The rest looked up in time to see the tiny, squatty figures of six men drop suddenly behind a row of rocks that resembled the top edge of a castle tower. But that impression was a brief one. As the group stared from below, they saw the rocky summit topple forward.
Those watchers on the cliff top had launched a mass of bounding boulders that encountered bigger chunks of granite and carried them along, with the earth in which they were imbedded. An avalanche of stone and dirt was gaining size as it roared down the slope, threatening to block the narrow ravine and bury every member of the party that had come into its path!
CHAPTER XV
Fabulous El Dorado
While the others stood rooted, staring upward, Biff looked for his father, in the frantic hope of giving him some last-moment warning. Up ahead, Mr. Brewster was waving for them to join him. Biff grabbed Whitman by the arm and tried to start him forward, at the same time yelling to Kamuka and Jacome:
“It’s our only chance! Maybe Dad can get us past the turn in the ravine!”
They all were starting forward before Biff finished speaking, but their chance faded as the landslide’s roar increased. Spreading as it came over the cliff edge, the first wave of dirt and stone was not only peppering them; it was pouring into the side passage that seemed their only refuge.
Fortunately, none of them was hit by that first spray of smaller stones. Whitman stumbled, but Jacome overtook him and helped him regain his footing. Then they had reached Mr. Brewster, who was blocking them from the side passage where Biff thought he wanted them to go.
Instead, Biff’s father now was rushing them beneath the overhanging cliff, where they huddled against the rocky wall and turned to witness the havoc that they had so narrowly escaped. From this hollow, open space where Mr. Brewster had guided them, they watched tons of dirt and stone drop down in a solid curtain, only a dozen feet away, for the bulge of the cliff above was comparatively slight.
Yet it jutted enough to send the tremendous landslide cascading out beyond them, something on which Mr. Brewster had counted when he made his quick decision. But after the roar had finally subsided, Biff’s father disclaimed any special credit for the rescue.
“I was close enough to see that this pocket offered us our only chance,” stated Mr. Brewster. “As it was, your own prompt response saved your lives. Otherwise, you would now be under there.”