Again there was an interval of speechlessness, and then the hushed voice of the young woman sitting with her hands locked over her knees. “Did my father know of that prospecting?” she asked. “Yes.” “Poor father!” she said, and her voice was shaken. “He is just simply stone blind on that side, David. I’ve tried and tried, and I can’t make him see! And now--he is going--to pay--the highest price he knows--for the dreadful cure!” “It is time for you to forget for a while, if you can,” said David, not knowing what else to say; and he went aside with Regnier, blowing out the light of the precious candle-end to save it for a time of greater need. A little later, when he came back and struck a match, he found her sleeping with her face hidden in the crook of an arm, and he was glad. XXVII The Terror When Virginia opened her eyes, after a troubled sleep which seemed to her to have lasted only a few moments, it was with a start, and out of the depths of a nightmare in which she had dreamed that some one was smothering her. “_David!_” she called softly; and he answered at once out of the enveloping darkness. “I am here--sitting beside you. Have you had a good sleep?” “It was dreadful!” she shuddered. “I dreamed that a big man like--like my father--had his hand over my face and was stifling me. What time is it?” “It is another day. It was a little past eight o’clock when I struck a match about an hour ago. You have slept all night.” “And you?” she inquired quickly. “I couldn’t sleep very much--naturally. Besides, I didn’t wish to. I was afraid you might waken and call me, and I shouldn’t hear.” “There is no news?” “A little. Regnier reports that the digging has gone on steadily all night. He knows the Morse alphabet, and he contrived to get into communication with Plegg during the night by tapping on the crushed air-pipe; so they know on the outside that we are here and alive.” She pressed her hands to her forehead. Though he could not see the movement, he knew she made it. “Does your head ache?” he asked. “Some. The air is much worse, isn’t it?” “It isn’t any better,” he conceded. “Once, in the night, they tried shooting the slide from the other side--blasting it with dynamite, you know. That was what made Regnier try the pipe-tapping. The fumes of the dynamite were blown through the loose stuff and that made it worse for us. Now they are trying to force a large pipe through the mass of the slide to give us air and food.” “Will they succeed?” she queried. “I promised, last night, to talk straight to you. If the slide is made up entirely of broken rock in small pieces, as it seems to be from our side, it should be comparatively easy to drive through it. But if the mass happens to contain large bowlders----” “Then they will drill and blast them,” she put in quickly.