ollow up the advantage they
had gained. Courage--perhaps he should defeat them yet! He had been
lucky to dispose of the dog so easily. With a fierce thrill of renewed
hope, he ran forward; when at his feet, in his face, arose that misty
Form, breathing chill warning, as though to wave him back. The terror at
his heels drove him on. A few steps more, and he should gain the summit
of the cliff. He could feel the sea roaring in front of him in the
gloom. The column disappeared; and in a lull of wind, uprose from the
place where it had been such a hideous medley of shrieks, laughter, and
exultant wrath, that John Rex paused in horror. Too late. The ground
gave way--it seemed--beneath his feet. He was falling--clutching, in
vain, at rocks, shrubs, and grass. The cloud-curtain lifted, and by
the lightning that leaped and played about the ocean, John Rex found an
explanation of his terrors, more terrible than they themselves had been.
The track he had followed led to that portion of the cliff in which the
sea had excavated the tunnel-spout known as the Devil's Blow-hole.

Clinging to a tree that, growing half-way down the precipice, had
arrested his course, he stared into the abyss. Before him--already high
above his head--was a gigantic arch of cliff. Through this arch he saw,
at an immense distance below him, the raging and pallid ocean. Beneath
him was an abyss splintered with black rocks, turbid and raucous with
tortured water. Suddenly the bottom of this abyss seemed to advance to
meet him; or, rather, the black throat of the chasm belched a volume of
leaping, curling water, which mounted to drown him. Was it fancy that
showed him, on the surface of the rising column, the mangled carcase of
the dog?

The chasm into which John Rex had fallen was shaped like a huge funnel
set up on its narrow end. The sides of this funnel were rugged rock, and
in the banks of earth lodged here and there upon projections, a scrubby
vegetation grew. The scanty growth paused abruptly half-way down the
gulf, and the rock below was perpetually damp from the upthrown
spray. Accident--had the convict been a Meekin, we might term it
Providence--had lodged him on the lowest of these banks of earth. In
calm weather he would have been out of danger, but the lightning flash
revealed to his terror-sharpened sense a black patch of dripping rock on
the side of the chasm some ten feet above his head. It was evident that
upon the next rising of the water-s