Instead of the dwelling being demolished in such a manner that he was exposed to view, the walls, besieged on every side, fell inward; and at the last deafening crash he commended himself to God, for it seemed positive he was buried alive.
In the brief space of time which elapsed from the first shattering of the side-wall until the end came Philip thought, with intense relief, that he would be crushed to death rather than murdered by those who had been so loyal a few days previous. Then the ceiling and sides of the room burst in, sending forth great clouds of dust, which from the outside must have looked like smoke ascending from a funeral pyre.
The assailants were silenced—awed by their work. The building was nothing more than a mass of ruin, but yet no trace of their king could be seen.
Looking from the outside, one would have said there could be no living thing beneath these enormous fragments of rock and wood; and yet, strange as it may seem, Philip was there with not so much as a single scratch upon his body. It was destined that his life should not be taken by his subjects during an assault planned by Goliah.
The heavy furniture, piled up from the door of the cupboard to the corner of the room as a barricade in case the apes succeeded in entering the building, had been sufficient to uphold the weight which fell upon it, and the timbers of the ceiling had formed across the top a perfect support.
The king of the apes, whose reign had been of such short duration, was thus literally buried alive; but in this accidental tomb he had provisions sufficient to serve him many days.
For a few moments after the falling of the timbers Philip congratulated himself upon this fact; but his joy was short-lived. He soon realized that unless—as was improbable—he could have aid from the outside, the stock of provisions would simply serve to prolong his wretched life a certain time, after which death must inevitably come.
“At all events I need not starve,” he said to himself after some reflection, as he raised his musket; and with the knowledge that he could invoke death before the torture of hunger and thirst became agonizing, he grew more resigned.
Then came a long time of silence, which was finally broken by the sound as of some one digging from above.
“Probably the night has passed, during which the apes were asleep, and now they are searching for my body,” Philip said to himself; and although he knew death would be inevitable in case of discovery (for the mandrill skin had literally been torn from his body), it was with a certain sense of relief he learned that the debris from above was being removed.