There was no moon, and the constellations of the stars were abridged with sombre clouds; but, when we had gone about a mile, the darkness began to be tinged with a faint lurid glow, the air was hot and smelt sulphurous, the vegetation grew sparse and stunted, on a dark hard ground cracked in fissures.
Suddenly the voice of the volcan boomed, like a terrible tocsin in the night. It came from close in front.
We went a little farther; but, on a sudden, Ambrose clutched hold on my arm. “Hist!” said he in my ear, and drew me behind a curtain of withered trees. He pointed between the branches; I looked, and what I saw was this:
In an open space, the earth being bare and blasted and black, was a little round hill, dark red in colour, but pink about the top; in height about fifty feet, and shaped like an inverted bowl. White and pearly vapour ascended from it thinly, in circling wraiths. At the foot thereof stood Doctor Copicus.
He stood motionless, his face towards the volcan. He began to speak.
“I grow liker and liker to thee!” said he, with passion in his shrill voice, “Liker to thy hollow heart! thy hollow, fiery heart!... I, too, am a volcan! On fire! On fire! Waiting!
“That I should be baffled, denied the secret which holds me from my revenge!
“Yet it cannot be for long. A little while, but a little while, and I shall come at it, I shall find my combustible! Then tremble, thou accursed race! You cast me out! You cast me out! Ha! Your proud cities, your bigot universities, your palaces, the very cottages upon your fields, shall be shattered! shall be shattered! I’ll make them like to this place of ashes!”
His voice rose, and quavered, and broke; the strung, tortured note of it sounds even yet in my ears. He shook his clenched fist above him; and, as he turned in the weird light, I saw that his brow was ribbed and stricken like the twisted lava-stones that strewed his path.
He scarce had ended, but another figure—a little lad—appeared from behind the volcan. His face was wild and mazed; his long brown hair fell straggling upon his forehead; his body was thin like a skeleton. He was dressed in the rags and tatters of a seaman’s watch-cloak. I knew him: ’twas the little antic lad whom the Englishman had told me of.