“What is the matter?” he asked hurriedly, as she fell into his arms. “Are you ill?—is the”—
“The lake! the lake, father!”
A terrible fear seized Justinian’s heart, but he nevertheless controlled his feelings and spoke calmly.
“What do you mean, Helena?”
“The lake! it is dried up.”
In the dark Justinian could not see the lake at the bottom of the valley, but he guessed what had happened. The lake’s bottom, shattered by the subterranean convulsions, had been unable to hold the water in its cup, and the whole body had been drained off into the bowels of the earth. This, then, was the third warning of Hephaistos, and a very terrible one it was, for if the crust of the crater was so convulsed, the next thing that would happen would be an outburst of fire.
Justinian foresaw all this in a moment, but, without saying a word, led his terrified daughter back to the Acropolis, where they sat down on the steps. The moon, lately obscured by cirrus-shaped clouds, now burst out in full splendor through the thin woof, and the Demarch with a pang saw that his beautiful valley was bereft of its gleaming silver eye. Where the calm expanse of water had been was now an ugly black gulf of rugged rock, and Justinian half expected to see fire burst fiercely from those black depths.
“It is nothing, it is nothing, my child,” he said, with a confidence he was far from feeling; “the earthquake has shattered the lake, and of course the water has drained off. Silly child, of what are you afraid?”
“I dread lest the crater should burst into fire.”
“There is no sign of that; we would have had warnings long ago.”