oward the crag.

"The SIGN! The SIGN!" he shouted.

The thousand heads raised as one, and taking up the cry, surged toward
the great cone, sifting through the timber like brown seeds through a
screen.

CHAPTER XVI

CIVILIZATION DAWNS IN THE HILLS

When the tumult had subsided, the amazed Major wheeled to face Terry's
quizzical grin.

"Well, Major," he said, "there is their merry little 'sign'! The darn
thing worked!"

The Major pulled him toward the door. "Come on," he exclaimed. "Let's
see what happened."

He hurried down the short ladder ahead of Terry and raced through the
strip of woods to where the mob was packed about the base of the cone.
The Major smashed an unceremonious pathway through the brown jam and
in a moment they stood at the foot of the crest.

A large segment of the huge pillar of rock had broken off and in
falling had carried thousands of tons of shale and eroded stone. The
immense rock, whose fracture and fall had precipitated the slide, lay
directly under the Tribal Agong, at which the Hillmen were staring up,
dumfounded.

Following their upward gaze the Major saw that the fallen stone had
formed the platform beneath the Agong, which now pivoted on its
granite bracket over a cliff which fell sheer for hundreds of feet
before curving into the stiff slope where crag fused into tableland.
The great black gong hung directly over them. Looking closely,
Bronner saw that it swung slowly in the evening breeze, and moved by
the same impulse that had impelled him the first time he stood beneath
it, he shouldered their way through the crowd to a safer position.

"You need not worry about its falling, Major. It will hang there for a
thousand years."

"I know it, but it gets me just the--what's that they're yelling?" he
exclaimed, as a swelling chorus of guttural shouts rose from the
excited throng.

"They are saying that the Tribal Agong can never be sounded
again--without the platform they can't reach it." As a new phrase was
caught up and repeated by hundreds of voices he added: "And now they
are calling for Ohto to interpret the sign!"

Several of the older savages tore out of the densely packed throng and
sped toward Ohto's house. In a few moments one of them returned and
announced that the chieftain would arrive shortly. The two white men,
absorbed in the drama, did not notice that four of the warriors who
had summoned Ohto had returned by another path and taken up their
posit