No words could ever describe the despair that overwhelmed me.
I was buried alive. There was nothing ahead of me except a slow, painful death from hunger and thirst.
I crawled around blindly, running my hands over the dry rock. I had never touched anything so completely dry.
“How did I lose the stream?” I asked myself in panic.
There was no doubt now. The little stream had stopped flowing through the tunnel where I was.
Suddenly, I understood the strange silence I had noticed earlier. When I had called out to my companions, I had heard nothing because I had already gone in the wrong direction.
When I first took that wrong turn, I had been too distracted to notice that the stream was no longer beside me.
Another tunnel must have taken the water away at the place where we had stopped. Without realizing it, I had entered a completely different passage.
“Where have they gone?”
“How far have they traveled?”
“And where am I?”
There was no clue anywhere. No landmark. Nothing to tell me which way I had come from. My footsteps left no clear marks on the granite and loose stones.
My head throbbed as I desperately tried to solve the problem.
There was only one answer.
Lost.
Lost!
Completely lost!
I was buried so deep beneath the earth that the distance above me seemed impossible to measure.
The enormous weight of those thirty leagues of rock seemed to press down on my shoulders. I felt as if I were carrying the whole earth itself.
My situation was enough to drive any sane man mad.
I tried to think about the world above, a world I had almost forgotten.
Hamburg came into my mind.
Then I saw our house on the Königstrasse.
Then I thought of my dear cousin Gretchen.
That familiar world suddenly seemed to float before my eyes like a dream.
I could almost see it, yet it felt impossibly far away.
Then, in my terrible state of mind, memories of our journey began passing through my imagination like scenes in a moving picture.
I saw the ship.
I saw the people on board.
I saw Iceland.
I saw M. Fridriksson.
Then I saw the great summit of Mount Sneffels.
“If I still have even the smallest hope of getting out of here,” I thought, “then I must already be losing my mind.”
It seemed better to give up completely.
What human power could possibly take me back to the surface?
Who could break through all those enormous layers of rock above my head?
Who could help me find the way back to my companions?
It was foolish even to imagine such a thing.
“Oh, Uncle!”
That was all I could say.
I did not blame him.
I knew how deeply my uncle would regret losing me. I knew he would search for me patiently, even if he believed there was no chance of finding me.
But there was no one else who could help me.
When I finally accepted that I was completely helpless, I fell to my knees.
For the first time in a long while, I prayed.
I remembered my childhood.
I remembered my mother, whom I had barely known before she died.
I remembered the faith I had once possessed.
I had forgotten God when life was easy, and now, in my darkest moment, I was asking Him for help.
Yet I prayed with all my heart.
Strangely, that prayer calmed me.
My mind became clearer, and I was finally able to think about my situation instead of simply surrendering to despair.
Then I remembered something important.
I still had three days’ worth of food.
My water bottle was also full.
That gave me a little hope.
But staying alone was impossible.
“I have to find them,” I told myself. “No matter what it costs me.”
The question was which way to go.
Should I climb upward?
Or should I continue downward?
Surely I had to go back the way I had come.
If I climbed carefully, I might reach the place where I had left the stream.
I might find the fork in the tunnel.
And if I could find the stream again, I could follow it all the way back to the terrible crater of Mount Sneffels.
Why had I not thought of this before?
At last, I had a real plan.
First, I had to find the Hansbach.
After eating a small meal and drinking some water, I stood up again.
I felt like a new man.
I leaned heavily on my walking stick and began climbing the tunnel.
The slope was steep and difficult, but I moved carefully.
For the first time since becoming lost, I felt hopeful.
It was like a man who has wandered through a huge forest but suddenly discovers that there is only one road leading out.
For an entire hour, nothing stopped me.
As I climbed, I tried to remember the tunnel.
I searched my memory for unusual rocks.
I tried to remember bends in the passage.
I tried to recognize places I might have passed before.
But nothing seemed familiar.
Slowly, I was forced to face the truth.
This tunnel could never take me back to my companions.
It led nowhere.
It was simply a dead end deep inside the earth.
Then I reached the end.
A solid wall of rock stood directly in front of me.
I knew at once that my last hope had disappeared.
I collapsed onto the dry ground.
There is no way to describe the despair and terror that filled me.
The courage that had kept me going disappeared the moment I saw that solid wall.
I was trapped inside a gigantic underground maze.
Tunnels twisted away in every direction.
I had no guide.
No map.
No compass.
No clue.
There was no point in trying to escape anymore.
All I could do was lie down and die.
And I knew it would be a slow and horrible death.
A strange thought even entered my mind.
“Perhaps one day someone will discover my fossilized bones,” I thought.
“Scientists might wonder how human remains came to lie so far beneath the surface.”
I tried to shout.
But my throat was so dry that only weak, broken sounds came from my lips.
I could barely breathe.
Then another terrible thought struck me.
My lamp had fallen earlier and been damaged.
I had no way to repair it.
Its light was already growing weaker.
Soon it would go out completely.
I stared at the faint light inside the lamp.
The glow became weaker and weaker.
Shadows moved across the granite walls.
I hardly dared to close my eyes because I was afraid that when I opened them again, the last light would be gone.
Every second, I expected the lamp to die.
Finally, only one tiny, trembling flame remained.
I stared at it with all the strength I had.
I gasped for breath.
I fixed my entire mind on that tiny light.
It was the last light I might ever see.
Then it disappeared.
Darkness swallowed everything.
A desperate cry escaped me.
On the surface of the earth, even the darkest night is never completely black. A little light always exists somewhere, and our eyes can usually find it.
But here there was nothing.
This was absolute darkness.
I could see nothing at all.
I was completely blind.
My mind finally broke.
I reached out my arms and felt the cold stone wall.
The touch of it filled me with terror.
I no longer knew what I was doing.
I began to run.
I ran blindly through the maze, rushing wherever the passage seemed to lead.
I kept going downward.
I raced beneath the earth like some creature trapped in a world of underground fires.
I screamed.
I shouted.
I howled in terror.
Sharp rocks tore at my body.
I fell, then forced myself back onto my feet.
Blood ran from my wounds.
In my madness, I even tried to drink the blood running down my face.
But there was so little of it that it only made my thirst worse.
Again and again, I feared that I would crash into another wall of rock.
Where was I going?
I had no idea.
I no longer knew anything.
For hours I ran through the darkness.
At last, my strength completely failed.
I collapsed beside the tunnel wall.
My body became heavy and lifeless.
Then everything went black.
I lost consciousness.