Shock growled, but I paid no heed, and gave him half of what I had in my hands, and then putting the parcel with the rest right at the end where the sand did not fall, I sat down and we ate our gritty but welcome meal.
We tried round the place again and again, using up the candle till the wick fell over and dropped in the sand; and then first one match and then another was burned till we were compelled to give up all hope of escaping by our own efforts.
Refreshed and strengthened by the food, Shock expressed himself ready for a new trial at digging his way out.
“I can do it,” he said. “I’ll soon get through.”
Soon after he was clinging to me, hot, panting, and trembling in every limb, after narrowly escaping suffocation, and when I wanted to take up the task where he had left off, he clung to me more tightly and would not let me go from his side.
“Yer can’t do it,” he said hoarsely. “Sand comes down and smothers yer. Faster yer works, faster it comes. Let Ike bring the shovels.”
There was no other chance. I felt that, and sat down beside Shock and talked and tried to cheer him up; and when I broke down he roused up and tried to cheer me. Then I talked to him about stories I had read, where people had been buried alive, and where they were always dug out at last, and when I was weary he took his turn, showing me that in his rough way he could talk quickly and in an interesting way about catching birds and rats. How at times he had caught rats with his hands, and had been bitten by them.
“But,” he added, with a laugh, “I served ’em out for it—I bit them after I’d skinned and cooked ’em.”
“How horrible!” I said.
“Horrible! Why? They’d lived on our fruit and corn till they were fat as fat, I like rat.”