“Oh, yes, I can,” said the midshipman, coolly; “but I’ve got no more miserables left in me. I used ’em all up when I was chained up by myself in the dark. I feel now quite jolly compared to what I was.”
“Nonsense. You can’t grasp what a terrible strait we’re in.”
“Oh, yes, I can. We’re buried alive.”
“Well, isn’t that horrible?” said Aleck.
“Pretty tidy, but not half so bad as being buried dead. It would be all over then; but as we’re buried alive perhaps we shall be able to unbury ourselves.”
“You must be half mad,” said Aleck, angrily, “or you’d never talk so lightly.”
“Lightly? I don’t talk lightly. I’m as serious as a judge.”
“But what are we to do?”
“Wait a bit and let’s think. We can live down here for ever so long; that is, as long as the rations last. Then we shall have to try some other way out.”
“Yes; but what way?”