| A Native Camp. |
But Mac and Stewart were already busily engaged collecting specimens, which they stowed in every nook and corner of their ragged garments.
"Come along, you gloating misers!" cried Phil, as he and I started to negotiate the last stiff climb.
"There's nae time like the present," growled Mac oracularly, pursuing his congenial task with supreme content.
"I'm o' the same opeenion," spluttered Stewart, who had turned his mouth into a receptacle for the finest gems in his collection. So we crawled over the smooth climaxing dome alone. Our surprise was great when on reaching the top we found ourselves on the edge of a small circular area that depressed ever so slightly towards the centre, providing a space which looked remarkably like an ordinary circus ring. This impression was much heightened by the fact that a well-marked path seemed to have been worn around the periphery; but through what agency this had been done I could not well imagine. We stood surveying the odd arena, filled with wonder.
"It is one of Nature's strange tricks," I said, after a considerable silence.
Phil looked doubtful, but he did not speak. Then we made a further discovery. The saucer-shaped hollow was graven out of a solid lava formation, but exactly over the point of its deepest dip several crumbling branches lay strewn. Of a certainty they had not come there of their own accord, and at once we were overwhelmed with dire misgivings.