“Here!” he yelled. “Help! I know now. Mr Lane. He went in there with us, and he aren’t been out. Come on!”
His strength and honest manly feeling had come back with the flash of light which had illumined his brain, and rushing straight for the mist, they saw him begin to grow bigger as if looked at through a magnifying glass, increasing in size till he was monstrous, indistinct and blurred, and then completely disappear.
The man’s cry and subsequent action roused them, and all staggered after him with their power of thinking clearly returning, and with it a feeling of horror as they grasped the fact that two of their party were now lost in the strange belt of vapour, whose fumes had so strangely overcome them.
“We must help them,” cried Panton wildly. “Come on: follow me.”
He started for the mist before them, but before he could reach it, Smith staggered and reeled out, striking against him, and then catching his breath as if he had been held under water, or as a man rises to the surface after being nearly drowned.
“Stop!” he panted, with his eyes seeming to start out of his head. “You can’t go. A man can’t breathe in there. I’ll try again, d’reckly, gentlemen, but—but! oh, the poor, brave, handsome lad! I—I—”
The big, strong, rough fellow’s voice became indistinct, and the sobs rose to his throat, nearly choking him in the weakness he vainly strove to hide.
“Come, come,” said Panton hoarsely, as he supported the man, Drew trying hard the while to shake off the effects of the vapour and be of some service.
“He liked him, gents,” growled Wriggs, an the strange intoxication seemed now to have passed off.
“Yes,” cried Smith, hysterically. “Course I did, gentlemen, and I’m going in again to try and fetch the poor lad out. But,” he continued feebly, “you can’t breathe in there, and it takes hold on yer somehow and sucks the strength out of yer. It’s like when poor Joe Noble went down in the hold among the foul air, and it killed him right off at wunst.”