s, to make
our position more secure. We did not venture to speak of our late
companion's fate to one another. Horror overwhelmed us, so enfeebled had
we become through famine and fatigue. We had devoured our leather belts,
and even crumbled the rotten wood of the timber-props in water, and
eaten that; but we were now consumed by thirst, which we dared no longer
quench. We were afraid to venture down as before for the water in which
the old man had sunk to death; and it was that which had kept us alive."

"Don't forget about how you made a bucket of your boots, Sol," suggested
Trevethick, gravely.

"Yes, at last we tied a string to a boot, and got the water up that
way," continued Solomon; "but our stomachs turned against it."

"It was not so good as my punch," observed the landlord,
parenthetically, and emptying his steaming glass.

"More dark days came and went, though, of course, we could not tell how
many; then, all of a sudden, we heard a human voice, inquiring: 'How
many are you?' 'We are three,' was our reply. We had not the courage
even then to own that one of us had already been taken; death seemed
still so near to us. The aperture which had thus let in the world upon
us was also very small."

"And what was it you asked for first?" interrupted the landlord, with a
nod at Richard, as much as to say: "Listen now; this is curious."

"What we wanted was light. 'Light above all things!' was our cry. But
our deliverers could give us but little of that, for they had scarcely
any themselves. They had been working in a narrow gallery, by means of
five inclined driftways, at each of which only one man could ply his
pick at a time, and where light and air could only be procured
artificially. The coal was carried out in baskets as fast as it was hewn
out: the atmosphere in which they thus toiled like giants, naked to the
waist, was almost suffocating; yet, under these conditions, they had
literally effected in four days, to save our lives, what it would have
taken them four weeks to do, had they been working by the piece for
wages. They had even been compelled to put up ventilators, and their
lamps would only burn when close to these. They gave us broth through a
tin pipe; but almost another day elapsed before the hole was large
enough for them to carry us through it in their arms."

"And there was nobody else saved, was there?" inquired the landlord,
with a triumphant look.

"There was not," said Solomon, expressi