But Alaskon could, feebly, but sufficiently. Even the coldness of the water—a totally new experience for a man who had never drunk anything but the soup-warm contents of the bromelaids—seemed to help him. He lay back at last, and said in a weak but otherwise normal voice: "So the stream was water after all."
"Yes," Honath said. "And there are fish in it, too."
"Don't talk," Mathild said. "Rest, Alaskon."
"I'm resting. Honath, if we stick to the course of the stream.... Where was I? Oh. We can follow the stream through the Range, now that we know it's water. How did you find that out?"
"I lost my balance and fell into it."
Alaskon chuckled. "Hell's not so bad, is it?" he said. Then he sighed, and rushes creaked under him.
"Mathild! What's the matter? Is he—did he die?"
"No ... no. He's breathing. He's still sicker than he realizes, that's all.... Honath—if they'd known, up above, how much courage you have—"
"I was scared white," Honath said grimly. "I'm still scared."
But her hand touched his again in the solid blackness, and after he had taken it, he felt irrationally cheerful. With Alaskon breathing so raggedly behind them, there was little chance that either of them would be able to sleep that night; but they sat silently together on the hard stone in a kind of temporary peace. When the mouth of the cave began to outline itself with the first glow of the red sun, they looked at each other in a conspiracy of light all their own.