y we wished to follow the King's symbol and the pointing
arrow plainly showed), we came presently close beside the rift in the
cliffs through which the waters of the upper lake had been discharged
upon the city in the valley below and so had buried it. And here we made
a very surprising discovery--which was no less than that the great rift
in the rocks through which the water had been let loose was not, as we
had supposed, the result of some fierce convulsion of nature, but very
plainly was the fiercer work of man. Along the face of the opening
whence the water had poured forth the rock was grooved, showing that
drill-holes had been made, close together, from the edge of the cliff
backward to the lake that once had filled all the valley now lying bare
and empty before us; and with the field-glass we could see that there
was a like channelling of the rock upon the farther side of the break.
And all doubt in our minds in regard to this matter was removed by our
finding a vastly long drill--made of the bright, hard metal that we now
were familiar with, yet could not at all understand its
composition--lying close beside the chasm upon the bare rock.

"There has been the devil's own work here!" said Rayburn, as he fully
took in this extraordinary situation. "Whoever did this must have spent
months over it, perhaps years, working with such tools as these. They
evidently went at it systematically, with the deliberate intention of
drowning the whole crowd down below. From an engineering stand-point I
must say that it's a good piece of work. See how cleverly they've picked
out this particular spot, where the wall of rock went down almost
perpendicularly into the lake, and so got the full value of the thrust
of the water when their cuts were finished. If I'm not mistaken, there
was a third line of drill-holes sunk in the middle of the mass that they
meant to cut loose. That's the way I should have done it: then there
would have been a little giving in the centre that would have helped to
loosen the sides. But what a lot of incarnate devils they must have been
to go at such a job!"

Truly, there was something chilling to the blood in the thought of the
slow labor of them who had toiled here, day after day and month after
month, until their ghastly purpose was accomplished, and they had slain
a whole city without striking a single honest blow. Such vengeance upon
an enemy as here was taken never had its equal for cold, malignant
c