In a staggering run, nearly tripped at every step, I bore her to the edge of the clearing, on the side toward the colony, and hid us both in the shadows. When I had picked her up she buried her face in my shoulder and clung to me with both arms round my neck.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A volcanic eruption.”
“Where’s Christopher?”
I put my hand on her lips, and she trembled as she clung closer. She was silent as the earthquake increased in violence, and presently asked:
“Do you see it, Choseph?”
I had been observing it since we were seated. “Yes. It is at the river passage. The mountain appears to be blown out there, and———”
“Stop!” she cried, holding me closer.
Undoubtedly the eruption had occurred at the boiling cauldron that we had passed under the mountain. Its first violence was already spent, and the earthquake was subsiding; but I reflected that the water from the valley stream and from the crimson fall must be pouring into the hot interior, and that the end was not yet.
The ejecta of the outburst were already falling about us from the great height to which the explosion had thrown them. Hot stones of all sizes rained. Had not the forest been damp, it would have broken into flame at a thousand places.