Grenville, however, showed his wisdom by this action, for he thus kept the rock between his party and any prying eyes, and he well knew that large bodies of the foe would be posted on or near the veldt adjacent to the rock, expecting the party—if they were fortunate enough to detect the approach of the water before it overwhelmed them—to make a desperate effort to cut their way through to the stairway. This knowledge had decided Grenville to make a détour, which he successfully did, and the party gained the open veldt some miles further on, without their escape from the rock having been observed by the enemy, and were soon pushing across this rolling prairie, with the terrific sound of the advancing water in their ears, and hoping to gain the stairway without having been perceived.
Vain hope!—when, after some hours of unmolested and ceaseless travel, the little band arrived within earshot of the stairway, a blazing thread of light shot upwards to the sky, and the hissing of a second rocket was heard preparing to take its aerial flight. The Mormon in charge of this incautiously showed himself for one second, and promptly received Leigh’s bullet through his brain; and then, without waiting for orders, the active Zulus rushed up the steps and broke into the cavern, uttering their fearful war-cries, and a moment later were joined by Grenville and Leigh, and an awful battle took place between these four and seven heavily-armed Mormons. Fortunately a torch was burning, and, equally happily, the Zulus had taken the men by surprise and given them no time to prime the pans of their rifles; but even as the cousins entered the cave two men were diligently performing this interesting occupation, and instantly went down with revolver bullets through them. In a couple of minutes the Mormons were all disposed of, the only casualties being a pistol bullet through Myzukulwa’s shoulder, which had fortunately not injured the bone, and a nasty slash from a cutlass which Leigh had received on his left arm. Quickly the whole party passed up the cavernous road, again taking the precaution to carry away all the torches, and congratulating themselves upon the complete and unexpected success of their plan; for Winfield, with the help of Rose—to whom the beast was sincerely attached—had actually got the quagga up the staircase, when suddenly Grenville called a halt, listened carefully, and then turned to the others with the horror of a living death imprinted upon every line of his face.
“Back!” he said, and his voice sounded but a hoarse, dreadful whisper; “back, all of you, quick; the lake has broken out on both sides of the mountain, and the water is racing down, our road, and will be here directly!” With a cry of agony, Winfield seized his daughter by one hand, Leigh grasped the other, and all ran for the stairway, which fortunately was not far off; and having once seen the women safely down, and directed them to hurry on towards the Eastern Mountains with Leigh and Winfield, Grenville and the Zulus, after infinite trouble, succeeded in pushing and pulling master quagga on to terra firma once more, and they then put their best foot foremost, and rejoined their companions.
Soon gaining the shelter of the forest and the rising land, they watched carefully, and could see across the veldt a Mormon host speeding forward to the stairway, in answer to the rocket’s message, and not far behind them was a dull, angry line, which Winfield pronounced to be the advancing water. The band, which numbered some twenty men, was evidently uneasy at its near approach, and anxious to gain the stairway, and now, even as they reached their desired haven, an awful thing happened, and the wicked certainly did fall hopelessly into his own net for once—there was a rushing, roaring sound, and then, with a thundering boom, the torrent came sweeping through the mouth of the cavern in hundreds of tons of water at one awful burst, hung for a short second, as it seemed, in mid air, and then plunged down in one mighty, irresistible volume right upon the luckless Mormons, who were instantly lost to human ken, and in less time than it takes to tell, the two forces of water had combined, and the veldt far and near was blotted out in one vast rolling, tumbling sea of agitated foam, upon which nothing could be seen save here and there a corpse bobbing up and down as it took its gradual and apparently unwilling course towards the River of Death.
After searching for some little time our friends discovered a cave about a mile from the great stairway, into which they thankfully entered; and after setting a watch, though the precaution seemed a useless one, lay down to sleep. The rest of the night passed uneventfully; and when the sun again shone out, the eye rested only upon what was seemingly a vast and wandering waste of waters, for a thick steaming mist, which was already rising from the surface of this suddenly-created inland sea, caused one’s range of vision to be limited to a few miles.
One thing, however, our friends did notice, which filled them with dismay. Grenville had calculated that as soon as the volume of water was quite exhausted in the natural reservoir on the mountains, their way through the subterranean road would be clear, and they would have a long start and be able to get clean through the River Pass before ever their enemies had a chance of moving from their own side of the chasm. Now all hope of escape seemed to be cut off, for the mighty rush of water falling from the subterranean road had entirely demolished the great stairway, not a single step of which they could now see, and it was obviously impossible for them to ascend several hundred feet of a precipitous wall of solid rock, which was what they would now have to do in order to regain the rood.
After two days had been spent hopelessly and aimlessly in the cavern, the water was observed to abate as fast as it had risen, and on the third day the veldt could again be seen in every direction, steaming in a most unpleasant manner under the rays of a vertical sun. Our friends were, however, well situated at some height above the plain, and Amaxosa spent that day in prospecting for a safer hiding-place, which he found about three miles off, along the mountain-side, and which consisted of a three-roomed cave, quite two hundred feet above the veldt, in a commanding position, approached only by narrow paths, a wall of solid rock behind, and blessed with an ample supply of water. Grenville unhesitatingly approved of the place as a temporary residence, and thither the party removed at nightfall.
The following morning smiled down upon East Utah in all its revived loveliness—the veldt looked greener and fresher for its wholesale bath, and a newcomer would certainly have had no idea of the awful tragedies which had recently been enacted in this country, where all looked so quiet and peaceful.
On this morning a band of Mormons, some fifty in number, arrived at the great stairway, and appeared struck dumb by its destruction, for they ran about gesticulating madly, and wringing their hands over the great blocks of stone cast hither and thither about the adjacent veldt. It was, however, evident, as Grenville had foreseen, that they did not believe the enemy had left the country by the roadway. The river had broken through too soon after the rockets had been fired to admit of any possibility of their escape in that direction. The only doubt they entertained was if the invaders had really been drowned and their bodies, together with those of their own ill-fated comrades, carried away by the River of Death.
The Mormons now examined the neighbourhood, with a keen scrutiny which let nothing escape unquestioned; but, having foreseen this search, Grenville had acted with the utmost caution, and no trace of their movements had been left behind, so that he was not in the least surprised when the Mormons—who were, he observed, led by Radford Custance—turned their backs on the stairway early in the afternoon, and set off across the veldt in the direction of their town.