We talked no more, but set about bathing and dressing our wounds.  Gad, how that cold water took them!  I was forced to set my teeth deep into my lip to keep from crying out, and once or twice Harry gave an involuntary grunt of pain that would not be suppressed.

When we had finished we waded far to the right to take a last deep drink; then sought our clothing and prepared to start on our all but hopeless search.  We had become fairly well limbered up by that time and set out with comparative ease.

We had gone perhaps a hundred yards, bearing off to the right, when Harry gave a sudden cry:  “My knife is gone!” and stopped short.  I clapped my hand to my own belt instinctively, and found it empty both of knife and gun!  For a moment we stood in silence; then: 

“Have you got yours?” he demanded.

When I told him no he let out an oath.

His gun was gone, also.  We debated the matter, and decided that to attempt a search would be a useless waste of time; it was next to certain that the weapons had been lost in the water when we had first plunged in.  And so, doubly handicapped by this new loss, we again set out.

There was but one encouragement allowed to us:  we were no longer in total darkness.  Gradually our eyes were becoming accustomed to the absence of light; and though we could by no means see clearly, nor even could properly be said to see at all, still we began to distinguish the outlines of walls several feet away; and, better than that, each of us could plainly mark the form and face of the other.

Once we stood close, less than a foot apart, for a test; and when Harry cried eagerly, “Thank Heaven, I can see your nose!” our strained feelings were relieved by a prolonged burst of genuine laughter.

There was little enough of it in the time that followed, for our sufferings now became a matter not of minutes or hours, but of days.  The assault of time is the one that unnerves a man, especially when it is aided by gnawing pain and weariness and hunger; it saps the courage and destroys the heart and fires the brain.

We dragged ourselves somehow ever onward.  We found water; the mountain was honeycombed with underground streams; but no food.  More than once we were tempted to trust ourselves to one of those rushing torrents, but what reason we had left told us that our little remaining strength was unequal to the task of keeping our heads above the surface.  And yet the thought was sweet—­to allow ourselves to be peacefully swept into oblivion.

We lost all idea of time and direction, and finally hope itself deserted us.  What force it was that propelled us forward must have been buried deep within the seat of animal instinct, for we lost all rational power.  The thing became a nightmare, like the crazy wanderings of a lost soul.

Forward—­forward—­forward!  It was a mania.

Then Harry was stricken with fever and became delirious.  And I think it was that seeming misfortune that saved us, for it gave me a spring for action and endowed me with new life.  As luck would have it, a stream of water was near, and I half carried and half dragged him to its edge.