And evermore their pangs increased,
Nor heaven’s libations ever ceased ...
(No further messages released
They’re on that mountain yet).
[1] Contributed by “Rusticus” to the New York Evening Post at this point in our adventures.
WHEN HE IS IN PAIN HE CALLETH FOR THE BOTTLE
IX. “WIFE, GIVE ME THE PAIN-KILLER”
“I suffered forty-seven separate chills,” said the poet. “And forty-seven separate cramps,” said I. Did we sleep? Six hours passed somehow and it seemed not so long as waiting that time for a train or for a theatre to open. Lindsay lay in a sort of hole. I lay with my head half over the abyss. I watched the stars swim out of the clouds above. I saw the blackness of the bottomless below us become grey as the clouds formed there. Lindsay cried out once: “I’m getting up to light a fire.” “Impossible!” I rejoined. “There’s no wood, and no place to light it.”
“I am afraid the clouds are below us; we may have to stay up here all day,” I whispered, an hour before dawn. But it was all the same to the poet, whose thoughts were entirely in the present.