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22 wouldn't be searching here so thoroughly.

"Right!" my friend agreed. "And now they've got us in a tight place!"

"Suppose," I suggested, "we slip across the valley and climb part-way up that other mountainside—then try to work along through the timber up there until we're near the ship."

"Good!" he assented. "Come on!"

Lying at full length upon the ground and wriggling along like snakes, we headed between two groups of the searchers. It was slow work, but we did not dare even to rise to our knees to crawl. Twice we dimly made out, not fifty feet away, some of the Chinamen slinking along, apparently hunting over every foot of the region. We could not tell how many of them there were now.

After a time that seemed nearly endless we reached the edge of the flat. Here we rose to our feet to tackle the slope in front of us.

As we did so, two figures leaped out of the gloom close at hand and split the night with cries of "Fan kuei! Fan kuei!" ("Foreign devils!")

Then they sprang to seize us.

Further concealment being impossible, we darted back into the valley, no longer avoiding the patches of moonlight, but rather seeking them, so that we could see where we were going. We were heading for the fiord.

In a few seconds other cries arose on all sides of us. It seemed that we were surrounded and that the whole region swarmed with Chinamen. Dark forms began to plunge out of the woods ahead to intercept us; the leading ones were not sixty feet away.

"We'll have to fight for it!" called Dr. Gresham. And our hands flew to our revolvers.

But before we could draw the weapons a great ripping and crashing sound burst forth upon the mountainside above us—the terrifying noise of rocks splitting and grinding—an appalling turmoil! Terrified, pursued and pursuers alike paused to glance upward.

There, in the brilliant moonlight, we saw a monster avalanche sweeping downward, engulfing everything in its way!

Abandoning the astronomer and me, the Chinamen turned to flee farther from the path of the landslide—and we all began running together down the valley.

Only a few steps had we gone, however, when above the roaring of the avalanche a new sound rang out—short, sharp, booming, like the report of a giant gun.

As I glanced about through the blotches of moonlight and shadow, I saw several of the sorcerers just ahead suddenly halt, stagger and then drop from sight.

Dr. Gresham and I stopped instantly, but not before we beheld other Chinamen disappearing from view.

The earth had opened and they were falling in!

Even as we stood there, hesitating, the black maw yawned wider—to our very feet—and with cries of horror we tried to stagger back. But we were too late. The sides of the crack were crumbling in, and in another instant the widening gash overtook us.

As his eyes met mine, I saw the astronomer topple backward and disappear.

A second later the ground gave way beneath my own feet and I was plunged into the blackness of the pit. 

 

 

HE NIGHT was hot and breathless, as had been the day, and the humid tang of the salt air smote my nostrils as, envying Martin his vacation respite from the grind of police reporting, I turned off the broad, paved thoroughfare of Washington Avenue and started down Wharf Street, narrow and dimly lighted, toward my lodgings beyond the bridge.

As I passed the second dirty-globed street light I halted suddenly, with the staccato sound of hurrying footsteps in my ears. Homeward bound from the Journal office, where Martin's work had kept me until after midnight, I had yielded to the temptation offered by the short cut. Now, with the peculiar emphatic insistence of the footfalls behind me, I began to wonder if I had chosen wisely.

Brass buttons, glinting dully under the corner arc, reassured me. The next instant I was roughly ordered to halt. I recognized the hoarse, panting voice of Patrolman Tom Kenton of the fourth precinct, whose beat, as I knew, lay along the wharves.

"It's me, Kenton—Jack Bowers, of the Journal," I said. "What's doing?"

Kenton peered at me keenly in the bad light. Then his face relaxed.

"Man killed in Kellogg's warehouse, just around the corner there," he replied.

"Killed? How?"

"The sergeant didn't say. I got it from him just now when I reported. Someone 'phoned in a minute ago. Come along and see, if you want. It's right in your line, and you're a good friend of the captain's."

I fell into step with him, finding some difficulty in keeping pace.

"Do you know who 'phoned?" I asked.

"No. May be a joke. May be a frame-up. May be anything."

His deep voice rumbled through the gloom of the dingy street, deserted save for our hurrying figures. We crossed to the opposite side, passing beneath a blue arc which flamed and sputtered naked through a jagged gash in its dirty, frosted globe.

Just around the corner loomed the ramshackle bulk of Kellogg's warehouse, a four-story, wooden structure squatting above the river piers. On the ground floor a broad entrance gaped blackly. At the left of the doorway, about three feet above street level, the end of a loading platform jutted out of the darkness.

Beyond the warehouse a narrow pier ran out toward midstream. I caught a glimpse of the riding lights of some small vessel, dimly outlined against the gray-black of the oily water.

Kenton stopped at the corner of the 