“Pages of the Bible! If that is the use they make of the Holy Book, I pity the missionaries! It will be rather difficult to establish a Maori library.”
“And what text of scripture did they aim at us?”
“A message from God Himself!” exclaimed John Mangles, who was in the act of reading the scorched fragment of paper. “It bids us hope in Him,” added the young captain, firm in the faith of his Scotch convictions.
“Read it, John!” said Glenarvan.
And John read what the powder had left visible: “I will deliver him, for he hath trusted in me.”
“My friends,” said Glenarvan, “we must carry these words of hope to our dear, brave ladies. The sound will bring comfort to their hearts.”
Glenarvan and his companions hastened up the steep path to the cone, and went toward the tomb. As they climbed they were astonished to perceive every few moments a kind of vibration in the soil. It was not a movement like earthquake, but that peculiar tremor that affects the metal of a boiler under high pressure. It was clear the mountain was the outer covering of a body of vapor, the product of subterranean fires.
This phenomenon of course excited no surprise in those that had just traveled among the hot springs of the Waikato. They knew that the central region of the Ika-na-Mani is essentially volcanic. It is a sieve, whose interstices furnish a passage for the earth’s vapors in the shape of boiling geysers and solfataras.
Paganel, who had already noticed this, called the attention of his friends to the volcanic nature of the mountain. The peak of Maunganamu was only one of the many cones which bristle on this part of the island. It was a volcano of the future. A slight mechanical change would produce a crater of eruption in these slopes, which consisted merely of whitish silicious tufa.
“That may be,” said Glenarvan, “but we are in no more danger here than standing by the boiler of the DUNCAN; this solid crust is like sheet iron.”