Nine months before, we had departed from our homes in the States, appointed engineers to the Cassandra Coppermining Company, Limited. Nine months before! and now our situation was worse than any Bowery loafer's; he, at all events, could try the station house when the nights grew colder.
"I knew it was too good to last," cried Gilbert, one morning as we awoke to find ourselves in a dismal plight. The mine was deserted: every man had gone to shoulder a musket on the principle of "compulsory volunteering." We transferred our worries by means of a letter to the head office, and then fell to unlimited euchre, awaiting instructions. Meanwhile, our funds melted away.
At last came one day of maddening heat that drove us to the shade of the mid-level of the mine. There we did what we ought to have done a month before: we held a council of war.
"We've just three and a half pesos left—that's about three dollars," quoth Gilbert sourly.
"Then we've got to tramp."
"Tramp!" echoed Gilbert, "in that!" and he cast an exasperated glance at the landscape. It was an open oven. Below us, the lighthouse lenses flashed back the sunlight in such brightness that if we had not known that all the lights on the coast had been extinguished by order, we might have thought the lamps were still burning. The village huts seemed to shrink and huddle from the glare. Not a creature was abroad; the very air seemed to have swooned in the heat of that narrow creek.
And yet, over the hill crest where the village path cut the upland, a tiny speck rose to sight, and without a pause descended the slope toward us.
"Impossible!" gasped my chum, starting up in amazement. "He's stark, staring mad!"
It was a man running at a sling trot.
"Madman number two," cried Gilbert, and another speck breasted the crest, and hurriedly descended on the heels of the first comer. And then, by ones and twos, more men appeared and swung downward, hurriedly and without a halt, until we counted twenty-one of them on the slope. They came nearer and lower, and we saw sparkles of light breaking off them as they ran; then we both cried together: "Soldiers!" And at that word all the world was of interest.