“I believe you’re right, Bry!” I cried, startled at this dreadful assertion; “and, if so, we’re prisoners here. Let us see what it looks like.”
I crawled rather stiffly down the inclined surface to the edge overlooking the sea, and one glance showed me that it would now be impossible for anyone to walk along the narrow ledge.
While I looked a sharp cry of horror from Nux reached my ears, and swiftly turning I hastened with Bry toward the place where the black was leaning over the gulf that separated the peak from the mainland.
“What is it, Nux?” I asked, anxiously.
But the Sulu only stood motionless, pointing with one finger into the abyss, while his eyes stared downward with an expression of abject fear.
We both followed his gaze, and one glance was sufficient to fully acquaint us with the awful catastrophe the vengeance of the storm had wrought.
The huge rocking-stone, weighing thousands of tons, which for ages had remained delicately balanced upon the edge of the chasm, had been struck by a bolt of lightning and torn from its base. Crashing into the gulf, a point of the great, wedge-shaped boulder had entered the mouth of the cave where the desperadoes sought shelter, and, crowded forward by its own weight, it had sealed up the robbers in a living grave, from whence no power of man could ever rescue them.
It was this mighty wedge, crowded into the space between the slender peak and the main cliff, that had caused the former to lean outward; and in one comprehensive look we were able to read the whole story of the night’s tragedy—a tragedy we had instinctively felt in the crash of the storm, but could only realize now.
“Poor fellows!” I whispered, softly, forgetting in my awe that they had been our relentless enemies. “It was a terrible fate. Perhaps they’re even now sitting in that dark hole, shut off from all the world and waiting for death to overtake them. Isn’t it dreadful.”
The blacks glanced at one another without reply; but I noticed that they exchanged a secret sign which their pagan priests had taught them when they were boys, and which was supposed to propitiate the demon of retribution. To their simple minds Daggett and his gang of cut-throats had been properly punished for their wickedness.