"Can't be time to get up yet," I thought, and I turned over on my soft
bed. It was too dark, and I was dozing off again when a loud snorting
gasp made me start and throw off the clothes that lay so heavy on me.
Then I stopped short, trembling and puzzled. Where was I? It was very
dark. That was not clothes, but something that slipped and trickled
through my fingers as I grasped at it. My legs felt heavy and numbed,
and this darkness was so strange that I couldn't make it out.
Was I asleep still? I must have been to sleep--heavily asleep, but I
was awake now, and--what did it mean?
A curious feeling of horror was upon me, and I lay perfectly still. I
could not stir for some minutes, and then it all came like a flash, and
I knew that I must have lain listening for some time to Shock breathing
heavily, and then insensibly have fallen asleep, and for how long?
That I could not of course tell, but so long that the sand had gone on
trickling in till it had nearly covered me, as I lay nearest to the
opening. It had been right over my chest, and sloped up and away from,
me, so that my legs were deeply buried, and it required quite a struggle
to get them free, while to my horror as I dragged them out from beneath
the heavy weight more sand came down, and one hard lump rolled down and
up against me sufficiently hard to give me pain.
There was the same terrible silence about me, and it seemed to grow
deeper. A short time before I had heard Shock breathing hard, but now
his breath came softly, and then seemed to cease.
That silence had lasted some time, when all at once it was broken by my
companion as I knelt there in the soft sand.
"Mars Grant! I say. You awake?"
"Yes."
"What yer doing of?"
"I am saying my prayers."
There was another silence here, and then Shock said softly: "What yer praying for?"
"For help and protection in this terrible place," I cried passionately;
and I crouched down lower as I bowed myself and prayed that I might see
the sunshine and the bright sky once again--that I might live.
Just then a hand was laid upon my shoulder, and I felt Shock's lips
almost touch my ear as he whispered softly: "I say--I want to say my prayers too."
"Well," I said sternly, "pray."
There was again that silence that seemed so painful, and then a low
hoarse voice at my side said slowly: "I can't. I 'most forgets how."
"Shock," I cried, as I caught at his hands, which closed tightly and
clung to mine; and for the first time it seemed to come to me that this
poor half-wild boy was only different to myself in that he had been left
neglected to make his way in life almost as he pleased, and that in
spite of his wilful ways and half-savage animal habits it was more the
want of teaching than his fault.