The writhing savages in the clearing were but dimly visible. No definiteness came out of the mass still crowded and heaped where we had left Christopher. All sufficiently near for me to see sat staring at the Face, which was now clearly taking its vengeance; all were moaning and howling, and prostrated with fear.
A deep-red flame rose with a rushing noise from the seat of the eruption as renewed rumblings and roarings came from the quivering ground. The rising flame plunged into a rapidly spreading canopy of smoke and ashes from the initial explosion. The hither edge of the vast cloud was wan in the moonlight, but the under surface reflected the crimson of the flame. All things adopted that dreadful hue. The green foliage took it on as the muddy purple of decay; the brown faces of the natives looked as if beaten to a pulp.
There came another light, and it woke a more insidious terror. Striating the crimson column and issuing snakily from many independent orifices distributed over a wide area of the valley rim, was the purple flame. And now the most wonderful of all was the great Face itself. The crimson light caught it in profile, and thus so sharpened its features as to make it seem a living monster of inconceivable ferocity. Nor was that the worst. The purple flame again issued from below the face with a great augmentation. In rising and spreading it cast a thin veil over the visage, making it ghastly.
The falling of heavy stones ceased, but the more numerous small ones began to pelt us. I drew my coat round Lentala’s head, and broke tree-branches within reach to shield her body, for the stones had a vicious sting.
The heat was growing, both by radiation from the crimson column and by reflection from the canopy. Flames were leaping from the forest near the eruption, for the heat was drying the leaves.
As the ground opened in many seams under the strain, steam found numerous issues on the front of the opposite valley wall, near the Face. The quaking of the earth deepened; the moans of the natives became cries of frenzy.
“Is it growing worse, Joseph?”