"'I'll be back with a full dinner-pail while you're sitting there doing nothing!' he boasted, and off he started. I'd have gone with him, quick enough, but I didn't want Anton to wake and find himself alone.
"After a while Anton woke up. I heard him munching, so I knew he was at his grub. I warned him not to finish it all at once, but he was so hungry he couldn't stop. I couldn't blame him much, at that. I was so ravenous that my stomach seemed to be tying itself up in knots, and the flesh inside seemed to crawl.
"I had to tell him that Jim had gone off by himself. Anton didn't say much to that. In fact, he didn't want to talk at all. He was brooding all the time. Twice I overheard him muttering to himself, and both times he was talking about Otto and his warning.
"I could see he was blaming me, but I'll say this for the boy—he never once said that he regretted having come back to warn me."
"That," interrupted the superintendent emphatically, "shows the boy is good stuff. It takes a good deal of moral courage to keep from blaming some one else, when you're in a pinch. I remember, once, in West Australia—" He checked himself. "Go ahead with your story, lad."
Clem resumed.
"Some time after—it seemed about an hour, though it may have been a good deal less or a good deal more—we heard shouting.
"'Jim's found the way out!' cried Anton, and scrambled to his feet.
"I grabbed him as he rose.
"'Don't run off in that fool fashion,' I said to him. 'Make sure where the shouts are coming from, first. You've been down in a mine long enough to know that the echoes are apt to make a noise sound as if it comes in a directly opposite direction from the right one.'