"But when the rescuers first spoke to you," the owner of the mine suggested, "you answered naturally enough."
"Perhaps I did, but I don't remember hearing them, at all, and I don't remember answering, at least, not more than I had a dozen times before. I'm not sure that I remember when the doctor came in and put a gas mask on me. It's all sort of vague.
"The first thing I do remember was coming up to the top and seeing a green tree. The trees weren't green when I went down a week ago, and I hadn't dreamed about trees, at all.
"Right now, it's hard to realize that I was buried down there for a week. If I wasn't so feeble, I'd think it was only a nightmare."
"And about this gold mine of Jim's," queried the reporter, scenting another phase of the story. "What was that?"
Jim, in a neighboring bed, half-raised himself in anxiety, but his comrade threw him a reassuring look.
"You'll have to ask Jim that, when he gets better," Clem answered. "I can't give away his secret. It might be true!"
CHAPTER V
THE LURE OF GOLD
In Clem's story one word had been spoken, the one word which, in all ages, has been as a raging fire in men's minds, which has sent scores to die on the scorching deserts of Africa and Australia, or on the borders of the Arctic Seas, which has bred fevered adventure, lawlessness, and murder wherever it has been spoken, the word: