It was a muggy place and their work, plus their excitement, with the heat thrown out from the fire, had left them saturated with sweat, even to Healy, who had done little but look on and show the light. Harvey lowered his canteen through the hole into the subterranean stream and brought it up with the cloth covering slightly steaming.
"It's goin' ter be a long time between drinks, waiting for that stuff to cool," said Larkin. "But the sides of my froat are stickin' together. Give it to me."
He tested it with his tongue, making a wry face. But he finally swallowed it.
"Tastes like brimstone and treacle—without the treacle," he said. "Flat beer's champagne to it. But it's wet." The liquid was strongly impregnated with minerals and Stone decided it would not do for a steady drinking diet.
"Hall it needs," opined Larkin, watching the others take their portion, "is sugar, lemon, nutmeg, and Scotch whisky. Partickler the Scotch whisky. Then it wouldn't 'urt if you forgot the water."
Stone and Harvey touched off the fuses and they all backed up across the vault, the torches out, and watched the fizzing, spitting sparks while the seconds seemed interminable.
The charges went off in a volley with a great flare that gave them glimpses of ceiling rocks high above them and also of the gold-seamed marble lifting into space. The air swept upon them as if they had been struck with a heavy web of cloth, and all about the
