“Nonsense!” cried Oliver, laughing.
“Ah! you may call it so, young gentleman, but I know how these things will happen. No, I stop by my ship, and if the beggars do come, the men and I will make a stiff fight of it till you folk come back to help me drive them to their canoe.”
No persuasion would alter the mate’s plans, but he eagerly forwarded those of the naturalists, and arranged for Smith and Wriggs to bear them company, even offering two more men, but Panton was of opinion that the smaller their number was the more likely they were to be successful, and the next morning they started—a well armed party, Wriggs and Smith carrying a ladder and little tent, the others the food and water.
Then in due time the boat was reached and rowed along the lagoon till the end of the mist and the effervescent water were passed, and at last, a good mile farther than the attempt had been before, they put ashore, drew up their boat in the cocoa-nut grove which went on far as eye could reach, and, with the men shouldering the traps after the boat had been hidden, they started over fresh ground for the slope.
The route was plain enough if they could follow it, for there, high above them, was the balloon-like cloud of steam and smoke floating over the crater, the only mist in the pure blue sky, and looking dazzling in the sunshine as a film of silver.
“I don’t see why we cannot easily do it,” said Panton, as he shifted his gun from one shoulder to the other. “What we have to do is to avoid the thick forest and make at once for the slope of cinders and ashes. Then we can zigzag up. It looks no distance to the top, and we could do it easily to-night.”
But the mate’s plan was considered the best: to get some distance up and pitch their tent at the edge of the forest at its highest point, and then have their good night’s rest and start upward as soon as it was daylight.
They carried out this idea, skirting round the dense patch of forest, and getting above it to the open ground, where they had to wind in and out among rifts and blocks of lava which formed a wilderness below the ash slope. Then, going close to the forest edge, they soon found water, a couple of little sources bubbling out from among the rocks, and oddly enough within a few yards of each other, one being delicious, cool, and sweet, the other so hot that they could hardly immerse their hands, and when it was tasted it was bitter and salt to a degree.
While the two men set up the tent and made a fire to boil the kettle, a short expedition was made by the three young naturalists, it being a settled thing that there was to be no collecting next day, but every nerve was to be strained to reach the mountain top.
The ash slope ran up rapidly from where they stood, as they shouldered their guns and looked about them, and naturally feeling that they would have enough of that the next morning they turned down among the lava blocks for a short distance and then paused before plunging into the forest below.