Nor was this to be wondered at, for I doubt
whether the world can show such another.
We stood upon the very apex of the loop, a flat space of rock about
eighty yards in length by some thirty in breadth, with the star-strewn
sky above us. To the south, twenty thousand feet or more below,
stretched the dim Plain of Kaloon, and to the east and west the
snow-clad shoulders of the peak and the broad brown slopes beneath.
To the north was a different sight, and one more awesome. There, right
under us as it seemed, for the pillar bent inwards, lay the vast crater
of the volcano, and in the centre of it a wide lake of fire that broke
into bubbles and flowers of sudden flame or spouted, writhed and twisted
like an angry sea.
From the surface of this lake rose smoke and gases that took fire as
they floated upwards, and, mingling together, formed a gigantic sheet of
living light. Right opposite to us burned this sheet and, the flare of
it passing through the needle-eye of the pillar under us, sped away in
one dazzling beam across the country of Kaloon, across the mountains
beyond, till it was lost on the horizon.
The wind blew from south to north, being sucked in towards the hot
crater of the volcano, and its fierce breath, that screamed through the
eye of the pillar and against its rugged surface, bent the long crest
of the sheet of flame, as an ocean roller is bent over by the gale, and
tore from it fragments of fire, that floated away to leeward like the
blown-out sails of a burning ship.
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