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When Vesuvius is silent, pygmies may make faces on the very lip of the crater, and they on the slopes forget the black terror of the fiery hail. Jake Wheeler himself, loyal as he was, did not care to look into the crater now that he was summoned; but a force pulled him all the way to the tannery house.
These words explain precisely that which did actually occur. On went the schooner, almost brushing the base of the volcano, causing Roswell many a bound of the heart, when he fancied she must strike; but she went clear. All this time, it was crack, crack, crack, from the crater, rumbling sounds and heavy explosions; the last attended by flames, and smoke of a pitchy darkness.
Some one of the crater, presumably Gunga Dass, must have shot him with his own gun the gun that fitted the brown cartridges. He had never attempted to escape in the face of the rifle-fire from the boat. I pushed the corpse out hastily, and saw it sink from sight literally in a few seconds. I shuddered as I watched. In a dazed, half-conscious way I turned to peruse the notebook.
"This lull will only last until the imprisoned fires overcome the block in the crater, and the longer it lasts the worse will be the explosion. From my knowledge of the coast I feel sure that we are close to the town of Anjer. If another wave like the last comes while we are here, it will not slip under your brig like the last one. It will tear her from her anchor and hurl us all to destruction.
A single peak, with its Souffriere, rises to some 2000 feet; right and left of it are two lower hills, fragments, apparently, of a Somma, or older and larger crater. One spot on the little island we should have liked much to have seen: the house where Nelson, after his marriage with Mrs. Nisbet, a lady of Nevis, dwelt awhile in peace and purity.
If such connection existed at all, it was by two very narrow necks of rock, of equal height, both of which had come up out of the water under the late action, which action had considerably altered and extended the shores of Crater Island. Sand appeared in various places along these shores, now; whereas, previously to the earthquake, they had everywhere been nearly perpendicular rocks.
It was climbed, in 1856, by Baron Muller, to whose mind the crater appeared like the entrance to a lower world of horrible darkness. He was struck with astonishment on contemplating the tremendous forces required to elevate and rend such enormous masses to melt them, and then pile them up like towers, until by cooling they became consolidated into their present forms.
We saw that four of the Selenites standing in the doorway were much taller than the others, and clothed in the same manner as those we had seen in the crater, namely, with spiked round helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and that each of the four carried a goad with spike and guard made of that same dull-looking metal as the bowls.
And that night I tried in vain to sleep, my brain whirling with wild surmises, as to how the long-dead man had found his way into the crater. Was there a path after all, or had he used a rope to let himself down in search of the diamonds, only to meet his death in some manner where they lay thickest?
"The corral! the corral!" exclaimed Ayrton. It was, in fact, towards the corral that the lava was rushing, as the new crater faced the east, and consequently the fertile portions of the island, the springs of Red Creek and Jacamar Wood, were menaced with instant destruction. At Ayrton's cry the colonists rushed to the onagas' stables. The cart was at once harnessed.
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