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There are also quarrymen who extract cantaria-slabs for sills and copings from the four square apertures which look afar like mortice-holes; and a fine marbled stone, white, blue, and ruddy, has been taken from this part of the cliff-face. Finally, there is a little knot of tiny huts which sticks like a wasp-nest to the very foot of the huge wall.
This was an easy and expeditious task, the jars of gold-dust and the gold bricks being simply slung at the end of a line and lowered down the cliff-face to Manners, who received them below.
The alarm trumpets were sounded, and there was again a stampede on the part of the women and children toward the curious caves in the cliff-face, while the men came running together and rallying round an individual who appeared to be their leader, or chief. Meanwhile I walked slowly up the narrow beach to the level ground beyond, and there stood with both hands upraised in token of amity.
He must think of what lay above. Therein was his hope. He clung to it, as he clung to the cliff-face, desperately. The sun blazed on his back. The sweat trickled down his face. He kept his mind to his work, and his nose to the cliff. A bee with an orange tail sucked at a purple thistle. Butterflies chased, loved, and sipped all round him. O for Gwen, and her killing-bottle!
Two minutes later the first luff and the gunner, breathless and panting, came running up to us, and we all plunged down the cliff-face together.
Falling rocks an avalanche, a cataclysm around us. Then light overhead. The giant's crushed body lay motionless. A pile of boulders, rocks and loose metallic earth was strewn upon his head and torso, illumined by the outer light through a jagged rent where the cliff-face had fallen down. We were unhurt, crouching back from the avalanche.
At my words the others of the first line, who had been interested spectators of my tactics, seized upon great boulders or bits of rock, whichever came first to their hands, and, without, waiting for a command from Gr-gr-gr, deluged the terrified cave men with a perfect avalanche of stone. In less than no time the cliff-face was stripped of enemies and the village of Gr-gr-gr was saved.
Then I looked down again carefully, searching every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get down, there seemed to be nothing but the sea for him at the end of his journey.
A call from Rhaalton took his attention. We landed our entire force in the foothills of the mountains. The power plant was there; it looked like a squat industrial building set upon a ledge of ice a shining cliff-face behind it, a precipice in front. At the foot of the precipice our other vehicles were clustered.
Looking a little closer, however, I presently became aware of an exceedingly narrow and dangerous zigzag path traversing the cliff-face, about a quarter of a mile farther on, and toward this we at once made our way.
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