"So are you!" and they laughed together for the first time since the calamity.
"Let's wash, there's a pool in the next room. Quite a respectable amount of clean water is collected about the floor."
He showed her the pool and left her to make her toilet while he explored their prison for some possibility of escape. Putting his hands to his mouth he sent forth stentorian cries for help with no result. Without a pick-axe to work with, he saw no chance of cutting a way through the tons of material that lay around them.
It was midday, when Joyce was feeling weak with hunger, and Dalton fighting a strong tendency to pessimism, that he heard Honor's "Coo-ee!" and replied.
"Thank God!—at last here's someone to the rescue!" he exclaimed, and Joyce burst into tears.
When Honor was able to locate the spot from which the answering voice proceeded, she contrived with difficulty to get near enough to the opening to hear what had happened. It was good to know, however terrible had been the experience of the pair, that both were unhurt, and that Joyce was bearing up wonderfully.
"I shall run back and get help at once, cheer up!" she called out.
"We don't, either of us, feel cheerful, I can assure you. It has been ghastly here all night," the doctor shouted back.
"But it is great to have found you! I am so thankful," and she sped to her bicycle and travelled at top speed to the Mission. Mr. Meek could provide the labour at a moment's notice for the work of digging out the imprisoned couple, and to him she went direct.
Immediately the Settlement hummed with activities; coolies swarmed to the spot with pickaxes and spades, crowbars and ropes, and as news flies from village to village with almost the rapidity of "wireless," hundreds of natives gathered at the scene to view operations, the women with infants astride one hip, and naked children swarming around. They camped on the ground chewing pan and parched rice, and chattered incessantly of the mysterious workings of Providence, the folly of humanity, and the decrees of Fate.