"Of course. At lofty heights, the dense air in the drum presses the membrane outwards. Swallowing permits the dense air to escape. One swallows until the pressure on the inside equals that of the rarefied outside air, and, hocus-pocus and presto, the pain has evaporated."
"I hope," I said, "that all our difficulties will be as easily resolved."
"Hey!" cried Milton.
"What's the matter now?"
"Stop swallowing that water! We've got food sufficient for a week, but we haven't got water to last a week or anything like a week. Keep up that guzzling, and your canteen will be empty before sunset."
"Sunset? Sweet Pluto! Sunrise, sunset or high noon, it's all the same here in Erebus."
"You'll say that it's very different," dryly remarked Milton Rhodes, "if you find the fingers of Thirst at your throat."
"Surely there is water in this place—somewhere."
"Most certainly there is. But we don't know how far we are from that somewhere. And, until we get to it, our policy, Bill, must be one of watchful conservation."
A silence ensued. I sank into profound and gloomy meditation. Four thousand feet down. A mile deeper, and where would we be? The prospect certainly was, from any point of view, dark and mysterious enough, dark and mysterious enough, forsooth, to satisfy the wildest dream of a Poe or a Doré. To imagine a Dante's Inferno, however, is one thing, and to find yourself in it is quite another. These are things, by the way, that should not be confounded. 'Tis true, we weren't in it yet; but we were on our way.