Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1901-03-28
OUT FROM THE L
BY H. s. CanAeld.
Author of Maid of the West etc.

Copyright, 1900. Daily Story Pub. Coz
Because he was attached to the
Smithsonian Institute and had formed
a part of several Of its scientific expe-
ditions Mr.. Francis Hope, aged 80, and
a bachelor, was inclined to believe that
he knew a good deal about many
things. He did not know, however,
that u~nrevealed iron deposits will
sometimes affect the needle of a COM
pass, or that, even upon most barren
land, rocks and struggling grasses and
such things are as sure guides to a
plainsman as a chart. Therefore, when
his party had been five days in Deaths
Valley. Mr.. Francis Hope left camp In
the morning with a mule and a water
bottle and in the afternoon found him
self lost. Around him on every hand
rose rockribbed lodges, dark red in hue.
Under his feet was sand. moistureless
and sometimes shining with saline par
ticles. Strapped to his back was a
leathern bottle, pretty nearly emptied.
A few PAGES away was a mule, with its
long ears down between its iracible
temper which helps a foot ball player,
but Is fatal to profound mathematics.
He walked to the spraddling mule
and kicked it in the belly. The ami
NAL toppled over on its side and died.
He looked around for the five hun
dreth time, to be met with the same
view Of red rock, cloudy sky, sand and
solitary Spanish dagger" growing
here and there, sharp-spined, dry, muir
derous, fit emblem of the country. He
said Damn" and threw his compass
away. This helped him a little, be-
cause he then depended solely upon
bottle, heard the faint gurgle inside of
it, set his teeth, fixed his eye on a dis
tant point and walked. He did not
know where nor In what direction he
was going, but at last, he was going
in a straight line. That was some COM
fort. And he walked and walked until
swift dark fell. Then the exhaustion
which comes from prolonged exertion
in an atmosphere of 125 degrees Of
heat came upon him and he rolled and
tossed in restless sleep. He walked be-
fore daylight and wrestled hard with
himself to keep from draining the last
drop OF water, and he o At 10
o'clock mex morning he estimated that
he was twenty miles from the dead
mule. Nature would not be denied
lips. A quarter pint of warmish leath-
cry water went down his throat He
swore and threw the bottle from him,
set his eye upon a distant point and
went on ~doggedly.
At 4 o'clock that afternoon the lips
OF Mr.. Hope were black and cracked
and sand had got into the cracks. His
tongue, swollen and blacklist also, pro-
truded a half inch between his teeth.
His face was a grayish yellow and the
skin was in folds. He stopped like an
old mar and often stumbled. Setting
his eye upon a fixed point. he discov-
cred a strong tendency TO walk in a
half circle. Sand was under his finger
nails, for he had fallen often, and his
feet were on fire. He mumbled to him
self:
Darwin was right-man's same as
jelly-fsh-jelly-ish got no backbone
I've got no backbone-aIl hell holds no
torment like this-give me to drink to-
night one single drop of Lethe's tabled
sup-must have been cool, cool. cool
and sparkling, that stream Of Lethe,
else why should the Greeks pirate about
1t to a dying nan dying man-that
ichthyosauri and peliosauri lived in
water-in water-the mammoths came
down to drink-to drink-curse all
mammoths-through breast and bone
l drove the stone and slew him upon
the brink-upon the brink to drink
1t was bis blood I drank-gushing
blood and It seemed cool. too
The trained scientific mind Of ~.
Hogs was wubbIy. he 1T down upon
; pile of rea pebbles and played win
than abeent1V. H lad din disogdegedl