While dinner was being prepared Tom climbed higher up still and sat himself down on a rock; but the vastness and grandeur of the scene, and its indescribable silence and solemnity, must be left to the reader’s imagination.
He must have been fully ten thousand feet above the sea-level; and yet the snowy craters of Carhuairazo, just visible over the bluff bare brow of the mountain, still towered high above him.
Far below was an ocean of lesser hills, of woods and plains and smiling valleys, with streams that looked like trickling rills or silver threads among the green, and here and there a glassy lake.
The sun went down in a blaze of glory, and he now hastened below to enjoy repose and a well-earned dinner.
About nine o’clock, though the stars had been very bright before this, a storm-cloud passed over the mountain-side, with a roaring wind, heavy rain, and thunder and lightning. After this Tom went out to have one more look at the scene before turning in. Nothing was now visible beneath but a dim chaos of clouds, nothing on the horizon either, except, far away to the north, the giant cone of Cotopaxi. Its snow-girt crater was lit up every now and then by the gleams of the great fires within—gleams that darted in straight lines up through the rolling clouds of smoke that hung pall-like over it.
This is the loftiest and mightiest volcano in the world. Talk not of its height in feet or yards—speak of it in miles; and fancy, if you can, a burning mountain nearly five miles in height, the thunders of whose workings can be heard, and have been heard, six hundred miles away! It made Tom shiver to think of it. But O, the illimitable distance of the stars that shone above, and to think of God who made them all! What a mystery of mysteries! And the stars are voice-less, and these dread volcanoes speak only to us in thunders that we cannot understand, till we are fain to seek for refuge in the only refuge we have: our belief in the goodness of the Father, and the religion revealed to us in the Book of Books.
Tom sighed, he knew not why, and crept inside to the shelter of the cave, and wrapping himself in his blanket soon sank to sleep. But many times ere morning he was startled by the roar of falling debris of earth, rocks, and stone, loosened by the recent rain storm.
Samaro roused his young master early to see the sunrise. But when he went outside he stood for a few moments in silent wonder. Where had the world all gone to? It had disappeared, most assuredly—most of it at all events. Here was the mountain above and round him, but all the gorgeous scenery he had gazed on last night was swallowed up in an ocean of white mist or clouds. The word “ocean” is precisely the one to use. Beneath and as far as the eye could gaze all was a vast white sea, only it was bounded on the horizon by the jagged ridges and crater-cones of the mountains, and these looked like rocks and cliffs overhanging this ocean.
It was a marvellous sight; but when presently the red sun showed over the edge the scene was changed, and the whole sea of mist turned to clouds of mingled gold and crimson.