Cleggett did not hesitate an instant."Lady Agatha," he said, "the Jasper B.is at your service as long as you may require the ship.The cabin is your home until we arrive at a solution of your difficulties."His glance and manner added what his tongue left unuttered--that the commander of the ship was henceforth her devoted cavalier.But she understood.
She extended her hand.Her answer was on her lips.But at that instant the jarring roar of an explosion struck the speech from them.
The blast was evidently near, though muffled.The earth shook; a tremor ran through the Jasper B.; the glasses leaped and rang upon the table.Cleggett, followed by Lady Agatha, darted up the companionway.
As Cleggett reached the deck there was a second shock, and he beheld a flame leap out of the earth itself--a sudden sword of fire thrust into the night from the midst of the sandy plain before him.The light that stabbed and was gone in an instant was about halfway between the JasperB.and Morris's.A second after, a missile--which Cleggett later learned was a piece of rock the size of a man's head--fell with a splintering crash upon and through the wooden platform beside the Jasper B., not thirty feet from where Cleggett stood; another splashed into the canal.The nextday Cleggett saw several of these fragments lying about the plain.
Calling to his men to bring lanterns--for the night had fallen dark and cloudy--Cleggett ran towards the place.Lady Agatha, refusing to remain behind, went with them.Moving lights and a stir of activity at Morris's, and the gleam of lanterns on board the Annabel Lee, showed Cleggett that his neighbors likewise were excited.
But if Cleggett had expected an easy solution of this astonishing eruption he was disappointed.Arrived at the scene of the explosion, he found that its nature was such as to tease and balk his faculties of analysis.The blast had blown a hole into the ground, certainly; but this hole was curiously filled.Two large bowlders that leaned towards each other had stood on top of the ground.These had been split and shattered into many fragments.A few pieces, like the one that came so near Cleggett, had been flung to a distance, but for the most part the shivered crowns and broken bulks had been served otherwise; the force of the blast had disintegrated them, but had not scattered them; the greater part of this newly-rent stone had toppled into the fissure in the ground, and lay there mixed with earth, almost filling the hole.It was impossible to determine just where and how the blast had been set off; the rocks hid the facts.But Cleggett judged that the force must have come from below the bowlders; mightily smitten from beneath, they had collapsed into the cavern suddenly opening there, as a building might collapse into and fill a cellar.The pieces that had been thrown high into the air were insignificant in proportion to the great bulk which had settled into the hole and made its origin a mystery.
As Cleggett, bewildered, stood and gazed upon the mass of rock and earth, Cap'n Abernethy gave a cry and pointed at something with his finger.Cleggett, looking at the spot indicated, saw upon the edge of this singular fracture in the earth a thing that sent a quick chill of horror and repulsion to his heart.It was a dead hand, roughly severed between the wrist and the elbow.The back of it was uppermost; the fingers were clenched.Cleggett set down his lantern beside it and turned it over with his foot.
The dead fingers clutched a scrap of something yellow.On one of them was a large and peculiar ring.
"My God!" murmured Lady Agatha, grasping Cleggett convulsively by the shoulder, "that is the Earl of Claiborne's signet ring!"But Cleggett scarcely realized what she had said, until she repeated her words.Fighting down his repugnance, he took from the lifeless and stubborn fingers the yellow scrap of paper.
It was a torn and crumpled twenty-dollar bill.
