Winefred and her father were on their way to the down, passing up from Axmouth through Bindon, when Mrs. Jose appeared in the archway that gives access to the court, and saluted them.

She was in a condition of considerable perturbation, as was perceptible in her face, which mirrored the state of her mind.

Winefred, catching her hand, inquired breathlessly, 'What is the meaning of this? It is as though every one were on the cliffs. Surely not an invasion from France?'

'It is rabbits. They are running from the downs and the people are going on to it.'

'What is the matter?'

'I cannot tell. No one knows. Something is going to happen, and your mother has not returned.'

'My mother!'

'She went to the cottage with a carpet-bag to remove her knick-knacks, and has not come back. But perhaps she has got together men to carry the furniture and all the whole bag of tricks out of the house.'

'But why?'

'And all my men and maids have gone too. And Jose has toddled after them, he as don't care for phenomena, as the parson calls it, but only his pipe and ale.'

'But what is the matter?'

'The Lord only knows. The sea is boiling and throwing up mud, and they think that the rocks are about to fall. But I can't say. Lord preserve us all! It may be the Last Day coming on us in Axmouth and going on next to Seaton, and destroy it by instalments. If so, I wish it had begun t'other end of England.'

'Where is my mother—at the cottage?'

'That is just what I do not know, but want to find out.'

Winefred waited no longer. She ran up the lane leaving her father to follow at a pace more suited to his age and tight-lacing.

She came to the gate—once set with thorns—with a number of people running also up the lane, and could see that there were a great many on the common, forming as it were a wavering black ribbon on the short turf. Some impelled by curiosity advanced considerably, but next moment alarmed at their own temerity, scared by some trifle, recoiled.

One cried out that he heard a grinding sound under his boot-soles, and at once there was a rush inland. There broke out an argument as to where the fall would be. Some said along the line of the old Undercliff, there would be the cleavage. This was disputed on the ground that the Undercliff represented an earlier and exhausted subsidence.

One point there was on the down higher than the rest, that commanded a general view, and this was a point to which the curious trended partly because it gave such an extensive prospect, but also because it was esteemed secure.

Winefred inquired of the groups she encountered whether they had seen her mother, and received contradictory replies.

She was taking the path that led to the cottage, when she was arrested by a loud and general cry that ran from west to east; and immediately she heard a strange rending sound as of thick cloth ripped asunder; this produced a rush backwards of the people, and shouts of command rang from some of the preventive men. At once was seen a jagged fissure running like a lightning-flash through the turf, followed by a gape, an upheaval, a lurch, then a sinkage, and a starring and splitting of the surface. In another moment a chasm yawned before their eyes, three-quarters of a mile long, torn across the path, athwart hedges, separating a vast tract of down and undercliff from the mainland, and descending into the bowels of the earth.

Winefred was caught by the shoulder and hurled back.

It was not safe to stand near the lip of this hideous rent, for that lip broke up and fell in masses into the abyss. Cracks started from it, or behind it, and widened, and whole blocks of rock and tracts of turf disappeared. The surface beyond the chasm presented the most appalling appearance. It was in wild movement, breaking up like an ice-pack in a thaw. It swayed, danced, fell apart into isolated blocks, some stood up as pillars, some bent as horns, others balanced themselves, then leaned forward, and finally toppled over and disappeared.

In an agony of alarm for her mother, Winefred ran to the bit of isolated land whence the whole scene was visible, even the cottage, and she was followed by Mrs. Jose and Mr. Holwood, who had come up with her.

From this spot of vantage could be discerned how that a wide tract of land, many acres in length, had separated from the main body and was sliding seaward in a tilted position. At the same moment from out the sea rose a black ridge, like the back of a whale, but this drew out and stretched itself parallel to the fissure.

An awed silence had fallen on the spectators as they held their breath to watch the progress of the convulsion that was changing the outline of the coast and transforming its appearance.

But suddenly a cry was heard, and next moment some one was seen running on the sloping and still sliding mass.

It was not Jane Marley. It was a man carrying a carpet-bag.

