The Bungalow Boys in the Great Northwest

Lake, earnestly examining bits of rock and handing them up to the professor, did not notice the loss of his weapon.

Suddenly there came an ominous growling sound from outside. It was thunder. The storm was rapidly nearing them then.

“Gee whillakers!” exclaimed Lake, suddenly springing erect. “Ef I ain’t forgotten ter go an’ look fer thet signal.”

“What do you mean?” asked the professor.

“Why, frum ther top uv this cliff yer kin see ther camp with field-glasses. I brought mine along fer thet purpose. Afore I left I agreed with Zeb thet in the event uv trubble he wuz ter hoist a red flag. Ef everything wuz all right, he was to run up the blue one. I’m goin’ up thar now afore ther storm makes it too thick.”

He hastened from the cave and, making his way along the ledge, began to mount the face of the cliff by a narrow stairway cut at a sharp incline in the face of the acclivity. Presently he vanished at the summit. It was then that Tom, with shining eyes, turned to the others.

“Our chance to escape has come!” he exclaimed.

“How do you make that out?” asked Mr. Chillingworth listlessly.

For reply Tom drew out his pistol.

“We can make Lake prisoner on his return,” he said eagerly, “and then make our way across the island to the cove in which, as he told us, he had hidden the boat.”

“Good gracious boy!” cried the professor excitedly. “That’s a good idea. A splendid one, but – what about my boy?”

Tom, who in his excitement had quite forgotten that the son and heir of the Dingle fortunes was in the care of Zeb Hunt, looked thoughtful.

“Of course, we must get him,” he said. “I’ll tell you,” he cried, his eyes flashing at the adventurous daring of the plan he was about to propose, “we’ll make Lake prisoner and take him along with us. With him in our power, we will be in a position to make terms with the rascals. We can conceal him somewhere and refuse to give him up till we get our liberty and the boy.”

Perhaps to any one less desperately situated the plan would have appealed only as the forlornest kind of a forlorn hope. But to our party it seemed feasible, and even excellently practicable.

But as they stood discussing it in the cave mouth, there came a sudden blinding flash of lightning. Involuntarily they all stepped back within the cavern. The clap of thunder that followed the electrical display shook the cliff till it vibrated again.

“Wow! this is a real storm, sure enough!” exclaimed Tom. “I never saw such lightning.”

“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.

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.

The other shook his head.

“A convulsion of nature seated that stone there,” he said; “another one displaced it. It is hoping too much that a third will occur and free us.”

“Then we must sit here till we die?”

Mr. Chillingworth’s voice struck in. It was as lifeless as the tones of the others.

As for Monday and Tuesday they took no part in the conversation, but sat moodily in the rear of the cave accepting their fate in a stoical manner.

“I am afraid that the only thing for us to do is to die like men and Americans,” said the professor bravely.

“Oh, no! no! I cannot die like this. I must get out! Oh, heaven, I won’t die like this!”

As he shouted thus incoherently the rancher dashed himself against the rock that sealed the cave mouth. Tom started up to drag him from the entrance and prevent his uselessly bruising and cutting himself. But the professor laid a hand on the boy’s arm.

“Leave him alone,” he said; “poor fellow. Life was good to him. He will be quieter when that paroxysm is over.”

And so it proved. The rancher’s desperate fit left him weak and exhausted. He sank down on a bit of rock, his head buried in his hand. But his heaving shoulders told what he was enduring.

Tom felt that he, too, would have liked to leap to his feet and hurl his body at the imprisoning rock, but he restrained himself by an effort.

“If I am to die, I’ll at least try to die as a man should,” thought the boy to himself.

For some time more they sat in gloomy silence. The only sound that broke the hush was that of Chillingworth’s sobs. Presently the professor arose, and not with any real sense of finding anything, commenced, with the aid of the lantern, a thorough examination of the cave. But if he had ever expected to find any outlet, he was disappointed. The place was without any other aperture than the one the fallen mass of stone had sealed.