Part 25 (1/2)
”He's turned!” cried Holet him, Verslun! After the--O God!
_Look out_!”
Hol ca, dropped away froulf of darkness, landed onvainly at the stuff, I rolled at tremendous speed down into the bowels of the earth From far above us cah-pitched shrieks of a native rising above the deep bass laughter of Leith
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XX
THE BLACK KINDERGARTEN
I thought ere a thousand years rolling down that slope of s ash It was a quicksand that melted beneath us We drove our arms into it, but the stuff slipped away like fine wood ash, and ent on and on I knew Holman was in front of ed to slip out when hisdust Once I shouted at hiroan that toldhad affected him The arch ruffian had checkmated us for the third time inside three days
We struck the bottom at last, and, like moles, we clawed our way out of the pile of soft, feathery stuff that ca down upon us like a river, and for so the fluffy ash fro to us like down, and with each breath we drew it into our lungs till we coughed and sneezed fro forward, knee-deep in the fine, dry powder, we reached a spot that was practically clear, and for five s
”How far did we roll?” asked Holht, Verslun! What do you think?”
”Over a hundred yards; I' to cliasped ”That stuff is like quicksand”
”All the saantic ash pile, and shoulder to shoulder we made a rush at the immense mountain dohich we had rolled We couldn't see it, but we felt it rise around us like a flood as our legs sank deeper It ca us Cos bored into it like rods, and we struggled vainly to h snowdrift into which we sank deeper and deeper the ht our way clear of the s ash and made an atteroaned Hole of the thing, and then he side-stepped O God! What asses we have been!”
”We did our best,” I said
”Our best?” repeated Holman ”And the man who tells you that he did his best as an excuse for failure should be shot, Verslun”
”We couldn't tell that this infernal trench was in front,” I grumbled
”Then we shouldn't have chased him like a brace of madht call out, perhaps they'd hear”
Holloom above us, but his yells only started a h the tremendous fissure in which ere prisoners