Dick and the guide exchanged hasty glances. Apparently they were feeling something of a similar nature, but could not lay it to the same cause as Roger.
“It is getting much worse now,” cried Mayhew, “and I can hear a terrible grumbling down underneath me that I must say I don’t like over much!”
All of them were by this time aroused to a sense of their sudden peril; but it was Dick who voiced the alarming truth.
“Run for your lives!” he shouted, “it must be a boiling fountain about to burst, and we are right on top of the crater!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
WITH HOPEFUL HEARTS
Forgotten at that minute were all their other troubles, as each made hurried efforts to get away from the spot. The trembling of the rocks told plainly enough that some convulsion of nature was about to take place; and Dick’s words gave evidence that he himself had discovered where the yawning crater of the boiling spring lay amidst the half melted snow.
Hardly had they gone back some thirty or forty feet when there burst forth a vast volume of spray and steaming water that ascended high into the air, reaching an altitude of possibly five score feet before it lost its velocity, and began to rain downward.
Immediately the snow around the entire vicinity commenced to melt with the heat of the falling water. With the sunlight falling on the wonderful fountain the two boys thought they had never in all their lives seen anything so sublime.