Brownsmiths Boy - A Romance in a Garden
Page 201"Shock! Shock!" I cried, but there was no reply, and it sounded as if
my voice was squeezed up in a narrowed space; then I seemed to hear a
rustling noise as I stepped forward, I was kicked violently in the shins
and fell forward with my hands plunging into a mass of soft sand, and to
my horror I found that I was lying upon my companion, who was half
buried.
The perspiration stood out all over me as I leaped to my feet; and then
went down again to find that Shock was kicking frantically, and a
moment's investigation told me that he could not extricate himself.
Seizing one of his legs, which as I grasped by the ankle and clasped it
to my side, kept giving spasmodic jerks, I dragged with all my might,
a tremendous throb, and I went backwards, followed, it seemed to me in
the darkness, by a quantity of soft sand; but Shock was free, for I
could feel him by me lying on his face, and as I turned him over he
uttered a groan.
And now a horrible sensation of fear came over me as I thoroughly
realised that I was buried alive in that sand-cave. I felt that my
climbing about on the top of the cliff had loosened or cracked the
compressed sand. Shock and I had jumped about over it when we threw
down the wood we had gathered, and that seemed to be the explanation of
the mishap.
Shock was killed, suffocated, came over me with terrible force, and I
bent over him, feeling his face, his heart, and hands.
His heart was beating fast, and his hands were warm, but though I spoke
to him over and over again, in the darkness, there was no answer, and
with a cry of despair I threw myself on my knees, when all at once he
shouted: "Hullo!"
"Shock," I cried, "I'm here."
"What yer do that for?" he cried fiercely.
"I didn't do anything."
"Yes, yer did," he cried. "Yer threw a lump o' sand on my head. I'm
I'll pay yer for it."
Then he began panting, and spitting, and muttering about his eyes, and
at last--"Here, where are yer?"
"I'm here, close by you," I said. "Don't you understand? The sand has
fallen and shut us in."
There was silence for a few minutes--a terrible painful silence to me,
as I felt that I was face to face with death. Then Shock seemed to have
grasped the situation, for he said coolly enough: "Like the rabbuds. Well, we shall have to get out."