‘ Yes.’ I was thinking how we’d gone up by the tourist road from Torre Annunziata to where it was blocked by an old lava flow and how we’d climbed the rest of the way on foot. I’d had both my legs then.’ It was very different,’ I murmured.
‘It was? Gee! This is a bit of luck for me meeting someone who saw it before the eruption. What was it like?’
His excitement was infectious. ‘The lower slopes were quite gentle,’ I said. ‘But the last bit was steep, like a battlement of lava. And the top was a plateau about a mile across which steamed with the heat pouring out of the fissures. The whole plateau was composed of solidified lava which rang hollow like metal casing as we walked across it. Right in the centre of the plateau was a huge heap of cinders about 300 feet high. From Naples it looked like a small pimple right at the very top, but close to it was more like a slag heap.’
‘And that was where the crater was?’
I nodded. ‘We climbed the slag heap and from the top we were able to look down into the crater mouth.’
‘Could you see anything?’
‘Oh, yes. She was blowing off about every thirty seconds then, sending stones whistling up to a height of about 2000ft.’
‘You don’t say. Wasn’t it dangerous?’
I laughed. ‘Well, I’ll admit I wished I’d got a tin hat with me. But fortunately the funnel of the crater was sloped slightly away from us. We could hear the stones falling on the other side of the plateau. And inside the mouth of the crater great slabs of red hot, plastic rock were rising and falling like phlegm in the throat of a dragon.’
He nodded, eyes gleaming. ‘A remarkable experience. I must tell my boy about this. A very remarkable experience. And you say the mountain is greatly changed?’