“And no rain,” said the professor; “that makes it doubly bad. These dry electrical storms are always more severe than those accompanied by a heavy downpour.”
As he spoke there came another blinding flash, accompanied by a terrific peal of thunder. But the figure of Lake could now be seen coming down the cliff-face on his way back to the cave. The time to put their plan into execution had arrived. Amid the turmoil of the elements, they discussed it. It was agreed that Tom, hiding behind a big fragment of rock at the entrance of the cave mouth, was to level his pistol at the unsuspecting desperado as he appeared. He was then to be disarmed and tied, and the rest of their arrangements they left in an undecided condition till the first part of the daring program was carried out. The main thing to do, so all hands agreed, was to capture Lake.
Nearer and nearer came the unsuspecting leader of the Chinese runners. Tom crouched back into his place of concealment as the other came on. The rest stood close behind him. They hardly dared to breathe as the footsteps of the man they wished to capture drew closer.
As his form was framed in the cave mouth Tom sprang erect, holding the pistol level and pointed straight at Lake’s head. He saw the rascal grow white under his tan and open his mouth as if about to speak. But at the same instant there came a crash that seemed as if heaven and earth were being devoured in one vast catastrophe. At the same time a sheet of dazzling, burning white flame enveloped them. The figures in the cave mouth were illumined in its livid glare as if cut out of black paper. Crash followed crash. Another and another. A sensation like that of the pricking of myriad pin points ran through them. The blue lightning darted, hissing viciously about them, bathing them in living electricity.
Bewildered and stunned, Tom saw Lake’s figure reel and fall backward, clutching at the rock as he fell. The boy sprang forward to catch him and save him from falling into the abyss below, when a crash that dwarfed the others fairly stopped him in his tracks.
There came a mighty splitting, rending sound and Tom, looking upward in the direction from whence it came, saw the form of the great rocking stone swaying drunkenly on the bed in which it had rested securely through the ages.
Suddenly the great rock mass toppled out, its black form impending between the lad and the sky. The noise of its falling reverberated above the shriek of the storm and the thunder’s loudest roar.
Instinctively Tom tottered backward as it fell. Stunned, half deafened, and numb from the lightning, he reeled like a sick man. But even above it all, he could hear Lake’s wild death-shriek ringing out as he plunged backward.
The next instant there was a shock that seemed to shake the cliff to its mighty foundations. The dim light of the storm-shrouded day was blocked out, and at the same moment Tom lost consciousness.
But to the others there came no such merciful blotting out of the strange horror of the situation. In the very act of overpowering their enemy, they had, in turn, been overwhelmed by a crushing disaster.