It had been part of the play that each member of their little party should carry a dinner-pail just like an ordinary miner. Wherefore she had hers still in her hand.
“Yes, and I have a candle here. Have you another match?”
He lit the candle with a shaking hand.
“Gimme that bucket,” he ordered gruffly, and began to devour ravenously the food he found in it, tearing at sandwiches and gulping them down like a hungry dog.
“What day is this?” he stopped to ask after he had stayed the first pangs.
She told him Tuesday.
“I ain't eaten since Saturday,” he told her. “I figured it was a week. There ain't any days in this place—nothin' but night. Can't tell one from another.”
“It's terrible,” she agreed.
His appetite was wolfish. She could see that he was spent, so weak with hunger that he had reeled against the wall as she handed him the dinner-pail. Pallor was on the sunken face, and exhaustion in the trembling hands and unsteady gait.
“I'm about all in, what with hunger and all I been through. I thought I was out of my head when I heard you holler.” He snatched up the candle from the place where he had set it and searched her face by its flame. “How come you down here? You didn't come alone. What you doin' here?” he demanded suspiciously.