_ CHAPTER THIRTY TWO. A NOVEL NIGHTMARE
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. _