When the tumult had subsided, the amazed Major wheeled to face Terry's quizzical grin.
"Well, Major," he said, "there is their merry little 'sign'! The darn thing worked!"
The Major pulled him toward the door. "Come on," he exclaimed. "Let's see what happened."
He hurried down the short ladder ahead of Terry and raced through the strip of woods to where the mob was packed about the base of the cone. The Major smashed an unceremonious pathway through the brown jam and in a moment they stood at the foot of the crest.
A large segment of the huge pillar of rock had broken off and in falling had carried thousands of tons of shale and eroded stone. The immense rock, whose fracture and fall had precipitated the slide, lay directly under the Tribal Agong, at which the Hillmen were staring up, dumfounded.
Following their upward gaze the Major saw that the fallen stone had formed the platform beneath the Agong, which now pivoted on its granite bracket over a cliff which fell sheer for hundreds of feet before curving into the stiff slope where crag fused into tableland. The great black gong hung directly over them. Looking closely, Bronner saw that it swung slowly in the evening breeze, and moved by the same impulse that had impelled him the first time he stood beneath it, he shouldered their way through the crowd to a safer position.
"You need not worry about its falling, Major. It will hang there for a thousand years."
"I know it, but it gets me just the—what's that they're yelling?" he exclaimed, as a swelling chorus of guttural shouts rose from the excited throng.
"They are saying that the Tribal Agong can never be sounded again—without the platform they can't reach it." As a new phrase was caught up and repeated by hundreds of voices he added: "And now they are calling for Ohto to interpret the sign!"
Several of the older savages tore out of the densely packed throng and sped toward Ohto's house. In a few moments one of them returned and announced that the chieftain would arrive shortly. The two white men, absorbed in the drama, did not notice that four of the warriors who had summoned Ohto had returned by another path and taken up their position behind the captives, spears in hand, grim.