"Let us pause a moment here," said Mildred, when they had dismounted, "and look at the bay. I have longed several times upon the road to make a halt, but if I had, it would have been a signal for the general hubbub of conversation. You," she continued with a smile, "are a sensible companion, you know how to be silent, or can talk in those snatches or broken utterances which rather relieve silence than dissipate it, which do not scare the gentle goddess altogether from our company. Had I asked my uncle to stop, he would immediately have commenced talking, and talked till we went on again."
The scene lay outstretched before them in all its beauty, and under an almost cloudless sky. One peculiar charm of this celebrated bay depends on the islands scattered on both sides of its entrance, as Capri, Ischia, and others. These, as you shift your position on the bay, produce an endless variety—interlacing the azure water with stripes of blue mountainous land, in the same manner as well-defined clouds are sometimes set, ridge after ridge, in the clear sky. From their present point of view, the centre of their picture was open sea, and the sides filled up and diversified by these islands. Seen under the mid-day sun, they appear invested in a mist of light.
"They rise from the deep blue sea like sapphires that love has breathed upon," said Winston. "What fantastic tricks," he continued, "but always beautiful—Nature plays under her own high heaven. The hills on yonder coast, huge as they are, have a way of hiding themselves in the very air—vanishing in the very light. And, look, yonder, in the extreme distance, the light seems to have cut away the solid basis of the hills, and left nothing but the ridge, the wavy outline, which one might expect to rise into the air, it is so cloud-like."
"The earth and heaven do so mingle here, there is no separating them," said Mildred. "I wonder not that the inhabitants of such a region as this threw a certain dimness, as of twilight, over their future Elysium. Some difference it was necessary to imagine between it and their familiar earth, and could they fancy any thing more bright and beautiful than this?"
"Look behind you," said Winston. She turned, and started at the sudden and complete contrast which the utter desolation of the scathed mountain presented to her.
They then addressed themselves to their somewhat arduous undertaking. Mildred had refused to be carried up in a chair—had determined to walk. She had received a very accurate description of this part of her task, and found things exactly as she expected. The side of the mountain seems, at first, composed of large loose stones, of a brown colour; but the lava, which assumes this shape, is not loose, and you step from projection to projection with perfect safety,—with the same fatigue,—neither more nor less, as one walks up a flight of stairs. It is rather a long flight, however, and there is no bannister. This last deficiency the guide is in the habit of supplying—to such as condescend to accept his assistance—by fastening a leathern strap round his waist, and giving the end of it into the hand of the traveller. Winston insisted upon putting this strap round his own waist, and that Mildred should allow him to take what seemed to him the most enviable position, of the guide. It was a dangerous experiment. Not the weight of Mildred—for she leant very lightly—it was not the weight of Mildred which he felt at every step was exhausting his strength, till his heart beat and his knees trembled. After a little time he was compelled to sit down, faint as a child. Mildred was far from guessing the cause of this sudden weakness, but requested that the belt might be again transferred to the guide. Nor did he hesitate a moment. Had he attempted to proceed much farther they might both have been precipitated to the bottom.
Their march was toilsome; and Mildred, taking advantage of a commodious place, sat down to rest upon the lava. At the altitude which they had reached the temperature changes,—a cold wintry wind was blowing—and she had not quite prepared herself for so sudden a change. Winston, anxious only that the breath of heaven should not visit her too rudely, and forgetting to ask himself whether there might not be a too familiar kindness in the act, pulled off a light over-coat which he wore, and, making the best shawl he could of it, put it over her shoulders. She was not a little confused at the unaffected anxiety which had evidently given rise to this prompt attention; and blushed as she refused to rob him of his own attire. She attempted, by some playful remark, to remove the feeling of embarrassment which had seized upon both parties.
"But from a poor gentleman," replied Winston, alluding to something that had passed between them at an earlier part of the day, "any gift may be safely accepted. Like the priest, he wears a tonsure, which at once gives him unusual privileges, and reduces him to a subject of indifference."
Mildred made no answer; but she thought that, in one of these cases, the tonsure was so little visible, was kept so much out of sight, that it might fail of its due precautionary influence. She rose, and they proceeded on their walk, or, rather, their climbing. And now the volume of smoke which had, for some time, been concealed from view by the mountain itself, burst upon them, and a few minutes placed them on the summit. They stood within the crater, or what has been such, for, at present, the mountain discharges itself through a lofty cone which rises on one side of this strange, black, sulphurous amphitheatre. All around them, however, the volcanic vapours were steaming up from innumerable crevices, and the hot lava pouring out, moving slowly, with a dull red heat. No need here of further clothing. Their feet were burning where they stood. They had again exchanged the cold of winter, not for the heat of summer, but of a furnace.
There is a terrific grandeur in the scene. The black masses of lava, whose surface, here, is of the hue and texture of cinders, are piled and jostled together with the utmost irregularity, with deep fissures between them, in the same manner, though the material is so different, as the blocks of ice in the glaciers of Mont Blanc. Sometimes these cindery surfaces undulate and take the appearance of black coils, as of a huge cable laid in parallel folds. These coils, as you advance, are explained; for you will see the dull red lava sweltering out from underneath one of those great blocks, in a long and narrow wave, which does not subside, but stiffens as it cools, and, in this form, is pushed forward by the succeeding wave. In another part, the lava is flowing in a small stream, about a foot in breadth, just as the metal in a foundery, but more slowly, and the surface dimmed with a black scaly film; on raising which, with your stick, the flame bursts out. It flows so slowly that, sometimes, you must watch it narrowly before you detect the motion; you may be looking at such a stream and not suspect it to be this stealthy Phlegethon, till suddenly it is seen to stir, like a vast serpent moving in its sleep.