Onward, and still onward. Fresh marvels of scenery seemed hourly opening before them. In pride of place, Tongariro, fire-breathing Titan, with volcanic cone, encircled by his stupendous mountain range. As they gazed, the ceaseless steam-clouds, now enveloping the summit, now wind-driven sportively, as if by a giant's breath, exposed to view the darkened rim of the crater.
To the right of Tongariro, more than five thousand feet in height, they saw the heaven-piercing bulk of Ruapehu (eight thousand nine hundred feet), cloud-crowned, lava-built, but girdled with ice-fields at a lower altitude; and at the base, arising from gloomy forests, valleys seamed and fissured, precipices, ravines, and outlined terraces.
"What a land of contrasts!" said the Englishman. "The sublime, the dread and awful, the idyllic and peaceful rural, seem mingled together in the wildest profusion; fire and water conflicting furiously in the same landscape. Nature appears to have thrown her properties and elements about without plan or method."
"A strange country!—a strange people!" exclaimed Erena. "Is that what you are thinking of? Surely you cannot expect an ordinary population amid scenes like these. I fear that we resemble our country in being calm as the sleeping sea, until the storm of passion is aroused."
"And then?" queried he.
"Then, if we feel injured, cruel as the grave, merciless, remorseless. So beware of us! We make bad enemies, I confess; but, then, we are always ready to die for our friends."
"I am numbered, I trust, among that favoured class, am I not?" he continued, as he gazed at the girl's face, wearing as it did a sudden look of high-souled resolve.
So might have looked, so posed, the daughter of Jephthah; so, scorning fate and the dark death, stood Iphigenia as she awaited the blow of doom.
The expression of her face changed; a wistful, half-pleading look came into her eyes.