Page:The Great Secret.djvu/113

Rh neither could they be sure; therefore, for the few remaining moments that their late prison lasted, they crouched together and looked seaward, listening to the thunderous sounds underneath, with the cold, fierce blast cutting through them and the heavy flakes dashing wildly about them.

They had not long to wait before the end came for the once stately, floating hotel that had ridden so proudly over the ocean, which was now revenging itself for its former submission. Wilder gusts of wind came shrieking down the gullies of this desolate land and whirled the snow-drift aside like a curtain which has been rent asunder, so that they could see amongst the white froth and foam the black and shapeless mass that was being torn to pieces.

The maddened waves broke high up the face of the butting precipice on either side of them, spurting out from that projecting ledge, which they struck like whitewash, running down in vivid streams again to the next advancing column—a savage war of the elements, that nothing could withstand except those mighty boulders.

They saw the black mass advancing once more to that adamantine wall against which it had dashed so often already, and then, as it struck, a mighty blaze leapt up like a volcano suddenly bursting into activity.

Up—up that vomit of flame burst, bearing on its lurid wings all that was left of the Rockhampton, and illuminating, while it lasted, the whole scene which before had been a mystery of horrors.

The mystery was a revealed fact now with its horrors intensified. One can sit on the edge of a precipice in the dark without becoming light-headed if one knows not