As he proceeded, the air grew more and more unbearable. His skin seemed to be on fire, and his eyes were filled with an aching, burning, smart that was maddening. But the boy kept repeating over and over to himself the words he had uttered as he plunged back over the path of danger.
"I must get them out. I must get them out!"
In the pitchy darkness, with mind and body burning, he painfully wriggled on.
"I can't keep this up much longer," was his thought; "where are they, oh, where are they?"
Suddenly he bumped into something soft. It was a human body.
"Professor!" gasped the boy in a voice which he knew must be his own, but which sounded strangely like that of another person.
A faint groan answered him.
"You must come with me. I must get you out. I must get you out," gasped Ralph. He seized the other's clothes and made a brave effort to drag him forward. But as he did so, everything seemed to race round and round in his head in a mad whirligig, and the boy collapsed in a senseless heap beside the two he had come to save.