Breathing satisfied him pretty well for a while.
There is no need to tell over what the papers told--how he had
taken the leadership of the demoralized band; how when he found
them cut off from the escape which he had planned he had set
them to work building a barrier across a passage where the air
was fresher; how behind this barrier they had lived for six days,
by the faith and courage of Johnny McLean. How he had kept them
busy playing games, telling stories; had taught them music and
put heart into them to sing glees, down in their tomb; how he had
stood guard over the pitiful supply of water which dripped from
the rock walls, and found ways of saving every drop and made
each man take his turn; how when Tom Steele went mad and tried
to break out of the barrier on the fifth day, it was McLean who
fought him and kept him from the act which would have let in the
black damp to kill all of them; how it was the fall in the
slippery darkness of that struggle which had broken his arm.
The eighteen told the story, but by bit, as the men grew strong
enough to talk, and the record rounded out, of life and reason
saved by a boy who had risen out of the gray of commonplace
into the red light of heroism. The men who came out of that
burial spoke afterward of McLean as of an inspired being.
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