“There’s food, and the snow for water; it would be long before we should starve. Why are you so silent now? Come, we must rest, and then try to cut our way out when the daylight comes.”
“The daylight!” said the other, with a mocking laugh.
“Yes; we may see a dim dawn to show us which way to tunnel.”
“Ah, of course!”
“Could you sleep now?”
“No, no; we must talk, or I shall go off my head. That brute hurt me so, it has made me rather strange. Yes, I must talk. I say: God bless you, old fellow! You saved my life from those wretches, and now you’re keeping me from going mad. I say! The air is all right.”
“Yes; I can breathe freely, and I am not cold.”
“I am hot. I say, let’s talk. Tell me how you came to be here.”
“Afterwards; the words would not come now. You tell me how you came.”
“Yes; it will keep off the horrors; it’s like a romance, and now it does not seem to be true. And yet it is, and it happened just as if it were only yesterday. I never thought of coming out here. I was going to be a soldier.”