"Hech! But I've a sore head the morn," he murmured, rubbing his eyes drowsily as he looked around him. The sight of bare blank walls instead of the walls of his bungalow, decorated with colour plates from the illustrated papers, caused him to sit up suddenly and rub his eyes again. It was a minute or two before full consciousness and the recollection of recent incidents returned to him. Then he remembered that his last waking moments had been spent in the rift; but he had awaked in a stone-walled, stone-floored cell, cubical in shape, and ten feet in each dimension.
His comrades, still asleep, lay at full stretch on the floor, on either side of him.
"Eh, Dick! Bob! waken yourselves," he called.
There was no response.
He got up, moved, somewhat totteringly, to Forrester, and prodded him in the ribs.
"Waken!" he called again. "Man, what's wrong with you?"
He gazed anxiously into his friend's face as Forrester slowly opened his eyes. Turning away, he hastened to Jackson, poked him, bawled in his ear, felt his pulse; then, assured that he was not dead, as he had begun to fear, raised him in his arms and shook him vigorously.
"Haven't got the ball, you ass!" Jackson spluttered.
"This isn't rugger, old man," said Forrester with a light laugh, coming to his side. "Wake up and see where the beggars have carried us."
Jackson recovered his wits more tardily than the others.