After a few minutes' more rest, we started on again upon our utterly
hopeless way; but I soon realized that I was weakening rapidly, and
presently I was forced to admit that I was through. "It's no use,
Ajor," I said, "I've come as far as I can. It may be that if I sleep,
I can go on again after," but I knew that that was not true, and that
the end was near. "Yes, sleep," said Ajor. "We will sleep
together--forever."
She crept close to me as I lay on the hard floor and pillowed her head
upon my arm. With the little strength which remained to me, I drew her
up until our lips touched, and, then I whispered: "Good-bye!" I must
have lost consciousness almost immediately, for I recall nothing more
until I suddenly awoke out of a troubled sleep, during which I dreamed
that I was drowning, to find the cave lighted by what appeared to be
diffused daylight, and a tiny trickle of water running down the
corridor and forming a puddle in the little depression in which it
chanced that Ajor and I lay. I turned my eyes quickly upon Ajor,
fearful for what the light might disclose; but she still breathed,
though very faintly. Then I searched about for an explanation of the
light, and soon discovered that it came from about a bend in the
corridor just ahead of us and at the top of a steep incline; and
instantly I realized that Ajor and I had stumbled by night almost to
the portal of salvation. Had chance taken us a few yards further, up
either of the corridors which diverged from ours just ahead of us, we
might have been irrevocably lost; we might still be lost; but at least
we could die in the light of day, out of the horrid blackness of this
terrible cave.
I tried to rise, and found that sleep had given me back a portion of my
strength; and then I tasted the water and was further refreshed. I
shook Ajor gently by the shoulder; but she did not open her eyes, and
then I gathered a few drops of water in my cupped palm and let them
trickle between her lips. This revived her so that she raised her
lids, and when she saw me, she smiled.
"What happened?" she asked. "Where are we?"
"We are at the end of the corridor," I replied, "and daylight is coming
in from the outside world just ahead. We are saved, Ajor!"
She sat up then and looked about, and then, quite womanlike, she burst
into tears. It was the reaction, of course; and then too, she was very
weak. I took her in my arms and quieted her as best I could, and
finally, with my help, she got to her feet; for she, as well as I, had
found some slight recuperation in sleep. Together we staggered upward
toward the light, and at the first turn we saw an opening a few yards
ahead of us and a leaden sky beyond--a leaden sky from which was
falling a drizzling rain, the author of our little, trickling stream
which had given us drink when we were most in need of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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