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160 If they kept us we know we could get free—sometime."

"Perhaps never!" exclaimed Ivan Petrofsky. "It is better to keep on here, and, as for me, I would rather die here than go back to a Russian prison. We must—we shall get out!"

But it was idle talk. Gradually they lost trade of time as they staggered on, and they hardly knew whether a day had passed or whether it was but a few hours since they had been lost.

Of their sufferings in that salt mine I shall not go into details. There are enough unpleasant things in this world without telling about that. They must have wandered around for at least a day and a half, and in all that while they had not a drop of water, and not a thing to eat. Wait, though, at last in their desperation they did gnaw the tallow candles, and that served to keep them alive, and, in a measure, alleviate their awful sufferings from thirst.

Back and forth they wandered, up and down in the galleries of the old salt mine. They were merely hoping against hope.

"It's worse than the underground city of gold," said Ned in hollow tones, as he staggered on. "Worse—much worse." His head was feeling light. No one answered him.

It was, as they learned later, just about two