Brownsmith's Boy: A Romance in a Garden

by George Manville Fenn

So I leaned against the rough side of the sand-cave, watching him tear away at the bones, holding a piece in one hand, the remains of the rabbit in the other.

I remember it all so well—him sitting there with just a faint blue curl of smoke rising from the embers, and beyond him, seen as it were in a rugged frame formed by the low entrance of the hole, was the lovely picture of hill and vale, stretching far as the eye could reach, and all bright in the sunshine, and with the bare sky beyond.

I was just thinking what a rough-looking object Shock seemed as he sat there just in the entrance 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.