But the little group of five which had formed farther up and was
engrossing all the watchers' attention had stopped upon a ledge of
rock. The negroes stooped and pulled up what appeared to be a
trap-door in the side of the mountain. Into this they all disappeared,
the white-haired man first, then his wife and son, finally the two
negroes, the glittering tips of whose jewelled head-dresses caught the
sun for a moment before the trap-door descended and engulfed them all.
Kismine clutched John's arm.
"Oh," she cried wildly, "where are they going? What are they going to
do?"
"It must be some underground way of escape--"
A little scream from the two girls interrupted his sentence.
"Don't you see?" sobbed Kismine hysterically. "The mountain is wired!"
Even as she spoke John put up his hands to shield his sight. Before
their eyes the whole surface of the mountain had changed suddenly to a
dazzling burning yellow, which showed up through the jacket of turf as
light shows through a human hand. For a moment the intolerable glow
continued, and then like an extinguished filament it disappeared,
revealing a black waste from which blue smoke arose slowly, carrying
off with it what remained of vegetation and of human flesh. Of the
aviators there was left neither blood nor bone--they were consumed as
completely as the five souls who had gone inside.
Simultaneously, and with an immense concussion, the ch??teau literally
threw itself into the air, bursting into flaming fragments as it rose,
and then tumbling back upon itself in a smoking pile that lay
projecting half into the water of the lake.
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