Then Paul went back to the others, and found it almost impossible to waken them. He finally succeeded; and when they comprehended his great news, each one had to go to the hole, draw in a deep breath of the fresh air, and call through it to Derrick, for the sake of hearing him answer. It was so good to hear a human voice besides their own; and though they knew he was a prisoner like themselves, it somehow filled them with new hope and longings for life. They had no tools with them, but all fell to work enlarging the hole with knives, the iron handles of their lunch-pails, or whatever else they could lay hands upon, while Paul stood by and held the lamp. Although Derrick had plenty of air and space to move about in, his situation had been fully as bad as theirs, for he had been alone. Nothing is so terrible under such circumstances as solitude, with the knowledge that you are absolutely cut off from mankind, and may never hear a human voice again. He had pricked his lamp down very low so as to save his oil, and was lying at full length on the cold floor, a prey to the most gloomy thoughts. All sorts of fantastic forms seemed to mock at him out of the darkness. He could almost hear their jeering laughter, and was rapidly giving way to terror and despair, when a ray of light flickered for a moment on the rocky roof above him. Springing to his feet and rubbing his eyes, he looked in the direction from which it seemed to have come, and saw it again, shining through what he had taken for a solid wall of rock. Then he called out, and Paul Evert, the very one of whom he had been in search, answered him. Half an hour later the hole was sufficiently large to allow a man to squeeze through it, and Derrick had thrown his arms around Paul, and hugged him in his wild joy and excitement. The thing for which the miners felt most grateful, next to their escape from the little stifling chamber and their meeting with Derrick, was his can of oil. Now they knew that with care they might keep a lamp burning for many hours; and the dread of total darkness, which is greater than that of hunger, or thirst, or any form of danger, no longer oppressed them. Aleck, the blacksmith, had a watch, and from it they learned that it was still early in the evening; though it already seemed as if they had been imprisoned for days. Some of the men began to complain bitterly of hunger and to beg for food, but Monk Tooley said they should not eat until the watch showed them that morning had arrived.