death by gradual stifling.
“You MUST take a little water,” Elma murmured, pouring out the last few drops for him into the tin cup—for Cyril had brought a small bottleful that morning for his painting, as well as a packet of sandwiches for lunch. “You’re dreadfully tired. I can see your lips are parched and dry with digging.”
She was deathly pale herself, and her own eyes were livid, for by this time she had fairly given up all hope of rescue; and, besides, the air in the tunnel was so foul and stupefying, she could hardly speak; indeed, her tongue clung to her palate. But she poured out the last few drops into the cup for Cyril and held them up imploringly, with a gesture of supplication. These two were no strangers to one another now. They had begun to know each other well in those twelve long hours of deadly peril shared in common.
Cyril waved the cup aside with a firm air of dissent.
“No, no,” he said, faintly, “you must drink it yourself. Your need is greater far than mine.”
Elma tried to put it away in turn, but Cyril would not allow her. So she moistened her mouth with those scanty last drops, and turned towards him gratefully.
“There’s no hope left now,” she said, in a very resigned voice. “We must make up our minds to die where we stand. But I thank you, oh, I thank you so much, so earnestly.”
Cyril, for his part, could hardly find breath to speak.
“Thank you,” he gasped out, in one last despairing effort. “Things look very black; but while there’s life there’s hope. They may even still, perhaps, come up with us.”
As he spoke, a sound broke unexpectedly on the silence of their prison. A dull thud seemed to make itself faintly heard from beyond the thick wall of sand that cut them off from the daylight. Cyril stared with surprise. It was a noise like a pick-axe. Stooping hastily down, he laid his ear against the rail beside the shattered carriage.
“They’re digging!” he cried earnestly, finding words in his joy. “They’re digging to reach us! I can hear them! I can hear them!”
Elma glanced up at him with a certain tinge of half-incredulous surprise.
“Yes, they’re digging, of course,” she said quickly. “I knew they’d dig for us, naturally, as soon as they missed us. But how far off are they yet? That’s the real question. Will they reach us in time? Are they near or distant?”
Cyril knelt down on the ground as before, in an agony of suspense, and struck the rail three times distinctly with his walking-stick. Then he put his ear to it and listened, and waited. In less than half a minute three answering knocks rang, dim but unmistakable, along the buried rail. He could even feel the vibration on the iron with his face.
“They hear us! They hear us!” he cried once more, in a tremor of excitement. “I don’t think they’re far off. They’re coming rapidly towards us.”
At the words Elma rose from her seat, still paler than ever, but strangely resolute, and took the stick from his hand with a gesture of despair. She was almost stifled. But she raised it with method. Knocking the rail twice, she bent down her head and listened in turn. Once more two answering knocks rang sharp along the connecting line of metal. Elma shook her head ominously.
“No, no, they’re a very long way off still,” she murmured, in a faltering tone. “I can hear it quite well. They can never reach us!”
She seated herself on a fragment of the broken carriage, and buried her face in her hands once more in silence. Her heart was full. Her head was very heavy. She gasped and struggled. Then a sudden intuition seized her, after her kind. If the rail could carry the sound of a tap, surely it might carry the human voice as well. Inspired with the idea, she rose again and leant forward.
A second time she knocked two quick little taps, ringing sharp on the rail, as if to bespeak attention; then, putting her mouth close to the metals, she shouted aloud along them with all the voice that was left her—
“Hallo, there, do you hear? Come soon, come fast. We’re alive, but choking!”
Quick as lightning an answer rang back as if by magic, along the conducting line of the rail—a strange unexpected answer.
“Break the pipe of the wires,” it said, and then subsided instantly.
Cyril, who was leaning down at her side at the moment with his ear to the rail, couldn’t make out one word of it. But Elma’s sharp senses, now quickened by the crisis, were acute as an Oriental’s and keen as a beagle’s.
“Break the pipe of the wires,” they say, she exclaimed, starting back and pondering. “What on earth can they mean by that? What on earth can they be driving at? ‘Break the pipe of the wires.’ I don’t understand them.”
Hardly had she spoken, when another sharp tap resounded still more clearly along the rail at her feet. She bent down her head once more, and laid her eager ear beside it in terrible suspense. A rough man’s voice—a navvy’s, no doubt, or a fireman’s—came speeding along the metal; and it said in thick accents—
“Do you hear what I say? If you want to breathe freer, break the pipe of the wires, and you’ll get fresh air from outside right through it.”
Cyril this time had caught the words, and jumped up with a sudden air of profound conviction. It was very dark, and the lamps were going out, but he took his fusee-box from his pocket and struck a light hastily. Sure enough, on the left-hand side of the tunnel, half buried in rubbish, an earthenware pipe ran along by the edge near the wall of the archway. Cyril raised his foot and brought his heel down upon it sharply with all the strength and force he had still left in him. The pipe broke short, and Cyril saw within it a number of telegraph wires for the railway service. The tube communicated directly with the air outside. They were saved! They were saved! Air would come through the pipe! He saw it all now! He dimly understood it!
At the self-same moment, another sound of breaking was heard more distinctly at the opposite end, some thirty or forty feet off through the tunnel. Then a voice rang far clearer, as if issuing from the tube, in short, sharp sentences—
“We’ll pump you in air. How many of you are there? Are you all alive? Is any one injured?”
Cyril leant down and shouted back in reply—
“We’re two. Both alive. Not hurt. But sick and half dead with stifling. Send us air as soon as ever you can. And if possible pass us a bottle of water.”
Some minutes elapsed—three long, slow minutes of it—intense anxiety. Elma, now broken down with terror and want of oxygen, fell half fainting forward towards the shattered tube. Cyril held her up in his supporting arms, and watched the pipe eagerly. It seemed an age; but, after a time, he became conscious of a gust of air blowing cold on his face. The keen freshness revived him.
He looked about him and drew a deep breath. Cool air was streaming in through the broken place. Quick as thought, he laid Elma’s mouth as close as he could lay it to the reviving current. Her eyes were closed. After a painful interval, she opened them languidly. Cyril chafed her hands with his, but his chafing seemed to produce very little effect. She lay motionless now with her eyelids half shut, and the whites of her eyes alone showing through them. The close, foul air of that damp and confined spot had worked its worst, and had almost asphyxiated her. Cyril began to fear the slight relief had arrived five minutes too late. And it must still in all probability be some hours at least before they could be actually disentombed from that living vault or restored to the open air of heaven.
As he bent over her and held his breath in speechless suspense, the voice called out again more loudly than ever—
“Look out for the ball in the tube. We’re sending you water!”
Cyril watched the pipe closely and struck another light. In a minute, a big glass marble came rattling through, with a string attached to it.
“Pull the string!” the voice cried; and Cyril pulled with a will. Now and again, the object attached