"An' nary one o' us is goin' back on you," said Emu Bill, with a grim laugh. "Wherever that there perfume comes from, I reckon Never Never an' me will see the end o' the journey."
They retraced their way to the camels, and in a short time were forcing a trail on into the seething mists. And now the stumbling camel-train experienced great difficulty in negotiating the many dry ravines that lay in their course, and they climbed over the basaltic bluffs which now and again reared their heads above the boulder-strewn expanse, only with the extremest effort. The sun beat down pitilessly on the wayfarers, and here the heat was, indeed, overpowering; it seemed to rise in long, pulsating swells from the bare rocks and hang in a filmy cloud of vapour, through which the eye could see but vaguely, as in a dream-picture. On, on, the pioneers struggled, and as they proceeded, the strange, sulphurous odour became more and more perceptible, until it assailed the nostrils in sharp, burning breaths. Yet still the vision ahead was clouded by dense white vapours, and the horizon remained obscured. Then suddenly a curious thing happened: the shrouding curtain in the near distance lifted up like a giant screen in a theatre, and through the mists of dispelling ether a dark towering height loomed up vividly.
"The mountain! the mountain!" cried Jack; and truly it was a mountain, and a mountain of so precipitous and forbidding an aspect that it looked like an immense black wall rising into the sky.
"That is just how I ran up against it before," said Mackay, calmly. "It appeared all at once, and I wondered why I didna see it earlier."
"Well, this beats me," growled Emu Bill. "An' why in all the world didn't we see such a colossal monument before? We oughter have sighted that there tower o' Babel at least two days back."
Even as he spoke a great white mask rose from the base of the towering elevation, and in an instant the mighty landmark had vanished from their view.
"I reckon we has had a sight o' ole Jimmy Squarefoot's furnace," remarked Never Never Dave, mysteriously. "An' don't it smell strong?"
"It jest howls," groaned Emu Bill, gasping hard.
Mackay kept an unmoved silence. He apparently had no intention of being surprised at anything; but Bob somewhat eased the minds of the twain by endeavouring to explain the phenomenon they had witnessed.
"The covering haze is nothing but steam," said he. "I think the mountain must be volcanic."