und the spot, and was instantly succeeded by an unremitting roll of
thunder, which seemed to shake all nature to her utmost depths, and
threaten earth with chaos worse confounded.

Hardly had the mighty echoes died away than the report of firearms could
be heard, in scattered shots, away under the mountain side. The reason
was evident: the Mormons had been on the alert, and the terrific blaze
of lightning had, no doubt, revealed to their watchful sentinels, the
ambush of the hidden savage foe. Sure enough, next minute there came
the steady rolling echoes as the Winchesters opened fire in ringing
volleys, upon the mass of men before them.

Speeding across the veldt, Grenville and his band endeavoured to take up
a flank position where they would run no danger from the bullets of
their friends, and, aided by another blazing flash, were almost within
range of Zero's troops, which were represented by a dark moving mass
upon the veldt, when suddenly and without an instant's warning, a most
awful thing happened.

The moon was waning fast and the light was growing dim, when the
countryside for miles and miles was all at once illuminated with a
brightness vivid as the glory of the noonday sun himself. This was no
passing flash of lightning; but there, right above the blazing peak
itself, hung a mighty zone of dazzling, blinding fire; for one brief
instant thus it stayed, then, with a mighty roar, which rent the earth
and quaked the giant rocks, and dwarfed out of recognition the thunders
of the sky, the volcano all at once blew up, driving its shattered
fragments to the winds of heaven.

Almost at Grenville's feet the earth yawned wildly, and where one moment
before had been lovely veldt and sparkling river, there appeared only a
mighty chasm, from whose abysmal depths rose fearsome sounds and pungent
scalding vapours.

For an instant, all was inky blackness and the quietude of death; then,
the storm-clouds driven wildly in every direction by the might of the
explosion, the moon shone out once more, and revealed an awful sight.

The mountain-peak was gone--gone, for ever, its fragments scattered wide
across the veldt, whilst between the foot of the mountain and the
position of our friends lay a gulf two hundred feet across, unbroken,
save by a tiny island of rock--measuring, perhaps, twenty square yards--
which still stood in its very centre. All round the rock--and, perhaps,
a hundred feet from its upper edge--there w