years, did I learn the cause of their deserting me. As I lay stunned
from my fall, my men, unable to get answer to their shoutings, had given
me up for dead. Meanwhile the apparatus which caused the destruction of
the German gas had gone wrong. My associates, unable to fix it, had fled
from the mine and abandoned the enterprise.

After some hours of waiting I stirred about and found means to erect a
rough scaffold and reach the mouth of the shaft above me. I attempted to
climb, but, unable to get a hold on the smooth wet rock, I gave up
exhausted and despairing. Entombed in the depths of the earth, I was
either a prisoner of the German potash miners, if any remained alive, or
a prisoner of the earth itself, with dead men for company.

Collecting my courage I set about to explore my surroundings. I found
some mining machinery evidently damaged by the explosion of our gas
bombs. There was no evidence of men about, living or dead. Stealthily I
set out along the little railway track that ran through a passage down a
steep incline. As I progressed I felt the air rapidly becoming colder.
Presently I stumbled upon the first victim of our gas bombs, fallen
headlong as he was fleeing. I hurried on. The air seemed to be blowing
in my face and the cold was becoming intense. This puzzled me for at
this depth the temperature should have been above that on the surface of
the earth.

After a hundred metres or so of going I came into a larger chamber. It
was intensely cold. From out another branching passage-way I could hear
a sizzling sound as of steam escaping. I started to turn into this
passage but was met with such a blast of cold air that I dared not face
it for fear of being frozen. Stamping my feet, which were fast becoming
numb, I made the rounds of the chamber, and examined the dead miners