Having done this, he was returning to the path, when he perceived that Allen and the half-breed had accompanied him.

They were all three approaching the mouth of the fissure, when they were thrown down by a sudden and violent shock.
At the same moment the crumbling masses of the hill slid down upon them and they instantly concluded that they were doomed to be buried alive.
Alive--all three?
No! Allen had been so deeply covered by the sliding soil that he was already smothered, but Arthur Pym and Dirk Peters contrived to drag themselves on their knees, and opening a way with their bowie knives, to a projecting mass of harder clay, which had resisted the movement from above, and from thence they climbed to a natural platform at the extremity of a wooded ravine.
Above them they could see the blue sky-roof, and from their position were enabled to survey the surrounding country.
An artificial landslip, cunningly contrived by the natives, had taken place.

Captain William Guy and his twenty-eight companions had disappeared; they were crushed beneath more than a million tons of earth and stones.
The plain was swarming with natives who had come, no doubt, from the neighbouring islets, attracted by the prospect of pillaging the _Jane_.

Seventy boats were being paddled towards the ship.

The six men on board fired on them, but their aim was uncertain in the first volley; a second, in which mitraille and grooved bullets were used, produced terrible effect.