less search. We had become fairly well limbered up by that time
and set out with comparative ease.

We had gone perhaps a hundred yards, bearing off to the right, when
Harry gave a sudden cry: "My knife is gone!" and stopped short. I
clapped my hand to my own belt instinctively, and found it empty both
of knife and gun! For a moment we stood in silence; then:

"Have you got yours?" he demanded.

When I told him no he let out an oath.

His gun was gone, also. We debated the matter, and decided that to
attempt a search would be a useless waste of time; it was next to
certain that the weapons had been lost in the water when we had first
plunged in. And so, doubly handicapped by this new loss, we again set
out.

There was but one encouragement allowed to us: we were no longer in
total darkness. Gradually our eyes were becoming accustomed to the
absence of light; and though we could by no means see clearly, nor even
could properly be said to see at all, still we began to distinguish the
outlines of walls several feet away; and, better than that, each of us
could plainly mark the form and face of the other.

Once we stood close, less than a foot apart, for a test; and when Harry
cried eagerly, "Thank Heaven, I can see your nose!" our strained
feelings were relieved by a prolonged burst of genuine laughter.

There was little enough of it in the time that followed, for our
sufferings now became a matter not of minutes or hours, but of days.
The assault of time is the one that unnerves a man, especially when it
is aided by gnawing pain and weariness and hunger; it saps the courage
and destroys the heart and fires the brain.

We dragged ourselves somehow ever onward. We found water; the mountain
was honeycombed with underground streams; but no food. More than once
we were tempted to trust ourselves to one of those rushing torrents,
but what reason we had left told us that our little remaining strength
was unequal to the task of keeping our heads above the surface. And
yet the thought was sweet--to allow ourselves to be peacefully swept
into oblivion.

We lost all idea of time and direction, and finally hope itself
deserted us. What force it was that propelled us forward must have
been buried deep within the seat of animal instinct, for we lost all
rational power. The thing became a nightmare, like the crazy
wanderings of a lost soul.

Forward--forward--forward! It was a mania.

Then Harry was stricken wi