This latter he proposed to fill with diluted prussic acid—of the commodity in question we possessed not a molecule, which he regarded as beside the question—and therewith advance down the passage up which two hours before he had so ingloriously fled. Arriving within range of the gaping mouth, he would fill it with the fatal fluid. But one frightful writhe and M. le Dinosaure would lie dead at his feet. V’là tout.
This versatile proposal was met with abounding laughter, the which daunted him in no degree, but cheered us all immensely. For with laughter returned self-respect, which had dropped from us in its entirety during the disgraceful rout of the morning, and we shook our fear from us as dogs shake their dripping coats. To each came great resolves to personally seek out and destroy the Monster, and complacent with the future renown thus inwardly promised, each turned patronizing attention to the talk of his fellows, using their banal conversation to cloak the deep and secret devices that seethed within his own brain. So content grew beneath the cloud of tobacco smoke, and pleasant talk expanded itself, and finally the ladies, under the persuasive tinkling of Gerry’s banjo, consented to enliven the rocky solitudes with a song.
CHAPTER XVII
A LITTLE DOG’S STUMBLE
It was as Gwen began to lift her voice sweetly in the opening notes of “Just a little bit of string,” that with harassing appropriateness the hawser, which had that morning again been tightened between the anchor and the ship, snapped with a ringing crack. The deck quivered villainously, and I, who had just risen to reach for more tobacco, fell upon my chair and smashed it to matchwood. The doors of the companion flapped to and fro, and the rigging quivered and thrummed. We could hear the jar of the rattled machinery in the engine-room.
At the same moment we were aware that the rocks were grinding upon the ship with a scissor-like movement, though happily they did not close. Had they done so we should have been nipped in their jaws with a very remote chance of escape. We also realized that the smoke-cloud, which had risen and grown thinner during the day, was expanding and thickening, making the twilight of the short Antarctic night a very business-like gloom.
We slipped across the gangways hurriedly, and grouped ourselves upon the rocks. A low rumble came creeping across the empty silences of the glacier. It rolled up to us like the muffled groaning of a buried army. We could fancy that the tombed city of long ago was sending out its desperate call for succor. The rocks shook beneath us. The gravel danced and pattered about our feet. We staggered, catching at one another aimlessly. Gwen, who was next me, tripped comfortably into my arms, where I held her with much content, both of us swaying absurdly.
The dull roar became abruptly a sharp crash. The ground rippled and worked horribly, and we were flung to earth, grasping at the rolling boulders. The cleft beneath the ship yawned like some Titanic mouth. As the remaining hawser parted, the keel sank further into the opening with a thud, and the stones we had built up beneath it went clattering down into the abyss. Not ten yards from where Gwen and I fell abroad, and not two feet from where Lessaution grovelled, a fissure opened and shut with a snap as of teeth. The Professor in fact declared that for one hair-raising moment he looked into the very deepest fastnesses of death.
As the gap closed, a puff of sulphurous steam was shot into the air. It clouded over us, making us cough. A clatter of ice and falling water came from the glacier; a splinter or two fell from the peak. Then, suddenly as came the upheaval, quiet returned and fell upon the scene.
From that moment, though, the darkness was riven. The mushroom-like pall of smoke now hung over us rosy red from fires that burnt beneath it in the lap of the hill. The crimson light flared down into the empty lake basin, reflected back luridly from the rocks. A small, fine rain of soot, gray and woolly, began to fall; it got into our eyes and nostrils, and set us sneezing and winking prodigiously. Then in trembling and with hopelessness in our hearts we climbed the slopes to the cliff-tops, filled with desolation in that the earth having turned traitor, we had but the sea to look to. How vainly we might look and how long we knew but too well.
The red glow wavered upon crestless surges that moved slowly upon the crags. Far out to sea the islands of the first eruption showed black and shattered, dim outlines in the cinder rain. This fell mercilessly on floe and berg, blackening them to filthy patches upon the rosy sea. Far away we could still see the gleam of moonlight upon the outer ocean, peaceful and silvered against the blood-like hue of the landward waters. From above us came the boom of irregular explosions, and gray tufts of smoke shot up into the darkness. Here and there crimson splashes of flame cut the smoke tower. They were spouts of molten stone, the slag of that mighty furnace. The snap and hiss as these fell upon the glacier was like the overboiling of some stupendous kettle.