No doubt under the inspiration of intense pain everybody becomes endowed with the gift of divers tongues. I did not know a word of Danish, yet instinctively I understood the word he had uttered.

“Water! water!” I cried, clapping my hands and gesticulating like a madman.

“Water!” repeated my uncle. “ Hvar? ” he asked, in Icelandic.

“ Nedat ,” replied Hans.

“Where? Down below!” I understood it all. I seized the hunter’s hands, and pressed them while he looked on me without moving a muscle of his countenance.

The preparations for our departure were not long in making, and we were soon on our way down a passage inclining two feet in seven. In an hour we had gone a mile and a quarter, and descended two thousand feet.