When she awoke again her head was clearer, but she was terribly weak. It was dark as ever, but the suffocating feeling had gone, and she could no longer see the signal lights, but the peculiar drip, drip, of water was there.
“I must have slept again long past the time when Gil would come,” she said, with a wild feeling of yearning for him; and now again she tried to make out where she was.
“I must be mad!” she exclaimed in a despairing tone, and she started, for her voice seemed followed by a hollow whispering murmur, that sent a shudder through her frame.
Crouching down once more, she waited with eyes and ears on the strain, but still there was nothing to be seen, no sound to be heard but that ceaseless drip, drip of water that fell with a faint musical plash somewhere hard by.
But her senses were gradually growing clearer, her perceptions more vivid, and she tried to make out what was the meaning of a peculiar heavy odour.
“It is powder!” she exclaimed, with a shudder. “Can there have been a mishap while I slept?”
She paused, trying to think, and her senses grew clearer still.
“Yes, it is powder; there must have been an explosion;” and she recalled the strange, dank, pungent odour that she had often breathed when some accident had occurred.
“But when? How could the powder have fired?”
She tried hard to think it out: but her mind was still too confused, and in a helpless manner she groped her way in the direction of the dropping water, till she felt a splash upon her head, and, stooping down, plunged her hands into what seemed to be a deep, cold pool.