I thanked her and went on. There was no difficulty in finding the Professor, who was kneeling on an overhanging platform of rock, hard at work. I clambered up beside him and congratulated him on his evident recovery from the effects of his accident.
“Ah! Still a little stiff and painful,” he jerked, “but my holiday is drawing to a close, and I cannot afford to lose more time.”
“Then you must not let me interrupt you,” was my natural response.
“Oh, you are not in the way, my dear sir. In fact you can, if you will, be of help to me.”
I replied that I should be delighted if he would only show me how.
He took up a fragment of rock. “You see these streaks, those veins? They indicate tertiary fossils. If you will hammer off some pieces and just put aside all those that have a similar marking I shall be glad.”
“Here,” he continued, as I expressed my readiness, “let me put you on to a likely place. There is not much use in our both working together; besides, it is dangerous, as chips fly off.”
Accordingly he took me across to another group of rocks, where, after we had ascended a steep path, he set me to work on an overhanging shelf of the cliff. The wielding of a geologist’s hammer, when one is not especially keen on the science, is apt after awhile to become a source of fatigue and boredom. I soon got pretty tired of my work, particularly as I came across nothing that looked at all interesting. However, I stuck to it mechanically. At the same time, it was not what I bargained for; I was learning nothing of geology, since the man who might have instructed me was some hundred and fifty yards away; consequently, there was not a great distinction between my occupation and that of a breaker of stones on the roadside—a proverbially unexciting employment.
Anyhow, my work was not so absorbing but that my mind had room for other thoughts. Presently, in the midst of my hammering, it occurred to me—what if this setting me at stone-cracking should be but a trick to get me out of the way, and so leave the two men at Schönvalhof defenceless? At the bare thought, I threw down my hammer, and had already run a considerable way down the sloping shelf, when the idea succeeded that I ran the risk of making a fool of myself. I stopped and listened. The sharp tap of the Professor’s hammer from beyond the next bluff reassured me. About to return to my task, I just stayed to listen to the hammer’s fall once more. What I heard though, was a great dull thud, followed by a crackling noise from the rock high above where I was standing. Then a terrific crash, as a great boulder came bounding down the rocky ledge towards me.
My situation was of course absolutely frightful. Escape was out of the question, with a wall of rock on one hand, sheer precipice on the other, and death, in the shape of tons of rock, crashing down the path to sweep me into eternity. Happily, the whole occurrence was so momentary that I had hardly time to realize my awful danger before it was past.