“In my jacket. I hung it on a stone in the side somewhere here. Light a match.”
Crick—crick—crack went the match; then there was a flash, and the sputtering bubbling blue flame of the sulphur, for matches were made differently in those days, when paraffin had not been dreamed of for soaking the wood.
Then the light burned up clearly, and Shock held the splint above his head, and we looked round.
“There ain’t no jacket here,” said Shock dolefully. “What did yer say bread and meat for?” he continued, as the match burned out and he threw it down. “It’s made me feel so hungry. I could eat a bit o’ you.”
“I can’t understand it, Shock,” I said.
“I wish I’d got some snails or some frogs,” he muttered. “I could eat ’em raw.”
“Don’t,” I said with a shudder.
“I knowed a chap once who eat two live frogs. Put ’em on his tongue—little uns, you know—and swallowed ’em down. He said he could feel ’em hopping about inside him after. Wasn’t he a brute?”
“Don’t talk to me,” I cried, as I went feeling about the wall, with my head in a state of confusion. “I know I had the jacket in here.”
“Have you got it on?” he said.