By this time they were ascending a rugged slope, and painfully climbing in and out among huge rocks, whose structure told of their being portions of some lava eruption. Water trickled here and there, overhung by mosses of loose habit and of a dazzling green. Tree ferns arched over the way with their lace-work fronds, and here and there clumps of trees towered up, showing that it must have been many generations since fire had devastated this part of the island, and the huge masses of lava had been formed in a long, river-like mass, to be afterwards broken up and piled by some convulsion in the fragments amongst which they clambered.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” cried Oliver.
“Grand!” exclaimed Drew. “Look at the Nepenthes,” and he pointed to the curiously metamorphosed leaves of the climbers around, each forming a pitcher half full of water.
“I want to know how you discovered it,” said Oliver.
“Oh, you must ask these fellows,” replied Panton.
“It were Billy Wriggs, sir, goin’ after a bird I’d shot in that robuschus way of his’n, and when I follered him and see what a place it were I was obliged to come on.”
“Why, we must be getting up toward an old crater,” cried Oliver. “There has been a volcanic eruption here.”
“Then just be a bit patient,” said Panton, laughing. “Only up as high as that ridge,” he continued, panting, “and then we’re close at hand.”
It was hot and toilsome work, but the party were in so lovely a natural garden that the toil was forgotten. For the trees of great growth were farther apart up here, leaving room for the sunshine to penetrate, with the result that the undergrowth was glorious, and the rocky dells and precipices magnificent.
“Straight away. Up to the top here,” cried Panton. “Come along.”