f me. Occasionally a curse directed at
Leith managed to slip out when his mouth was not filled with the
smothering dust. Once I shouted at him, and he answered the cry with a
groan that told me how the happening had 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 came streaming down upon us like a
river, and for some minutes we were busy wiping the fluffy ash from
mouth and eyes and ears. It clung to us like down, and with each breath
we drew it into our lungs till we coughed and sneezed from the
irritation it produced. Struggling forward, knee-deep in the fine, dry
powder, we reached a spot that was practically clear, and for five
minutes we were busy endeavouring to relieve our tortured lungs.

"How far did we roll?" asked Holman.

"About half a mile," I replied.

"But straight, Verslun! What do you think?"

"Over a hundred yards; I'm certain of that."

"Well, I'm going to climb back."

"You can't do it!" I gasped. "That stuff is like quicksand."

"All the same I'm going to make a try."

We stumbled back to the gigantic ash pile, and shoulder to shoulder we
made a rush at the immense mountain down which we had rolled. We
couldn't see it, but we felt it rise around us like a flood as our legs
sank deeper. It came up to our waists--to our armpits, choking and
smothering us. Coming down we had rolled lightly over its surface, now
our legs bored into it like rods, and we struggled vainly to move. The
pile was like a high snowdrift into which we sank deeper and deeper the
more we struggled, and, worn out with our efforts, we fought our way
clear of the smothering ash and made an attempt to review the situation.

"He's beat us," groaned Holman. "He just trotted ahead of us till he
had us on the verge 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 madmen. I wonder if
Maru and Kaipi came near it?"

"We might call out, perhaps they'd hear."

Holman yelled the names of the two natives into the gloom above us, but
his yells only started a million echoes rolling