CHAPTER XXIV.
HOPE.
“Gone! Do you mean to tell me that they are all gone?” cried the Doctor, when I broke the news.
“Gone to a man, and Ah Schow with them. The bridge lies upon the other side of the cañon. We have been abandoned to our fate!”
The Doctor gave an exclamation of despair.
“My God! My God! This is terrible!” he breathed. “I would never have dreamed that mild old man could use us so! It is all my fault, George! All mine, every bit of it. From the first moment I met you on the stairs of the old tower of the Nagkon Wat, I have been nothing but a dead weight upon you, a perpetual handicap, a Jonah, a curse.”
“Do not upbraid yourself,” I answered, for his distress was most painful. “It was perfectly natural for you to speak. Let us waste no time in idle regrets. We must decide upon some definite course of action, and follow it without delay.”
“Oh there’s time enough! God knows there’s time enough! Is the rice all gone too?”
“I didn’t look into the corner where the provisions were stored.”
“Then I will go and do that much! Hark! What voice was that? Some of those devils back to mock us in our misery? Merciful powers! Is the mountain falling down?”
The sound first heard was a sharp cracking, followed immediately by an awful crash. The ground beneath us shook with great violence. Maurice raised up and began muttering unintelligible words.
“An earthquake!” gasped the Doctor. “This is to be our end!”
At the moment I could but agree with him; we stood breathlessly listening, the noise dying away into an ill-defined rumble and then all was still.
“Surely that was an earthquake shock,” said the Doctor.
“I cannot imagine what else it could have been,” I an-
