The words died on Merry’s lips. A bowlder, just above the ledge, had slipped from its moorings and was rolling over and over, grinding and crashing toward the ledge. The colonel had just risen from lighting the fuse. He saw the bowlder, and tried frantically to get out of the way of it. In his haste, he slipped and fell prone upon the ledge. The next moment the bowlder was upon him!
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
A TANGLE OF EVENTS.
Right from that moment a series of thrilling happenings began below. The slope of the gulch wall was a stage, and from the crest Frank and his chums watched events breathlessly. Horror gripped them and held them spellbound. Instinctively they rose from their crouching positions and stared wide-eyed at the tragic scene below them.
The colonel, as it is already known, had cut off only a two-minute length of fuse. This meant that, in one hundred and twenty seconds from the time he applied the match to the fuse, the gulch wall adjacent to the ledge would be piled with ruin. So, in the short space of two minutes, one weird event heaped itself upon another with amazing rapidity.
Frank and his chums saw it all. Not one detail of the awful drama escaped them. But, as the eye can comprehend infinitely quicker than the tongue can frame a scene in so many words, it will be well to describe each occurrence. At the same time, let it be remembered that most of them happened simultaneously, and that the others fairly jostled each other, so closely did they follow.
It was the falling bowlder that, primarily, caused the tragic situation. This had become loosened, perhaps by the pounding Jode had done in “putting down” that hole for the blast. Poised and ready to tumble, Fate held the bowlder back until the critical moment when the colonel had lighted his two-minute fuse and was on the point of rushing from the ledge.
A cry of horror escaped the lads on the crest when they saw the huge stone apparently about to crush out the life of the fallen man on the ledge. But fortune, in a small way, favored Colonel Hawtrey.
The bowlder crashed to a full stop on the ledge, trapping one of the colonel’s feet. He was held securely, it seemed, for, in spite of his wild struggles, he could not release himself.
He was lying on the stones with his head toward the sputtering fuse, and yet the fuse itself was well beyond the reach of his arms. A terrible fate appeared to be in store for him unless Jode came to his rescue.