of water struck
him. McNab and the soldier felt the sudden pluck of the rope and saw the
light swing across the abyss. Then the fury of the waterspout burst with
a triumphant scream, the tension ceased, the light was blotted out, and
when the column sank, there dangled at the end of the lariat nothing
but the drenched and blackened skeleton of the she-oak bough. Amid a
terrific peal of thunder, the long pent-up rain descended, and a sudden
ghastly rending asunder of the clouds showed far below them the heaving
ocean, high above them the jagged and glistening rocks, and at their
feet the black and murderous abyss of the Blowhole--empty.

They pulled up the useless rope in silence; and another dead tree
lighted and lowered showed them nothing.

"God rest his puir soul," said McNab, shuddering. "He's out o' our han's
now."

CHAPTER XXV. THE FLIGHT.

Gabbett, guided by the Crow, had determined to beach the captured boat
on the southern point of Cape Surville. It will be seen by those who
have followed the description of the topography of Colonel Arthur's
Penitentiary, that nothing but the desperate nature of the attempt could
have justified so desperate a measure. The perpendicular cliffs seemed
to render such an attempt certain destruction; but Vetch, who had been
employed in building the pier at the Neck, knew that on the southern
point of the promontory was a strip of beach, upon which the company
might, by good fortune, land in safety. With something of the decision
of his leader, Rex, the Crow determined at once that in their desperate
plight this was the only measure, and setting his teeth as he seized
the oar that served as a rudder, he put the boat's head straight for the
huge rock that formed the northern horn of Pirates' Bay.

Save for the faint phosphorescent radiance of the foaming waves, the
darkness was intense, and Burgess for some minutes pulled almost at
random in pursuit. The same tremendous flash of lightning which had
saved the life of McNab, by causing Rex to miss his aim, showed to the
Commandant the whale-boat balanced on the summit of an enormous
wave, and apparently about to be flung against the wall of rock
which--magnified in the flash--seemed frightfully near to them. The
next instant Burgess himself--his boat lifted by the swiftly advancing
billow--saw a wild waste of raging seas scooped into abysmal troughs,
in which the bulk of a leviathan might wallow. At the bottom of one
of t