The rocking stone, driven and unseated by a terrific thunderbolt, had lost its delicate balance and toppled from its base into the abyss.
In its fall it had wedged across the narrow gorge, blocking completely with the weight of tons of stone the entrance to the cave.
The castaways of Bully Banjo’s island were buried alive beyond hope of escape.
CHAPTER XXI.
MR. CHILLINGWORTH FIRES—AND MISSES.
As is often the case where a disaster so complete has overtaken men, their very powers of speech seem to be taken from them. We read of men entombed in mines sitting silently awaiting the end, and of the silence in which disabled submarines have sunk to the bed of the sea.
It was so in this case. After a brief examination had shown them, what in fact they already knew, that tons of stone blocked their escape from the cave, they had relapsed into apparent apathy.
No one even appeared to notice Tom, who presently came to himself and stood dizzily upright. The lamp still burned in the rear of the cavern, shedding a dim, yellow light. But outside its rays the place was pitchy black. The weight of the rock that had fallen blocking the cave mouth had also shut out all sound of the fury of the storm—so that the place was as silent as a graveyard.
In answer to Tom’s questions the professor told him in a dull, listless voice, what had occurred. Tom was a plucky lad and had faced a good many dangers without flinching, but as he realized their position his heart sank, and he felt a queer, sickish feeling, that, if it were not real panic, approximated it pretty closely.
“Then there is no hope?”
Tom heard the professor to the end and then spoke in the same dull, toneless voice.