Mew IX.
Daring ascent of a Volcanic Mountain.
After another half-hour’s walk Blinks arrived at the foot of a great black mountain, all covered with rank black grass. The mountain had much the resemblance of a huge lion couchant.
“Seems a long way to walk round,” said our hero; “I’ll even go over, and I’ll get a fine view of the surrounding country from the top.” So saying, Blinks mentally girded up his loins, and began to climb. It was very steep, and very high, and he had to pause many times to take breath; but he cast no longing lingering look behind,—that wasn’t his nature. So he muttered, “Excelsior,” putting a great emphasis on the “r,” which is the pet letter of the feline race. After much toil and trouble, he stood on the highest peak of Mount Black;—and, St. Mary! what a scene burst upon his astonished eyes. The sun had gone down behind the distant window-frame; but the ogre had just lighted two moons, and placed them conveniently on the end of brass pipes, for which kind action Blinks postponed his execution sine die. Everything was thus rendered nearly as bright as day. As far as his eye could reach, nothing was visible but the flowery prairie, the ogre’s legs, and the great beams supporting the universe. The view was bounded by flowery walls, which, he doubted not, was the end of the world, while far away in a corner, the well-pleased and foolishly-affectionate-looking face of his mamma looked up from her rug. She spied her son, even at that distance, and turned up the white of her breast to lure him down.
“The old idiot,” said Blinks to himself, “how can she be so ridiculous and unromantic? Would Livingstone’s mamma do that to her son, if she espied him far away on the Peak of Teneriffe? No!”
Blinks was gazing skywards, and thinking that if he were spared to return to his native rug, he would write a book that would astonish the weak nerves of the tea-guzzling universe, and beat all creation, when he began to fancy he could hear a low rumbling noise beneath his feet, and perceive a slight heaving motion in the body of the mountain. He bent down and listened. Yes! there it was;—there could not be a doubt of either fact; and, terrible thought! he stood on the summit of a living volcano. But he did not fear; nay he even caught himself singing for joy; but in a moment his joy was turned to very particular grief, and his wonder to something as nearly akin to fear as the heart of a Blinks could beat time to.
“For,” says Blinks, “isn’t it rising I am? Isn’t it bigger and bigger the mountain is getting?”
There was no longer any question of it at all; and Blinks hurried down the side of the mountain as fast as four legs could carry him; but judge, if you can, of his astonishment to find that the hill itself had four legs, as well as he himself had; so that unless he could manage to creep down one of these, he would have to leap through the sky, down—down—down to the vast plain below. For a moment only he stopped to think, to bring all the wonderful powers of his great mind to bear upon the terrible situation; but just then his deliberation was brought to a speedy conclusion; for, wonderful to relate, the whole head of the hill turned about, and looked him directly in the face with a pair of eyes as big, so thought he, as fish-ponds; while at the same time a great cold nose was thrust right beneath him, and he was hurled headlong to the plain below, and the volcanic mountain—which cats, jealous of the immortality of Blinks, have since averred was nothing else but the ogre’s large dog Nero—shook itself and walked away to the other end of the boundless prairie. And Blinks confessed, many days afterwards, that at that moment, though by no means afraid, he would not have undertaken to say whether his head or heels were uppermost. After all, no wonder; for at that precise moment Blinks lay on his back, and the world consequently had an up-side-down look about it.