For some time none could make out who he was; but the Captain of the Excise, who had a glass, exclaimed that he was Dench, the ferryman. Olver appeared to be panic-stricken to such an extent as to have almost lost his senses. Seeing the crowd he ran towards it, along the path from the cottage till he came upon the gap that was rapidly widening and dividing him at every moment farther from the mainland. He seemed as though on board a vessel that was being swept out to sea, and frantically strove to escape from her to those who stood on the wharf observing him. Down into the separating chasm eyes looked, but could not make out the bottom; the depth contained a tossing mass of crumbled chalk and erupted pebble, with occasional squirts of water, some two or three hundred feet below the surface on the land side. It was like a mighty polypus mouth that had opened and was chewing and digesting its food in its throat and belly.

Seeing this, mad with fear, shrieking like a woman, Olver turned and fled, to be again arrested by a mound that lifted before his eyes as though thrown up by a monstrous burrowing mole. Almost immediately this ridge changed its character, it split with a sharp snap, became a rent, and Dench's way was again cut off. Once more he turned, and this time ran in a seaward direction down the inclination, but when he caught sight of the churning water throwing up volumes of mud, and at the uprising slimy reef lifting itself out of the sea, he turned again, never letting go his hold of the bag, shrieking still, for in the unparalleled horror of the situation his brain had lost its balance.

Those who looked on at the frantic man knew that it was not within human power to aid him. It was a mighty arena, and the spectators contemplated the solitary flying wretch pursued to his death by the relentless, invisible forces of Nature. Now he sought the cottage. It seemed to him in his dazed condition that he might find shelter there. But the door had been locked by himself and the key cast away.

He stood and wiped from his brow the sweat that rained down and blinded him. And then a gleam of thought lighted his troubled mind. He considered that if he ran eastward and could outstrip the rent as it formed, he might yet attain solid and stationary land.

But those who looked on with bated breath and trembling pulses saw that the attempt must end in failure. Such as stood on the height in security roared out advice to him. He halted, looked in their direction, endeavoured vainly to catch what was said. Men yelled louder, waved their arms, but as none agreed in the advice tendered, the wretch was confused and not assisted.

He continued his run eastward, ran—ran with his full strength, and came abruptly on the edge of a mural precipice, with another world far below his feet covered with brushwood, from which he was cut off by a perpendicular escarpment like one of the walls of a crater in the moon. To that lower world he could not descend. Then again he turned to run in an opposite direction. To such as saw him he was like a fox throwing the hounds off his scent, doubling, retrieving, dodging, but always headed.

And now as he ran he was brought down by his foot suddenly sinking into a crack that was in process of formation, and which he had not seen in his precipitate haste. By the time he had extracted his leg, this crack had become a gash that descended into darkness.

Clinging to a bush, kneeling, as he withdrew his foot, he saw the crumbling chalk dribble into this depth below, and the thought quivered through him that he was going down alive into the bottomless pit.

Rendered crazy with fear he mounted a fragment of rock and saw about him the wreckage as of a world—prostrate trees, leaning pillars of rock, disrupted masses of soil, bushes draggling over to drop into the throats open to swallow them.

There was but one possibility of salvation open to him, to leap the chasm that divided him from the mainland at one point where as yet the width was not extreme, and the feat was not impossible.

But to do this he must act with promptitude. To fail was to fall down that throat to be mumbled and chumped with the grinding rocks. The leap would be considerable, but feasible by any man of moderate activity.

Dench retreated to run.

Those who saw his purpose shouted to him. He looked up at them bewildered.

They called to him to lay aside the carpet-bag. His hand was passed through the loops, and it hung from his wrist.

He did not understand what was shouted. Possibly in his then condition of mind he was unconscious that he was still weighted with the bag. He ran, leaped, was flying in space over the chasm, touched the rock on the farther side, caught at the grass; but was overbalanced, dragged backward from the crest by the weight of the bag, and went down with a tuft of wiry grass and hawkweed in his right hand, and disappeared in the midst of the rock and earth that was in process of being chewed. Now the carpet-bag, then a leg, next a hand appeared, and went under again. Then up came the head, only next moment to be drawn beneath and disappear in the mighty mill.