“Are yer?”
“Yes. Will you shake hands?”
“What for?”
This staggered me, and I could make no reply, and so we remained silent for some time.
“Here, let’s see,” said Shock all at once. “Where’s that there candle?”
“Here it is,” I said, and as he struck a light I held the scrap of little more than an inch long to the flame, and it burned up so that we could examine our position, and we soon found that our prison was reduced to about half its size.
“It’s of no use to try and dig our way out, Shock,” I said despairingly, as I extinguished the candle. “We shall only bring down more sand and cover ourselves in.”
“Like Old Brownsmith’s toolips,” said Shock, laughing. “I say, should we come up?”
“Don’t talk like that,” I said angrily. “Don’t you understand that we are buried alive.”
“Course I do,” he said. “Well, what on it?”