hear various sounds outside
as of moving to and fro. The enemy had likewise no reason for further
concealment.

"Look!" suddenly cried Tim. "Something crawling."

He raised the 30-30 and fired. Before the flash and the fumes had
blinded me I, too, had seen indistinctly something low and prone gliding
around the corner of the entrance. That was all we could make out of it,
for as you can imagine the light was almost non-existent. The thing
glided steadily, untouched or unmindful of the shots we threw at it.
When it came to the first of the crazy uprights supporting the roof
timbers it seemed to hesitate gropingly. Then it drew slowly back a foot
or so, and darted forward. The ensuing thud enlightened us. The thing
was one of the long, squared timbers we had noted outside; and it was
being used as a battering ram.

"They'll bring the whole mountain down on us!" cried Tim, springing
forward.

But even as he spoke, and before he had moved two feet, that catastrophe
seemed at least to have begun. The prop gave way: the light at the
entrance was at once blotted out; the air was filled with terrifying
roaring echoes. There followed a succession of crashes, the rolling of
rocks over each other, the grinding slide of avalanches great and small.
We could scarcely breathe for the dust. Our danger was that now the
thing was started it would not stop: that the antique and inadequate
supports would all give way, one bringing down the other in succession
until we were buried. Would the forces of equilibrium establish
themselves through the successive slight resistances of these rotted,
worm-eaten old timbers before the constricted space in which we crouched
should be entirely eaten away?

After the first great crash there ensued a moment's hesitation. Then a
second span succumbed. There followed a series of minor chutes with
short intervening silences. At last so long an interval of calm ensued
that we plucked up courage to believe it all over. A single stone rolled
a few feet and hit the rock floor with a bang. Then, immediately after,
the first-deafening thunder was repeated as evidently another span gave
way. It sounded as though the whole mountain had moved. I was almost
afraid to stretch out my hand for fear it would encounter the wall of
debris. The roar ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Followed then a
long silence. Then a little cascading tinkle of shale. And another dead
silence.

"I believe it's over," ventured M