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75 - Roughing It by Mark Twain · Roughing It

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  Speaker 1: This is chapter seventy five of Roughing It. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Roughing It by Mark Twain, Chapter seventy five. The next
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  Speaker 1: night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of
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  Speaker 1: the crater, for we desired to traverse its floor and
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  Speaker 1: see the north lake of fire, which lay two miles
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  Speaker 1: away toward the further wall. After dark, half a dozen
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  Speaker 1: of us set out with lanterns and native guides and
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  Speaker 1: climbed down a crazy thousand foot pathway in a crevice
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  Speaker 1: fractured in the crater wall, and reached the bottom in safety.
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  Speaker 1: The eruption of the previous evening had spent its force,
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  Speaker 1: and the floor looked black and cold, But when we
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  Speaker 1: ran out upon it we found it hot yet to
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  Speaker 1: the feet, and it was likewise riven with crevices, which
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  Speaker 1: revealed the underlying fires gleaming vindictively. A neighboring cauldron was
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  Speaker 1: threatening to overflow, and this added to the dubiousness of
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  Speaker 1: the situation. So the native guides refused to continue the venture,
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  Speaker 1: and then everybody deserted except a stranger named Marlette. He
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  Speaker 1: said he had been in the crater a dozen times
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  Speaker 1: in daylight and believed he could find his way through
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  Speaker 1: it at night. He thought that a run of three
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  Speaker 1: hundred yards would carry us over the hottest part of
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  Speaker 1: the floor and leave us our shoe soles. His pluck
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  Speaker 1: gave me backbone. We took one lantern and instructed the
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  Speaker 1: guide to hang the other to the roof of the
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  Speaker 1: lookout house, to serve as a beacon for us in
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  Speaker 1: case we got lost. And then the party started back
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  Speaker 1: up the precipice, and Marlette and I made our run.
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  Speaker 1: We skipped over the hot floor and over the red
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  Speaker 1: crevices with brisk dispatch, and reached the cold lava, safe
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  Speaker 1: but with pretty warm feet. Then we took things leisurely
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  Speaker 1: and comfortably, jumping tolerably wide and probably bottomless chasms, and
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  Speaker 1: threading our way through picturesque lava uphea with considerable confidence.
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  Speaker 1: We got fairly away from the cauldrons of boiling fire.
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  Speaker 1: We seemed to be in a gloomy desert and a
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  Speaker 1: suffocatingly dark one, surrounded by dim walls that seemed to
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  Speaker 1: tower to the sky. The only cheerful objects with the
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  Speaker 1: glinting stars high overhead. By and by, Marlett shouted stop.
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  Speaker 1: I never stopped quicker in my life. I asked what
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  Speaker 1: the matter was. He said, we were out of the path.
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  Speaker 1: He said we must not try to go on till
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  Speaker 1: we found it again, for we were surrounded with beds
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  Speaker 1: of rotten lava through which we could easily break and
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  Speaker 1: plunge down a thousand feet. I thought eight hundred would
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  Speaker 1: answer for me, and was about to say so when
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  Speaker 1: Marlett partly proved his statement by accidentally crushing through and
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  Speaker 1: disappearing to his arm pits. He got out and we
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  Speaker 1: hunted for the path with the lantern. He said there
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  Speaker 1: was only one path, and that it was but vaguely defined.
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  Speaker 1: We could not find it. The lava surface was all
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  Speaker 1: alike in the lantern light. But he was an ingenious man.
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  Speaker 1: He said it was not the lantern that had informed
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  Speaker 1: him that we were out of the path, but his feet.
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  Speaker 1: He had noticed a crisp grinding of the fine lava
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  Speaker 1: needles under his feet, and some instinct reminded him that
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  Speaker 1: in the path these were all worn away. So he
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  Speaker 1: put the lantern behind him and began to search with
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  Speaker 1: his boots instead of his eyes. It was good sagacity.
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  Speaker 1: The first time his foot touched the surface that did
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  Speaker 1: not grind under it, he announced that the trail was
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  Speaker 1: found again. And after that we kept up a sharp
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  Speaker 1: listening for the rasping sound, and it always warned us
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  Speaker 1: in time. It was a long tramp, but an exciting one.
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  Speaker 1: We reached the North Lake between ten and eleven o'clock
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  Speaker 1: and sat down on a huge overhanging lava shelf, tired
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  Speaker 1: but satisfied. The spectacle presented was worth coming double the
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  Speaker 1: distance to see under us, and stretching away before us
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  Speaker 1: was a heaving sea of molten fire of seemingly limitless extent.
