r pockets jingling, a
question on her parted lips, but instinct told John that there was no
time for words. They must get off the mountain without losing a
moment. He seized a hand of each, and in silence they threaded the
tree-trunks, washed with light now and with the rising mist. Behind
them from the valley came no sound at all, except the complaint of the
peacocks far away and the pleasant of morning.

When they had gone about half a mile, they avoided the park land and
entered a narrow path that led over the next rise of ground. At the
highest point of this they paused and turned around. Their eyes rested
upon the mountainside they had just left--oppressed by some dark sense
of tragic impendency.

Clear against the sky a broken, white-haired man was slowly descending
the steep slope, followed by two gigantic and emotionless negroes, who
carried a burden between them which still flashed and glittered in the
sun. Half-way down two other figures joined them--John could see that
they were Mrs. Washington and her son, upon whose arm she leaned. The
aviators had clambered from their machines to the sweeping lawn in
front of the chateau, and with rifles in hand were starting up the
diamond mountain in skirmishing formation.

But the little group of five which had formed farther up and was
engrossing all the watchers' attention had stopped upon a ledge of
rock. The negroes stooped and pulled up what appeared to be a
trap-door in the side of the mountain. Into this they all disappeared,
the white-haired man first, then his wife and son, finally the two
negroes, the glittering tips of whose jewelled head-dresses caught the
sun for a moment before the trap-door descended and engulfed them all.

Kismine clutched John's arm.

"Oh," she cried wildly, "where are they going? What are they going to
do?"

"It must be some underground way of escape--"

A little scream from the two girls interrupted his sentence.

"Don't you see?" sobbed Kismine hysterically. "The mountain is wired!"

Even as she spoke John put up his hands to shield his sight. Before
their eyes the whole surface of the mountain had changed suddenly to a
dazzling burning yellow, which showed up through the jacket of turf as
light shows through a human hand. For a moment the intolerable glow
continued, and then like an extinguished filament it disappeared,
revealing a black waste from which blue smoke arose slowly, carrying
off with it what remained of veget