His
thoughts had been travelling along the same lines as mine, and at
about the same pace. I was convinced of this when he added slowly:
"Starvation may be their game. It would be the safest to play."
Then the mad, riotous desire to fight got hold of both of us. We began
to search for a weapon: anything--a stick, a stone, a bit of iron. But
we found nothing.
We had never carried pistols, and our pocket knives were hardly keen
or strong enough to sharpen a pencil.
Despair was again gripping me when Ajax touched my arm. We had
examined the filthy floor of the room very systematically, kneeling
side by side in the darkness and groping with eager fingers in the
dirty sand, for there was no floor.
"I have something," he murmured. Then he seized my right hand in his
left and guided it to some solid object lying deep in the sand.
The object proved to be a log. San Francisco is built on sand dunes,
and in early days the houses were log-cabins for the most part,
constructed of logs that two stout men could handle. After many
minutes of silent but most vigorous excavation we joyfully decided
that one of these very logs had come into our possession.
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