trance to the hole, and wishing that, now he had a
good situation and was decently clothed, he would become like other
boys, when I saw Juno come slowly towards Shock, wagging her tail and
showing her teeth as if asking for more bones, but she suddenly whisked
round and darted away, as, with a noise like a dull clap of thunder,
something seemed to shut out the scene from the mouth of the hole, I
felt a puff of heat and smoke in my face, and all was darkness.

I stood there as if petrified for a minute, I should think, quite unable
to make out what was the matter, and panting for breath.

Then the thought came like a flash, that a quantity of sand had fallen,
and blocked up the mouth of the cave.

For a moment or two I felt as if I should fall. Then the instinct of
self-preservation moved me to act, and with my hands stretched out
before me I went quietly towards the entrance.

"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,
and found I could not move him; but as I dragged again he seemed to give
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.

But I had no time to think of this now, for the thought that perhaps
Shock was killed, suffocated, came over me with terrible force, and I
bent over him, feeling his face, his heart, and hands.