"So this," he thought whimsically, "is the terrible Fire Mountain!" He was excitedly happy.
A few moments later, when he went aloft to furl sail, he saw the shore, this unmarked, unknown rock that had filled his thoughts for months.
It was a sudden and eery transition as he mounted the rigging, from gray night to sunshine in the space of a few ratlines. On the foretopgallant-yard he was above the fog, the very roof of the bank lying a dozen feet below. The decks were concealed from him.
Overhead, the sky was blue and the gulls drove past and circled about in white screaming clouds. Before him, and on either side, not five hundred yards distant, loomed the mountain.
Martin stared intently and curiously, and, despite himself, that bleak and desolate outlook sobered the gaiety of his mood. On three sides the rock reared skyward, bare and black, with never a hint of vegetation.
The mountain formed a rough cone; some two thousand feet overhead was the summit, and over it hovered a cloud of white steam vapor, and a twisting column of curiously yellow-brown smoke that trailed away lazily on a light wind. Martin, staring at it, decided that the air he breathed did have an alien, a sulphurous taint.
There were no raw fissures about the crater edge, and no evidence beyond the rather thin volume of smoke that the volcano contained life. Yet Martin seemed to hear, above the thunder of the surf in the fog beneath him, a distant, ominous rumbling, as if the slumbering Vulcan of the mountain were snoring in his sleep.
But it was the mountainside that longest held Martin's fascinated gaze. For, in her fiery past, the volcano had clad her flanks with black lava that was now molded into a vast chaos of fantastic architecture and sculptures. It was as if an army of crazy artists had here expended their lunatic energies.
He saw huge, round towers, leaning all awry; a vast pile fashioned like a church front, with twin steeples canting drunkenly; the tremendous columns the captain had told him of; jutting masses that hinted in their half-formed outlines of gigantic, crouching beasts. And everywhere in that weird field of shapes were the openings of caves—dark blots in the black stone.
The mountain was truly a sponge-like labyrinth, Martin perceived. He could not see the strip of beach, however, or the cavern mouth, shaped like an elephant's head, of the whaleman's log. The fog hid them from view.