“So you’re to be sent up?” he sneered, staring curiously at the bewildered little company. “Well, you’re not worth an eruption, but orders are orders, so up you go!”
Grampa could find no words to answer, for his eyes were glued in horror upon the boiling lake of lava, churning about a few feet below. Thick green smoke curled up toward them in clouds and just as he was about to order a hasty retreat to the door the keeper of the volcano seized a forty-foot poker and plunged it into the lake.
Next instant it had risen to the top, caught the four fire-proof travellers in its sulphurous waves and hurled itself frothing and bubbling to the top of the earth. Being erupted from a volcano is such a noisy, smothering, altogether terrifying experience that Grampa and his little army could not have told what was happening had they tried. And had it not been for Gorba’s medicine they would have blown clear out of the story, but, thanks to the medicine, the boiling lava did not injure them and having hurled them from the middle of the earth and some fifty feet higher than the earth, the liquid immediately surrounding them began to harden and form a flying-island.
Of course Grampa and Tatters were too dizzy to know this and the first indication they had that the eruption was over was a dreadful bounce and a perfect shower of water. The water brought them to their senses and—fearfully opening their eyes—they looked around. Horrors! The volcano was in the Kingdom of Ev, on the other side of the Deadly Desert, and had flung them clear into the Nonestic Ocean itself! This great body of water lies far to the Northwest and mighty few Ozites have ever reached its shores.
“Well,” coughed Grampa, rubbing his game leg vigorously, “I thought we were goners, but I see we are survivors. Are you all right? Are you all here?”
Urtha shook her lovely fern hair out of her eyes and, strange as it may seem, the little flower girl had come through the eruption without crushing a single posy.
“Fair and cooler!” wheezed Bill, hopping up on a little ridge of the hardened lava.
“But how did we get here?” asked Tatters, rubbing his eyes.
“You’ll have to ask Blazes,” puffed Grampa, “but I must say I prefer water to fire.” Already the spirits of the old soldier were beginning to rise. “We may be far from home, but we’re on top again and still moving.” Grampa took a few marching steps and waved his sword.