alf-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 h