Chapter 18

Hour followed hour, and the V-shaped mouth of the gorge was within cable length when he heard a roar and a crack, and, looking up, he saw what he thought was one whole bank collapsing. It fell over with incredible slowness, and then, with a report like the explosion of a gun, it fell. . . . It missed the ship by a few feet—a shower of stones rattled down on the deck, and a fair-sized sapling, uprooted in the landslide, fell athwart the deck. This probably saved the _Zaire_ from destruction, for a second later she w…