“The shed....”
“Well, what about the shed?”
“Demolished. Can’t you see? It’s gone.”
We ran still faster.
The shed was absolutely demolished and is now only a shapeless mass of rubbish, but there are no signs of a shell—no traces of burned timbers, no splinters. One would have thought that it had folded up and laid down on its side like a house of cards.
When we reached the shed we saw Chocolate’s great neck and shoulders and enormous head free from the rubbish which hid the rest of his body. He was stretched out full length on his side, browsing serenely on the young shoots of an apple tree, which had gone down with the building. His large eye looked us over as we stood there, overcome and absolutely stupefied with amazement, as much as to say:
“What ... you’ve come at last ... you needn’t have been in so much of a hurry.”
I ran to the air-hole of the cellar.
“Hey there, men with spades; quick, come, dig out Chocolate.”