He lay flat on his back and tried to dig in his heels; this worked for a moment, but the stones were too loose and cascaded away from under his feet.

The deafening roar of the slide thundered in his ears, stones cascaded over him and then dirt and dust.

With a whispering that crescendoed into an earth-shaking roar, gray stone crumbled, then cascaded downward, some of it hitting the old ridge line and bouncing toward me, and I cast up yet another shield, throwing what seemed to be every bit of energy I had around me.

He could see that the British guns had done damage and knew that the stones and rubble must have cascaded into the hidden ditch to make a crude ramp, perhaps a hundred feet wide, up which the attackers must climb to get into the heart of the fortress town.

For the six days the new batteries built in the ruins of the Picurina Fort had fired incessantly at the breaches, at first with small effect until, almost unexpectedly, the loosened stone had cascaded into the ditch and was followed by a dust-spewing avalanche of rubble from the wall's core.

Then a puff of dust rose on one side of the building, and stones cascaded down onto the ground.

Dirt and stones cascaded into the darkness beneath him.

The stairs broke away from the wall, stones fell outward, crumbling, and then the whole tower split and fell, crashing in heavy thunder down upon the roofs of the keep, stones cascading into the courtyards, falling into the valley below, touching off rockfalls and landslides.

For a minute no one uttered a word as dirt and small stones cascaded over the brink and rained down on a section of woodland over 1000 feet below.