Chapter 23 - Page 2

closest. I satnear the wall, while the waters were flowing past me at a distance oftwo feet with extreme violence. But there was a thick granite wallbetween us and the object of our desires.

Without reflection, without asking if there were any means ofprocuring the water, I gave way to a movement of despair.

Hans glanced at me with, I thought, a smile of compassion.

He rose and took the lamp. I followed him. He moved towards the wall.I looked on. He applied his ear against the dry stone, and moved itslowly to and fro, listening intently. I perceived at once that hewas examining to find the exact place where the torrent could beheard the loudest. He met with that point on the left side of thetunnel, at three feet from the ground.

I was stirred up with excitement. I hardly dared guess what thehunter was about to do. But I could not but understand, and applaudand cheer him on, when I saw him lay hold of the pickaxe to make anattack upon the rock.

"We are saved!" I cried.

"Yes," cried my uncle, almost frantic with excitement. "Hans isright. Capital fellow! Who but he would have thought of it?"

Yes; who but he? Such an expedient, however simple, would never haveentered into our minds. True, it seemed most hazardous to strike ablow of the hammer in this part of the earth's structure. Supposesome displacement should occur and crush us all! Suppose the torrent,bursting through, should drown us in a sudden flood! There wasnothing vain in these fancies. But still no fears of falling rocks orrushing floods could stay us now; and our thirst was so intense that,to satisfy it, we would have dared the waves of the north Atlantic.

Hans set about the task which my uncle and I together could not haveaccomplished. If our impatience had armed our hands with power, weshould have shattered the rock into a thousand fragments. Not soHans. Full of self possession, he calmly wore his way through therock with a steady succession of light and skilful strokes, workingthrough an aperture six inches wide at the outside. I could hear alouder noise of flowing waters, and I fancied I could feel thedelicious fluid refreshing my parched lips.

The pick had soon penetrated two feet into the granite partition, andour man had worked for above an hour. I was in an agony ofimpatience. My uncle wanted to employ stronger measures, and I hadsome difficulty in dissuading him; still he had just taken a pickaxein his hand, when a sudden hissing was heard, and a jet of waterspurted out with violence against the opposite wall.

Hans, almost thrown off his feet by the violence of the shock,uttered a cry of grief and disappointment, of which I soon under-.stood the cause, when plunging my hands into the spouting torrent, Iwithdrew them in haste, for the water was scalding hot.

"The water is at the boiling point," I cried.

"Well, never mind, let it cool," my uncle