Fire Island Part 63

"What, didn't yer think o' that rubub and magneshy stuff, sir?"

"The magnesium wire? Yes, I brought that."

"Well, that's something, sir, but we do want candles."

"And we must have some. Here, Smith, you must go back," cried Panton.

"Right, sir, on'y shouldn't I be useful to you when we gets there?"

"Of course, very: but we can't do without a light."

"No, sir, that we can't. How many shall you want?"

"Ask for half-a-dozen," said Panton, "and be as smart as you can."

"Half-a-dozen, sir," said Smith, "that all?"

"Yes, be off!"

"But Billy Wriggs's got more'n that tucked inside his jersey, if they ain't melted away. Air they, Billy?"

"No," said that gentleman, thrusting his hand inside his blue knitted garment. "The wicks is all right, and they're gettin' a bit soft, but there's nothing else amiss."

"Well done, Smith," cried Oliver, who by this time pretty well knew his man. "You thought we should want some, then?"

"Course I did, sir. We ain't got cat's eyes, and we can't see like them speckydillo chaps as we hear going about in the woods o' nights. So I thought we'd bring some dips, and if we didn't want 'em we could only bring 'em back again."

By this time they were ascending a rugged slope, and painfully climbing in and out among huge rocks, whose structure told of their being portions of some lava eruption. Water trickled here and there, overhung by mosses of loose habit and of a dazzling green. Tree ferns arched over the way with their lace-work fronds, and here and there clumps of trees towered up, showing that it must have been many generations since fire had devastated this part of the island, and the huge ma.s.ses of lava had been formed in a long, river-like ma.s.s, to be afterwards broken up and piled by some convulsion in the fragments amongst which they clambered.

"Wonderful! Wonderful!" cried Oliver.

"Grand!" exclaimed Drew. "Look at the Nepenthes," and he pointed to the curiously metamorphosed leaves of the climbers around, each forming a pitcher half full of water.

"I want to know how you discovered it," said Oliver.

"Oh, you must ask these fellows," replied Panton.

"It were Billy Wriggs, sir, goin' after a bird I'd shot in that robuschus way of his'n, and when I follered him and see what a place it were I was obliged to come on."

"Why, we must be getting up toward an old crater," cried Oliver. "There has been a volcanic eruption here."

"Then just be a bit patient," said Panton, laughing. "Only up as high as that ridge," he continued, panting, "and then we're close at hand."

It was hot and toilsome work, but the party were in so lovely a natural garden that the toil was forgotten. For the trees of great growth were farther apart up here, leaving room for the suns.h.i.+ne to penetrate, with the result that the undergrowth was glorious, and the rocky dells and precipices magnificent.

"Straight away. Up to the top here," cried Panton. "Come along."

He was foremost, and had reached a tremendous piled-up wall of ma.s.ses of mossy stone, whose crevices formed a gorgeous rockery of flowers and greenery, wonderful to behold, almost perpendicular, but so full of inequalities that offered such excellent foot and hand hold that there was very little difficulty in the ascent. He began at once seizing creeper and root, and was about half way up, when there was a snarling yell, and a great cat-like creature sprang out of a dark crevice, bounded upward and was gone, while Panton, startled into loosening his hold as the brute brushed by him, came scrambling and falling down, till he was checked by his friends.

"Hurt?" cried Oliver, excitedly.

"Hurt!" was the reply, in an angry tone, "just see if you can come down twenty or thirty feet without hurting yourself."

"But no bones broken?" said Drew.

"How should I know? Oh, hang it, how I've hurt my poor shoulder again."

Irritation, more than injury, was evidently the result of the fall, for as he knelt down to bathe a cut upon one of his hands, Panton exclaimed,--

"One of you might have shot the brute. Only let me catch a glimpse of him again."

"There wasn't time," said Oliver. "But don't you think we had better give up the excursion for to-day?"

"No, I don't," cried Panton. "Think I've taken all this trouble for nothing," and, rising to his feet again, he took his gun from where he had stood it, and began to climb once more in and out among the pendent vines and creepers till he was at the top, and the others followed, but did not reach his side without being bitten and stung over and over again by the ants and winged insects which swarmed.

"There, what do you say to that?" cried Panton, forgetting his injuries and pointing downward.

His companions were too much entranced to speak, but stood there gazing at as lovely a scene as ever met the eyes of man.

For there below them, in a cup-like depression, lay a nearly circular lake of the purest and stillest water, in whose mirror-like surface were reflected the rocky sides, verdant with beautiful growth, the towering trees and spire-like needles which ran up for hundreds of feet, here and there crumbled into every imaginable form, but clothed by nature with wondrous growth wherever plant could find room to root in the slowly decaying rock.

"Glorious, glorious!" exclaimed Drew, in a subdued voice, as if tones ought to be hushed in that lovely scene, for fear they should all awaken and find it had been some dream.

Panton gazed from one to the other, forgetful of his fall, and with a look of triumph in his smiling eyes, while Oliver let himself sink down upon the nearest stone, rested his chin upon his hand, and gazed at the scene as if he could never drink his fill.

As for the two sailors, they exchanged a solemn wink and then stood waiting with a calm look of satisfaction as much as to say: "We did all this; you'd never have known of it if it had not been for us."

"Come, lads," cried Panton at last, "we must be getting on. You see now how it is there is so much clear water trickling down below. What a magnificent reservoir!"

"It seems almost too beautiful," sighed Oliver, rising unwillingly.

"Who could expect a place like this with a burning mountain only a few miles to the north?"

"And think," added Panton, "that this is the crater of an old volcano that once belched out these stones and poured fire and fluid lava down the slope we have just climbed."

"It almost seems impossible," said Drew. "The place is so luxuriantly fertile. Are you sure you are right?"

"Sure," said Panton, "as that we stand here. Look for yourselves at the perfectly formed crater filled with water now as it was once filled with seething molten matter. Look yonder, straight across there where the wall is broken down as it was perhaps thousands of years ago by the weight of the boiling rock which flowed out. Look, you can see for yourselves, even at this distance, the head of the river of stone. Chip any of these blocks, and you have lava and tufa. That block you sat on is a weather-worn ma.s.s of silvery pumice inside, I'm sure, though outside it is all black and crumbling where it is not covered with moss."

"But for such luxuriance of growth here all must have been barren stone."

"Barren till it disintegrated in the course of time, and, by the action of the sun, rain, and air, became transformed into the most fertile of soil. Why, Lane, you ought to know these things. Look there, how every root is at work breaking up the rock to which it clings, and in whose crevices the plants and trees take root, grow to maturity, die, and add their decaying matter to the soil, which is ever growing deeper and more rich."

"Hear, hear," growled Wriggs in a low tone, and Panton frowned, but smiled directly after as he saw the sailor's intent looks.

"Well, do you understand, Wriggs?" he cried.

"Not quite exactly, sir," said the man. "Some on it, sir; and it makes me and my mate feel that it's grand like to know as much as you gents do."