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  Speaker 1: The glare from it was so blinding that it was
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  Speaker 1: some time before we could bear to look upon it steadily.
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  Speaker 1: It was like gazing at the sun at noonday, except
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  Speaker 1: that the glare was not quite so white. At unequal distances,
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  Speaker 1: all around the shores of the lake were nearly white
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  Speaker 1: hot chimneys or hollow drums of lava four or five
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  Speaker 1: feet high, and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays
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  Speaker 1: of lava, gouts and gem spangles, some white, some red,
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  Speaker 1: and some golden. A ceaseless bombardment, and one that fascinated
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  Speaker 1: the eye with its unapproachable splendor. The mere distant jets
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  Speaker 1: sparkling up through an intervening gossamer veil of vapor seemed
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  Speaker 1: miles away, and the further the curving ranks of fiery
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  Speaker 1: fountains receded, the more fairylike and beautiful they appeared. Now
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  Speaker 1: and then the surging bosom of the lake under our
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  Speaker 1: noses would calm down ominously and seem to be gathering
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  Speaker 1: strength for an enterprise. And then all of a sudden,
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  Speaker 1: a red dome of lava, the bulk of an ordinary dwelling,
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  Speaker 1: would heave itself aloft like an escaping balloon, then burst asunder,
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  Speaker 1: and out of its heart would flit a pale green
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  Speaker 1: film of vapor, and float upward and vanish in the darkness,
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  Speaker 1: a released soul, soaring homeward from captivity with a damned
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  Speaker 1: no doubt. The crashing plunge of the ruined dome into
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  Speaker 1: the lake again would send a world of seething billows,
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  Speaker 1: lashing against the shores and shaking the foundations of our perch.
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  Speaker 1: By and by, a loosened mass of the hanging shelf
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  Speaker 1: we sat on tumbled into the lake, jarring the surroundings
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  Speaker 1: like an earthquake, and delivering a suggestion that may have
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  Speaker 1: been intended for a hint and may not. We did
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  Speaker 1: not wait to see. We got lost again on our
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  Speaker 1: way back, and were more than an hour hunting for
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  Speaker 1: the path we were where we could see the beacon
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  Speaker 1: lantern at the lookout house at the time, but thought
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  Speaker 1: it was a star and paid no attention to it.
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  Speaker 1: We reached the hotel at two o'clock in the morning
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  Speaker 1: pretty well fagged out. Kilawea never overflows its vast crater,
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  Speaker 1: but bursts a passage for its lava through the mountain
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  Speaker 1: side when relief is necessary, and then the destruction is fearful.
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  Speaker 1: About eighteen forty it rent its overburdened stomach and sent
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  Speaker 1: a broad river of fire careening down to the sea,
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  Speaker 1: which swept away forests, huts, plantations, and everything else that
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  Speaker 1: lay in its path. The stream was five miles broad
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  Speaker 1: in places and two hundred feet deep, and the distance
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  Speaker 1: it traveled was forty miles. It tore up and bore
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  Speaker 1: away acre patches of land on its bosom like rafts, rocks, trees,
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  Speaker 1: and all intact. At night, the red glare was visible
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  Speaker 1: a hundred miles at sea, and at a distance of
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  Speaker 1: forty miles fine print could be read. At midnight, the
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  Speaker 1: atmosphere was poisoned with sulfurous vapors and choked with falling ashes, pomice, stones,
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  Speaker 1: and cinders. Countless columns of smoke rose up and blended
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  Speaker 1: together in a tumbled canopy that hid the heavens and
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  Speaker 1: glowed with a ruddy flush reflected from the fires below.
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  Speaker 1: Here and there, jets of lava sprung hundreds of feet
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  Speaker 1: into the air and burst into rocket sprays that returned
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  Speaker 1: to Earth in a crimson rain. And all the while
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  Speaker 1: the laboring mountain shook with nature's great palsy and voiced
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  Speaker 1: its distress in moanings and the muffled booming of subterranean thunders.
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  Speaker 1: Fishes were killed for twenty miles along the shore where
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  Speaker 1: the lava entered the sea. The earthquakes caused some loss
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  Speaker 1: of human life, and a prodigious tidal wave swept in land,
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  Speaker 1: carrying everything before it and drowning a number of natives.
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  Speaker 1: The devastation consummated along the route traversed by the river
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  Speaker 1: of lava was complete and incalculable. Only a pompeii and
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  Speaker 1: a herculaneum were needed at the foot of Kilauea to
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  Speaker 1: make the story of the eruption immortal. End of Chapter
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  Speaker 1: seventy five