Suddenly a rumbling rose from far inland. The earth shook and trembled. Nat-ul, wide eyed with terror, saw her people fleeing upward toward their caves. The heavens became overcast, the loud rumbling rose to a hideous and deafening roar. The violence of the earth's motion increased until the very cliffs in which the people hid rocked and shook like a leaf before a hurricane.
Nat-ul ran to the innermost recess of her father's cave. There she huddled upon the floor burying her face in a pile of bear and lion skins. About her clustered other members of her father's family—all were terror stricken.
It was five minutes before the end came. It came in one awful hideous convulsion that lifted the mighty cliff a hundred feet aloft, cracking and shattering it to fragments as its face toppled forward into the forest at its foot. Then there was silence—silence awful and ominous. For five minutes the quiet of death reigned upon the face of the earth, until presently from far out at sea came a rushing, swirling sound—a sound that only a few wild beasts were left to hear—and the ocean, mountain high, rushed in upon what had been the village of Nu, the chief.
XV
WHAT THE CAVE REVEALED
When Victoria Custer opened her eyes the first face that she saw was that of her brother, Barney, bent above her. She looked at him in puzzled bewilderment for a moment. Presently she reached her hands toward him.
"Where am I?" she asked. "What has happened?"
"You're all right, Vic," replied the young man. "You're safe and sound in Lord Greystoke's bungalow."
For another moment the girl knit her brows in perplexity.
"But the earthquake," she asked, "wasn't there an earthquake?"