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!"