out further delay. No time was to be lost.

It was at this moment that I had reason to bless the thoughtfulness of
my uncle, when he refused to allow the eider hunter to close the
orifices of the hot spring--that small fissure in the great mass of
granite. This beneficent spring after having saved us from thirst during
so many days would now enable me to regain the right road.

Having come to this mental decision, I made up my mind, before I started
upwards, that ablution would certainly do me a great deal of good.

I stopped to plunge my hands and forehead in the pleasant water of the
Hansbach stream, blessing its presence as a certain consolation.

Conceive my horror and stupefaction!--I was treading a hard, dusty,
shingly road of granite. The stream on which I reckoned had wholly
disappeared!

CHAPTER 24

LOST!

No words in any human language can depict my utter despair. I was
literally buried alive; with no other expectation before me but to die
in all the slow horrible torture of hunger and thirst.

Mechanically I crawled about, feeling the dry and arid rock. Never to my
fancy had I ever felt anything so dry.

But, I frantically asked myself, how had I lost the course of the
flowing stream? There could be no doubt it had ceased to flow in the
gallery in which I now was. Now I began to understand the cause of the
strange silence which prevailed when last I tried if any appeal from my
companions might perchance reach my ear.

It so happened that when I first took an imprudent step in the wrong
direction, I did not perceive the absence of the all-important stream.

It was now quite evident that when we halted, another tunnel must have
received the waters of the little torrent, and that I had unconsciously
entered a different gallery. To what unknown depths had my companions
gone? Where was I?

How to get back! Clue or landmark there was absolutely none! My feet
left no signs on the granite and shingle. My brain throbbed with agony
as I tried to discover the solution of this terrible problem. My
situation, after all sophistry and reflection, had finally to be summed
up in three awful words--

<i>Lost!</i> Lost!! LOST!!!

Lost at a depth which, to my finite understanding, appeared to be
immeasurable.

These thirty leagues of the crust of the earth weighed upon my shoulders
like the globe on the shoulders of Atlas. I felt myself crushed by the
awful weight. It was indeed a position to drive the