“If I am to die I’m not going to deny myself a drink of water;” and drained a quarter of its contents at one gulp almost. Frank and Harry both possessed plenty of self-control, but the sight of Billy’s assuagement of his thirst was more than they could bear, and simultaneously each of them seized his canteen and throwing back his head let the grateful stream trickle down their parched throats.
“I could hear it sizzle,” exclaimed Harry, putting his canteen aside with a sigh of satisfaction.
That night the boys bravely fought off all temptation to touch any more of their precious water, but when the sun got up and the parching heat of the day penetrated even into the shaft they could bear it no longer. They took their canteens and drank and when they set them down from their lips they contained only a few drops each. As for food they still had some left, but they scarcely dared to eat it fearing to increase the maddening torture of thirst. As the day wore on they sat round the bottom of the shaft in a sort of hopeless apathy.
Their tongues were swollen till they could hardly speak, their eyes were caked with dust and red-rimmed, their lips blackened and parched by their sufferings. They were indeed a different looking group to the trim Chester Exploration Expedition that had set out so light-heartedly the day before. From time to time they fell into a sleep of sheer exhaustion from which they awakened unrefreshed. Strange visions of cool flashing brooks, green orchards and crystal lakes shot through their minds. The first stages of the delirium that precedes death by hunger and thirst were upon them and they realized it. Long before night came and the coolness relieved their sufferings to a slight extent they had emptied the last drops of water in their canteens. They had even resorted to the expedient of staggering back along the tunnel, to where the walls began to grow damp, and licking off the grateful moisture with their tongues. Infinitesimal as the relief was, still it furnished some alleviation of their sufferings.
At daybreak the next day, Harry and Billy were comatose. They lay with their eyes closed at the bottom of the shaft uncaring of their fate. This is the merciful anodyne that nature sometimes brings to those she dooms to die in the cruelest way imaginable. Frank alone held out against the deadly torpor he felt creeping over him.
“While there’s life there’s hope,” he kept whispering through his cracked lips, but he knew that in his heart hope had died and there was nothing to wait for but death.
An idea suddenly struck him. Perhaps some day, long after they were dead, somebody would stumble on them. He would leave a record of their names and how they met their fate. Feverishly, with half palsied hands, he searched through his pockets for a pencil and a scrap of paper. He drew out a handful of odds and ends from his pocket, and sorted through them for a stub of pencil. As he did so his waterproof matchbox fell from the collection and rolled slowly to his feet. He gazed at it stupidly. The idea flashed into his mind, that they would give a lot of fire now for water and here was the means of fire so carefully protected against the element that would give them life. He laughed mirthlessly, but suddenly staggered to his feet, a last hope animating him—
“Fire!”
Across the boy’s reeling brain there shot an idea, as he stared at the matchbox.
If a column of smoke were seen from the shaft mouth it might bring aid. What a fool he was not to have thought of that before. Hastily he tore his shirt into strips and with his blackened, blood-stained hands scraped together some litter that had fallen from the brush above into the shaft.