for us!' he said to me, hoarsely. 'It's just
like Father said. They're laughing at us!'
"Well, I don't mind telling you my blood ran a bit cold. I'm not
superstitious, but, for the second time in that mine, I was scared
enough to run. But where to?
"Anton was gasping horribly; it made me worse to hear him. I put my
hand on his shoulder to quiet him. He was trembling and shaking, like
as he had a chill.
"The laughing came nearer, and louder.
"The louder it got, the less I was scared. After the first few seconds
of fright, I got all right again, and started to think quietly. Then
the real reason came to me.
"It must be Jim!
"I let out a loud shout.
"The laughing stopped dead.
"Then I knew it was Jim; things that weren't human wouldn't care if I
shouted or not.
"'Keep quiet!' I said to Anton. 'It's Jim, and he's coming this way.'
"Presently the laughter began again, a sort of half choked scream,
like I said, but it was laughing just the same. It made my flesh creep
to hear it. Somehow it wasn't quite human, more like an animal trying
to laugh like a man.
"It was quite close to us, now. I got up, for I could hear steps
shuffling along the gallery.
"Suddenly, something bumped into me, though I thought the steps were
several yards away.
"It was Jim, sure enough.
"He gave a sort of screech and both his hands went up to my throat, in
a strangling grip.
"I'm a good deal bigger than Jim, but I was like a baby in his hands.
He had me like in a vise.
"'Help! Help! Anton!' I called. 'He's throttling me! It's Jim!'
"At that, the kid got up, tottering. He was weak enough, but, as you
know, he's really got muscles of iron. In spite of his scare--for he
was dead sure that it was something supernatural--he came to my help.
"The minute he got his hands on Jim and found that it was really flesh
and blood that he was tackling, and not any sort of goblin, he got
furious. He wrenched at his opponent savagely, and the more furious he
got, the more his strength came back. I could hear his sinews
cracking.
"But Jim's grip was that of a madman.
"It was a good thing for me that Anton was the son of the champion
wrestler of the mine. Despite his powerful muscles, he could do
nothing, absolutely nothing against the madman. I felt him let go, and
thought that was the end. My head was bursting, my heart fluttering.
"Then, with a swift change of hold, the youngster took Jim in a
wrestler's grip, one he had learned from his father. It's a death
hold, unless the other weakens. I heard Jim gasp. The clutch loosened.
At last I could breathe and I shook myself free.
"But the madman was not tamed. His fists shot out like flails. One
blow took Anton full in the chest. I heard his body crash against the
wall. I could do little to help him, that choking grip had taken away
every ounce of force I had.
"There wasn't any need for my help. That blow had roused Anton to a
rage but little less than that of his mad foe. He knew nothing of
boxing, but he could wrestle. It was a grim fight, down there in the
dark!
"Despite the madman's blows, Anton ran in, clutched him in some kind
of a wrestler's grip, lifted him clear off his feet and threw him over
his shoulder.
"The madman fell heavily on the rock floor and lay like a log.
"For a minute or two we panted, saying nothing. Then,
"'Have you killed him, Anton?' I asked.
"'I don't know. I hope so,' he answered savagely.
"I felt pretty much that way, myself, at first, for my throat felt as
if it were twisted clear out of shape. But, as I began to feel a bit
better, I thought of Jim lying there.
"After all, he hadn't had any water! Small wonder he'd gone mad.
"Staggering--for that grip had nearly done for me--I got over beside
him and knelt down. His heart was still beating, pretty rapidly, at
that. But his jaws were almost locked upwards, forced apart by his
thickened and swollen tongue.
"I got some water into his mouth, but with difficulty. I couldn't pry
his tongue down far enough to get more than a drop or two in. But I
kept at it--hours, I reckon--and kept on giving him sips of water
until he began to breathe a bit more naturally.
"Then I reckon I fainted, for, when I came to, I was lying right
across Jim. He was still unconscious, but the tongue was a whole lot
better and he was nearly able to close his mouth. I poured a lot more
water into him. Then I tried to give him a bite from the bread I had
left, but he couldn't swallow. So I gave it to Anton, who was moaning
a good bit.
"Me, I was getting less and less hungry. The gnawing pain that I'd
felt at the beginning, especially that first time that I was hunting
water, only came back at longer and longer intervals. In between, I
felt quite all right, rather jolly, in fact. I caught myself laughing,
once, the way I'd heard Jim, and I had hard work to stop it.
Hysterical, I reckon.
"I must have slept a lot, or fainted, I don't know which. I remember
having dreamed that I was rescued, oh, a score of times! Always, when
I was asleep, there seemed plenty of light, generally a bright violet.
It was only when I woke up that it was dark. The blackness was like a
rock lying on my chest. The air I breathed seemed to taste black.
"Jim got violent, more than once. To end up, I had to tie his feet
with my belt, so he couldn't get up on his feet. I wasn't going to
risk any more fights like we'd had with him at the start.
"When he wasn't struggling, he was talking. He talked nearly all the
time, and mostly about some gold mine that he'd found, that he knew
would make him a millionaire and that he wanted to go back to. He
described the place, over and over again. I believe I could go right
there, just from hearing him. The only thing that quieted him was when
I answered. Then he'd shut right up, only to begin again, after a
while.
"What worried me the most about Jim was that he couldn't keep the
bitter water on his stomach. He'd vomit it up, almost as soon as I'd
get it down. I kept pouring it into him, just the same.
"When I put the last bite of grub into Anton--he was dead
unconscious--it seemed like the end of everything. I lost all track of
time. I don't know what happened, after that. I got quite
light-headed, I think.
"Half the while, I didn't know whether the time I was dreaming was
real, or the time I was awake. I knew somehow that the air was getting
bad, and I remember thinking that this might be because a rescue party
was trying to get down the wall.
"But there was always plenty of light when I was asleep, and I liked
that, so, every time I was awake, I tried to go back to sleep."
"Didn't you hear any sounds of the rescue party coming nearer?" Owens
asked.
"I heard them all the time, even when they weren't there," Clem
answered. "How was I to tell what was real and what was dream?
"On one side was Jim telling about his gold mine, on the other was
Anton, crying out from time to time that the knockers had him. Poor
kid, he seemed to be in a nightmare all the while."
"But when the rescuers first spoke to you," the owner of the mine
suggested, "you answered naturally enough."
"Perhaps I did, but I don't remember hearing them, at all, and I don't
remember answering, at least, not more than I had a dozen times
before. I'm not sure that I remember when the doctor came in and put a
gas mask on me. It's all sort of vague.
"The first thing I do remember was coming up to the top and seeing a
green tree. The trees weren't green when I went down a week ago, and I
hadn't dreamed about trees, at all.
"Right now, it's hard to realize that I was buried down there for a
week. If I wasn't so feeble, I'd think it was only a nightmare."
"And about this gold mine of Jim's," queried the reporter, scenting
another phase of the story. "What was that?"
Jim, in a neighboring bed, half-raised himself in anxiety, but his
comrade threw him a reassuring look.
"You'll have to ask Jim that, when he gets better," Clem answered. "I
can't give away his secret. It might be true!"