CHAPTER XVII
UNDERGROUND WANDERINGS
When Peveril next awoke he was racked with pain, and so stiff in every joint that an attempt to move caused him to groan aloud. A faint light dimly revealed his surroundings; but these were so strange and weird that for several minutes he could not imagine where he was nor what had happened. Slowly the truth dawned upon him, and one by one the awful incidents of the past night began to shape themselves in his mind.
"I have been murdered and drowned," he said to himself. "Now I am entombed alive, beyond reach of hope or human knowledge. Never again shall I see the sunlight, never revisit the surface of the earth, never look upon my fellows nor hear the voice of man. I may live for several days, but I must live them alone—alone must I bear my sufferings, and finally I must die alone. What have I done to deserve such a fate? Is there no escape from it? I shall go mad, and I hope I may. Better oblivion than a knowledge of such agony as is in store for me.
"And yet why should I lose faith in the Power that has thus far miraculously preserved me? I am alive, and in possession of all my faculties. I shall not suffer from thirst. I even have a certain amount of food, together with the means for procuring fire. I am not left in utter darkness, and, above all, I have not yet proved by a single trial that escape is impossible. How much better off I am in every respect than thousands of others, who, finding themselves in desperate straits, have yet had the strength and courage to work out their own salvation! What an ingrate I have been! What a coward! But, with God's help, I will no longer be either!"
Having thus brought himself to a happier and more courageous frame of mind, Peveril stiffly gained his feet, moved his limbs, and rubbed them until a certain degree of suppleness was restored. He was about to build a fire, but refrained from so doing upon reflection that his stock of fuel must be limited, and that a fire might be of infinitely greater value at some other time.
Now the prisoner began a careful survey of his surroundings by the feeble light finding its way down the shaft into which he had been flung. As it did not materially increase, he concluded that full day had already reached the upper world. It was also brightest in the middle of the black pool, which showed that the opening through which it came must be directly above that point, and that the shaft must be perpendicular.
Peveril called the hole a shaft, because, while he could neither see to the top nor clearly make out the outlines of the portions nearest at hand, it still impressed him as being of artificial construction, while the opening at one side, in which he stood, also seemed very much like a drift or gallery hewn from the solid rock by human hands.
The impossibility of scaling the sheer, smooth walls of the shaft was evident at a single glance, and Peveril turned from it with a heavy heart. At the same moment his attention was attracted by a sharp squeaking, and, to his dismay, he made out a confused mass of something in active motion about the precious biscuit that he had left beside his fireplace. With a loud cry he sprang in that direction, only to stumble and fall over a small pile of what he took to be rocks that lay in his path.