It was night, with silver Saturn filling the overhead sky. Trembling, we stood and watched the cave-mouth from which a visible line of smoke was now issuing. Our home was down there; the fire-monster had it—and we could not go down and take it from him.
We never went back to the cave. The meteor’s swift days and nights passed in rapid succession; and during several of them we stood helplessly watching.
Presently the fire came to the surface. I realize now that it was eating its way downward as well as upward until the entire vicinity of the cave was glowing with molten, burning rocks.
The ground all around the cave-mouth soon fell inward. A seething crater was exposed where the cave had been—a bottomless pit of lurid, licking flames with black smoke rolling up from it, and the hissing of steam below.
We took instant flight, swimming through the air over our tiny world, until, on its opposite hemisphere we found sanctuary.
There was no evidence of the fire here. We were pleased. We would find another cave, another river, and build our home anew.
We were both famished. I caught a lizard and we ate it—uncooked, for we were both afraid to unleash again the monster that had all but overcome us.
Then we slept; and again, when two of the meteor’s brief days and nights were passed, and Saturn was sinking below the horizon to give place to dawning sunlight, we searched for a new cave.
No cave was to be found. But there was water. A river several hundred yards wide bubbled up from the ground and flowed in a broad shallow stream toward the horizon. We followed it to a tiny line of hills. Into a hole in a cliff-face it plunged downward with an impetuous current.
Here we decided to build our home. There were blue rushes along the river bank. Nona gathered them; she would dry them, plait them into robes for our couch.