He was about to congratulate himself heartily on escaping so opportunely from a distinctly awkward predicament, when he heard the sand crunch under hurrying footsteps, and the Shadow, now close above, commenced to shout his name. He was evidently bent on following the retreating natives, for he halted not a moment, but kept up his mad rush forward. Before the horrified prisoner below could raise an alarm, he had jumped impetuously into the snare which had already done its work so well, and a moment later he tumbled down heavily head over heels by Bob's side. The spray he threw up almost blinded Bob, and the fetid odours that were thus again let loose, caused him to gasp wildly. His comrade in misfortune struggled to his feet with eloquent maledictions, and his amazement when he recognized Bob—the light was now streaming down through the gap he had made—was very genuine indeed.
"What in thunder is you doing here?" he cried.
Bob considered the question rather superfluous under the circumstances.
"Me? Oh, I'm fishing!" he replied laconically.
The Shadow ceased his flow of language for a moment, and examined the walls of his gloomy habitation with interest. It did not take him long to grasp the situation.
"Hang it, that was a tidy trick to play on a peaceable sort o' cuss like me. They've bagged the pair of us, an' if we'd had the savvy o' a mosquito, we didn't oughter be here," he snorted in extreme disgust.
"It is a bit humiliating," admitted Bob, not at all displeased that the wonderfully acute Shadow had blundered into the trap as easily as himself. It tended to soothe his wounded feelings in no little degree. "But all the same," he added brightly, "we've found water, and that's worth some inconvenience, isn't it?"
The Shadow grunted something unintelligible and began to prospect in the almost viscous fluid with both hands.
"There's some slimy crawler shoved up against me," he growled, "an' I reckon I'm goin' to break his little back, so that he won't have no appetite to feed on us afterwards." He groped around viciously.