His throat was parched, his lips dry. He had not spoken a word for two nights and a day; it was scarcely wonderful speech was difficult.
There was no answer for a full minute, and then came that same groaning cry again, not as in answer to the question, but at its own regular interval.
Following the curve of the thicket a little way, behind a thick group of trees Eustace came to a sudden standstill with a cry of dismay; for there, standing almost upright in the thickest of the scrub, was the figure of a man, his bare head bowed down upon his breast so that his face was invisible, his arms hanging down at his sides.
It struck Eustace at once as strange that he should be standing making this terrible sound. It would not have surprised the boy nearly so much to have found him lying down—indeed, that he had expected. Bracing himself to the task, Eustace went closer.
"I say," he said in a loud voice, "what's up?"
The man made neither sign nor movement. Could he be tied there to a stake? the boy wondered. Was he deaf and blind?
"I say," Eustace said, almost shouting now, "can't you see me?"
Fighting down his own horror of the situation, he pressed a little closer, to find the man's shirt torn to shreds, his arms pinioned down to his sides by something that looked like small cords.
"It's the 'wait-a-bit' cane!" Eustace exclaimed aloud, shrinking back sharply with a quick horror of being entrapped by it himself.
Here was an awful state of affairs. A wretched wayfarer caught and held like a fly in a spider's web, and not a soul at hand to help.