Then I never expected to be right on the very top of that volcano, throwing stones down in the lava, and sailing chips down the streams of hot stuff, just as I sailed chips on ice water at home-when the streets were flooded by spring rains. Say, there is no more danger on Vesuvius than there is in a toboggan slide, or shooting the chutes at home. I thought we would have to hire dagoes to carry us up to the top, and be robbed and held up, and may be murdered, but it is just as easy as going up in the elevator of a skyscraper, and no more terrifying than sitting on a 50-cent seat in a baseball park at home and witnessing the “Destruction of Pompeii” by a fireworks display
The crater looks sort of creepy, like a big cauldron kettle boiling soap on a farm, only it is bigger, and down in the earth's bowels you can well believe there is trouble, and if you believe in a hell, you can get it, illustrated proper, but the rivulets of lava that flow out of the wrinkles around the mouth of the crater are no more appalling than making fudges over a gas stove. When the lava cools you would swear it was fudges, only you can't eat the lava and get indigestion as you can eating fudges.
It was hard work to get dad to go up on the volcano, because he said he knew he would fall into it, and get his clothes burned, and he said he couldn't climb clear to the top, on account of his breath being short, but when I told him he could ride up on a trolley car, and have the volcano brought right to him, he weakened, and one morning we left Naples early and before two hours had passed we were on a little cogwheel railroad going up, and dad was looking down on the scenery, expecting every minute the cogs would slip and we would cut loose and go down all in a heap and be plastered all over the vineyards and big trees and be killed.
I don't know what makes dad so nervous, but he wanted a woman from Chicago, who was on the car with us, to hold his hand all the way up, but she said she was no nurse in a home for the aged, and she said she would cuff dad if he didn't let go of her. I told her she better not get dad mad if she knew what was good for her, for he was a regular Bluebeard, and wouldn't take no slack from no Chicago female, 'cause he had buried nine wives already. So she held his hand, and I guess she thinks she will be my stepmother, but I bet she don't.
Well, after we got almost to the top the car stopped, and we had to walk the rest of the way, several hundred feet, and we had to have a pusher and a putter for dad, a dago to go ahead and pull him up, and another to put his shoulder against dad's pants and shove. Gee, but it was a picture to see dad “go up old baldhead,” with the dagoes perspiring and swearing at dad for being so heavy, and the Chicago woman laughing, and me pushing her up.
One thing that scared dad was that every little way there was a shrine, where the guides left dad lying on the ground, blocked with a piece of cold lava, so he wouldn't roll down, like you would block a wagon wheel, and they would go to the shrine and kneel and say some prayers.
Dad was afraid they were going to charge the prayers in the bill for pushing him up, but I told dad that these people expected every time they, went up to the top that it would be their last trip, as they knew that some day the volcano would open in a new place and swallow them whole, with all the tourists. Then he gave them a dollar apiece to pray for him, and wanted to go back down the mountain and let Vesuvius run its own fireworks, but the Chicago lady told dad to brace up and she would protect him, and so the guides gave a few more pushes, and we were on top of the volcano, and dad collapsed and had to be brought to with smelling salts and whisky that the woman carried in her pistol pocket.
Gee, but it was worth all the trouble to get up the mountain, to see the sight that opened up. The hole in the mountain filled with boiling stuff was worth the price of admission, and the roaring of the boiling stuff, and the explosions way down cellar, and the flying stones, the smoke going into the air for a mile, like the burning of an oil well, the red-hot lava finding crevices to leak through, and flowing down the side of the mountain in streams like hot maple sirup, made a scene thai caused us to take off our hats and thank the good Lord that the thing hadn't overflowed enough to hurt us. But I could see dad was scared, 'cause when I wanted him to go around the edge of the crater with me, and see the hell-roaring free show from other points of view, and see where the hot ashes years ago rolled down and covered Pompeii and Herculaneum, he balked and said he had seen all he wanted to, and if he could stay alive until the next car went down the mountain, they could all have his interest in Vesuvius, and be darned to them, but he said if I wanted to go around looking for trouble, he would stay there under a big rock, with the Chicago lady, and wait for me to come back. She said she knew dad was all tired out, and needed rest, and she would stay with him, and keep him cheered up; so I left them and went off with one of the dagoes, to slide down hill on some flowing lava, and pick up specimens.