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On this has been erected the Royal Observatory, under the superintendence of Professor Luigi Palmieri, where continuous observations are being made, by means of delicate seismometers, of the earth-tremors which precede or accompany eruptions; for it is only justice to say that Vesuvius gives fair warning of impending mischief, and the instruments are quick to notify any premonitory symptoms of a coming catastrophe.
"Are you saying," Soames asked after a moment, "that ordinary earth-tremors record like explosion-waves, but that you'd have to have an implosion to make a record like this?" "Sure!" said the geophysics man. "But how can you have an implosion that will make an earth-shock? I'm going to have to take this whole damned wabble-bucket apart to find out what's the matter with it!
"This is an improved seismograph," he explained, "one after a very recent model by Prince Galitzin of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. The seismograph, as you know, was devised to register earthquakes at a distance. This one not only measures the size of a distant earthquake, but the actual direction from which the earth-tremors come. That is why there are two pendulums and two drums.
It was the sacred reminder that from roaring, raging fire, and from the agony of monstrous earth-tremors, man had been born, and that by these same agencies he would eventually be swallowed up he and the sins within his breast. And here the Empress was prostituting its solemnities into a mere call to gluttony, and sign for ribald laughter and sensuous display.
But the earth-tremors were not the only surprise in store for Tom and his two friends, On the island they found five men and two ladies, who, by strange chance, had been stranded there when the yacht Resolute, owned by Mr. George Hosbrook, was wrecked in the same storm that disabled the airship. Mr. Hosbrook, a millionaire, was taking a party of friends to the West Indies.
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