“Why, uncle, what do you mean?”
“The vapors of the volcano!”
Both Helena and her lover grew pale at these ominous words.
“Still,” said the latter anxiously, “if they do nothing but give headaches”—
“You forget,” replied Justinian in a sombre tone, as they entered the Acropolis; “we are half-way up the crater, but if the vapors are rising from the volcano, think of all my people in the valley.”
Without waiting a moment, the three, in a state of great alarm, hurried to the platform in front of the temple, and looked anxiously down to the village. Although it was now seven o’clock, and the Melnosians were early risers, there was no appearance of life in the valley below, no sound of labor or voices ascended, no smoke curled upward from the chimneys; but in the still morning the cup of the crater lay spread out before them, a scene of exquisite beauty, yet terribly, ominously calm.
“Great God!” cried Justinian, with a strangled sob; “can it be as I feared?”
A man came staggering along the mulberry avenue, waving his arms wildly, and when he came sufficiently near, they saw it was the bos’n Dick, pale and haggard, reeling in his gait like a drunken man.
Maurice ran forward to help him as he advanced, and ultimately had to carry him to the steps of the Acropolis, while Helena, by her father’s direction, ran inside for brandy and smelling-salts. With these they revived the almost insensible sailor, who opened his eyes with a shudder, only to find three faces scarcely less haggard than his own bending over him. None of them asked what had happened, for the intense quiet of that valley told its own terrible story, and Justinian knew that in one night he had lost the whole of his subjects through the deadly vapors breathed by the awakening volcano.
“Oh, Mr. Justinian! Mr. Roylands! it is horrible—horrible!” said Dick, sitting up with difficulty. “They are all dead!—not one left alive; and my poor messmates are gone also. Let us leave this cursed place, sir, or we will die also.”