His companions were too much entranced to speak, but stood there gazing at as lovely a scene as ever met the eyes of man.
For there below them, in a cup-like depression, lay a nearly circular lake of the purest and stillest water, in whose mirror-like surface were reflected the rocky sides, verdant with beautiful growth, the towering trees and spire-like needles which ran up for hundreds of feet, here and there crumbled into every imaginable form, but clothed by nature with wondrous growth wherever plant could find room to root in the slowly decaying rock.
“Glorious, glorious!” exclaimed Drew, in a subdued voice, as if tones ought to be hushed in that lovely scene, for fear they should all awaken and find it had been some dream.
Panton gazed from one to the other, forgetful of his fall, and with a look of triumph in his smiling eyes, while Oliver let himself sink down upon the nearest stone, rested his chin upon his hand, and gazed at the scene as if he could never drink his fill.
As for the two sailors, they exchanged a solemn wink and then stood waiting with a calm look of satisfaction as much as to say: “We did all this; you’d never have known of it if it had not been for us.”
“Come, lads,” cried Panton at last, “we must be getting on. You see now how it is there is so much clear water trickling down below. What a magnificent reservoir!”
“It seems almost too beautiful,” sighed Oliver, rising unwillingly. “Who could expect a place like this with a burning mountain only a few miles to the north?”
“And think,” added Panton, “that this is the crater of an old volcano that once belched out these stones and poured fire and fluid lava down the slope we have just climbed.”
“It almost seems impossible,” said Drew. “The place is so luxuriantly fertile. Are you sure you are right?”
“Sure,” said Panton, “as that we stand here. Look for yourselves at the perfectly formed crater filled with water now as it was once filled with seething molten matter. Look yonder, straight across there where the wall is broken down as it was perhaps thousands of years ago by the weight of the boiling rock which flowed out. Look, you can see for yourselves, even at this distance, the head of the river of stone. Chip any of these blocks, and you have lava and tufa. That block you sat on is a weather-worn mass of silvery pumice inside, I’m sure, though outside it is all black and crumbling where it is not covered with moss.”