"Now everything depends upon that sign I fabricated. If it fails--or if an unfavorable natural sign comes first.... You know I must be in Zamboanga on the twenty-sixth, some way." He lapsed into reverie. The Major fidgeted, reached for his hat and stepped to the door, a bit shamefaced. "Terry," he said, awkwardly, "if you don't mind I think I'll run over toward Ahma's house. There is a lot to talk over with her now and I guess I--" His words were drowned in a resounding crash that blotted out all other sounds. The village shook with the jarring impact of some vast missile striking near, the air filled with the roar of shattering rock and heavy rumble of sliding earth. The Hillmen bounded upright at the first terrific crash and stood transfixed, witless, superstitious fear written upon every brown face. A dead silence followed the dying out of the last thunderous echoes, then a child whimpered, another, and the women took up the whining note. A warrior, one of the sub-chiefs from a neighboring village, raised a braceleted arm in astounded gesture toward the crag. "The SIGN! The SIGN!" he shouted. The thousand heads raised as one, and taking up the cry, surged toward the great cone, sifting through the timber like brown seeds through a screen. CHAPTER XVI CIVILIZATION DAWNS IN THE HILLS When the tumult had subsided, the amazed Major wheeled to face Terry's quizzical grin. "Well, Major," he said, "there is their merry little 'sign'! The darn thing worked!" The Major pulled him toward the door. "Come on," he exclaimed. "Let's see what happened." He hurried down the short ladder ahead of Terry and raced through the strip of woods to where the mob was packed about the base of the cone. The Major smashed an unceremonious pathway through the brown jam and in a moment they stood at the foot of the crest. A large segment of the huge pillar of rock had broken off and in falling had carried thousands of tons of shale and eroded stone. The immense rock, whose fracture and fall had precipitated the slide, lay directly under the Tribal Agong, at which the Hillmen were staring up, dumfounded. Following their upward gaze the Major saw that the fallen stone had formed the platform beneath the Agong, which now pivoted on its granite bracket over a cliff which fell sheer for hundreds of feet before curving into the stiff slope where crag fused into tableland. The great black gong hung directly over them. Looking closely, Bronner saw that it swung slowly in the evening breeze, and moved by the same impulse that had impelled him the first time he stood beneath it, he shouldered their way through the crowd to a safer position. "You need not worry about its falling, Major. It will hang there for a thousand years." "I know it, but it gets me just the--what's that they're yelling?" he exclaimed, as a swelling chorus of guttural shouts rose from the excited throng.