pout the place where he stood would
be covered with water.

The roaring column mounted with hideous swiftness. Rex felt it rush at
him and swing him upward. With both arms round the tree, he clutched the
sleeves of his jacket with either hand. Perhaps if he could maintain his
hold he might outlive the shock of that suffocating torrent. He felt
his feet rudely seized, as though by the hand of a giant, and plucked
upwards. Water gurgled in his ears. His arms seemed about to be torn
from their sockets. Had the strain lasted another instant, he must have
loosed his hold; but, with a wild hoarse shriek, as though it was some
sea-monster baffled of its prey, the column sank, and left him gasping,
bleeding, half-drowned, but alive. It was impossible that he could
survive another shock, and in his agony he unclasped his stiffened
fingers, determined to resign himself to his fate. At that instant,
however, he saw on the wall of rock that hollowed on his right hand, a
red and lurid light, in the midst of which fantastically bobbed hither
and thither the gigantic shadow of a man. He cast his eyes upwards and
saw, slowly descending into the gulf, a blazing bush tied to a rope.
McNab was taking advantage of the pause in the spouting to examine the
sides of the Blow-hole.

A despairing hope seized John Rex. In another instant the light would
reveal his figure, clinging like a limpet to the rock, to those above.
He must be detected in any case; but if they could lower the rope
sufficiently, he might clutch it and be saved. His dread of the horrible
death that was beneath him overcame his resolution to avoid recapture.
The long-drawn agony of the retreating water as it was sucked back
again into the throat of the chasm had ceased, and he knew that the next
tremendous pulsation of the sea below would hurl the spuming destruction
up upon him. The gigantic torch slowly descended, and he had already
drawn in his breath for a shout which should make itself heard above the
roar of the wind and water, when a strange appearance on the face of the
cliff made him pause. About six feet from him--glowing like molten gold
in the gusty glow of the burning tree--a round sleek stream of water
slipped from the rock into the darkness, like a serpent from its hole.
Above this stream a dark spot defied the torchlight, and John Rex felt
his heart leap with one last desperate hope as he comprehended that
close to him was one of those tortuous drives which