Chapter 28

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE RESCUE IN THE WHISPERING GALLERY

When I returned to partial life my face was wet with tears. How longthat state of insensibility had lasted I cannot say. I had no meansnow of taking account of time. Never was solitude equal to this,never had any living being been so utterly forsaken.

After my fall I had lost a good deal of blood. I felt it flowing overme. Ah! how happy I should have been could I have died, and if deathwere not yet to be gone through. I would think no longer. I droveaway every idea, and, conquered by my grief, I rolled myself to thefoot of the opposite wall.

Already I was feeling the approach of another faint, and was hopingfor complete annihilation, when a loud noise reached me. It was likethe distant rumble of continuous thunder, and I could hear itssounding undulations rolling far away into the remote recesses of theabyss.

Whence could this noise proceed? It must be from some phenomenonproceeding in the great depths amidst which I lay helpless. Was it anexplosion of gas? Was it the fall of some mighty pillar of the globe?

I listened still. I wanted to know if the noise would be repeated. Aquarter of an hour passed away. Silence reigned in this gallery. Icould not hear even the beating of my heart.

Suddenly my ear, resting by chance against the wall, caught, orseemed to catch, certain vague, indescribable, distant, articulatesounds, as of words.

"This is a delusion," I thought.

But it was not. Listening more attentively, I heard in reality amurmuring of voices. But my weakness prevented me from understandingwhat the voices said. Yet it was language, I was sure of it.

For a moment I feared the words might be my own, brought back by theecho. Perhaps I had been crying out unknown to myself. I closed mylips firmly, and laid my ear against the wall again.

"Yes, truly, some one is speaking; those are words!"

Even a few feet from the wall I could hear distinctly. I succeeded incatching uncertain, strange, undistinguishable words. They came as ifpronounced in low murmured whispers. The word '_forlorad_' wasseveral times repeated in a tone of sympathy and sorrow.

"Help!" I cried with all my might. "Help!"

I listened, I watched in the darkness for an answer, a cry, a merebreath of sound, but nothing came. Some minutes passed. A whole worldof ideas had opened in my mind. I thought that my weakened voicecould never penetrate to my companions.

"It is they," I repeated. "What other men can be thirty leagues underground?"

I again began to listen. Passing my ear over the wall from one placeto another, I found the point where the voices seemed to be bestheard. The word '_forlorad_' again returned; then the rolling ofthunder which had roused me from my lethargy.

"No," I said, "no; it is not through such a mass that a voice can beheard. I am