It required no little steady determination to attack that ascent.
Oliver's nerves had been terribly shaken by that which he had gone
through. The heat was intense beneath the trees, where hardly a breath
of air reached him, and it was impossible to keep off the sense of
loneliness and awe brought on by the knowledge that he was in the home
of Nature's most terrible forces, and that the huge mountain in front,
now looking so calm and majestic, might at any moment begin to belch
forth showers of white-hot stones and glowing scoria, as it poured
rivers of liquid lava down its sides. At any moment too he knew that he
might step into some bottomless rift, or be overcome by gases, without
calculating such minor chances as losing his way in the pathless
wilderness through which he was struggling, or coming in contact with
some dangerous beast.
But he set his teeth and toiled on, dragging thorny creepers aside,
climbing over half-rotten tree-trunks, whose mouldering bark gave way,
and set at liberty myriads of virulent ants. Once or twice he grasped
leaves which were worse than the home-growing nettle. But he struggled
on, though, with the feeling growing stronger, that if he got through
the patch of forest before dark, it would be as much as he could manage,
for the difficulties increased at every step.
Suddenly he stopped short, and caught at the nearest tree-trunk to save
himself from falling, for the giddiness returned, and he stood panting,
trying to master the horrible sensation by drawing a deeper breath.
Then he clung more tightly to the tree, and knew what this sense of
vertigo meant; for it was no vapour that had overcome him, but the
sensation of the earth heaving beneath his feet, with a strange
quivering, as if some vast force were passing, and a dull muttering, as
of subterranean thunder, made the tree quiver in his grasp.
A few seconds later, as he waited for a repetition of the earth-tremor,
knowing now full well that he had for the first time experienced a
couple of earthquake shocks, there came from away in front a deep heavy
boom, following a strange rushing sound, evidently from the summit of
the volcano--the huge safety-valve from which the pent-up forces of the
earth escaped to the open air.
Oliver struggled forward a few yards into a clearer spot, where he could
just catch a glimpse of the crater of the mountain, and, as he had
expected, there was the great globe-like cloud riven into rags of
vapour, while dark-looking bodies were falling in various directions
about the summit.
As he gazed, the rain of falling fragments ceased, and the torn-up
flecks of cloud seemed to be drawn slowly together again by the currents
of air on high, first one and then another coalescing, as the tiny
globules of spilt mercury glide one into another, till all are taken up.
And it was so here, the mysterious attraction blended the flying
vapours into one great whole, which floated above the mouth of the
burning mountain.
"And I might have been somewhere on the slope, when that burst of stones
was falling," thought Oliver. "Still, I might climb up a hundred times,
and no eruption occur. I'm getting cowardly, instead of being
accustomed to the place."
He smiled to himself as he marked the top of the mountain, and aimed as
straight as he could for its side, before plunging again into the
bewildering maze of trees, whose wide-spreading foliage made all beneath
a subdued shade.
But a dozen steps had not been taken before he stopped short, with his
heart beating, and listened eagerly, for a distant shout had fallen upon
his ear, coming as he felt sure from behind him, and to the right.
Then there was utter silence for a few seconds, before a second shout
arose, to be heard plainly enough, but away to his left.
His heart sank again, and the hope died out. That was no cry uttered by
one of his companions, but came from a savage, or some wild beast, which
he could not say, but he suspected that it must be from one of the apes
of which they had seen specimens that morning.
There it was again, rather a human cry, such as a boy might give vent to
in a wood, when calling to his fellows, and a few moments afterwards the
sound was repeated.
Whatever animals they were who called, they were answering each other,
and certainly coming nearer.
The remembrance of the strange-looking face he had seen peering through
the leaves directly after the great nut had struck Wriggs, came back to
Oliver as he resumed his arduous journey, now finding the way easier
where the bigger trees grew, now more toilsome where there was an
opening caused by the fall of some forest monarch, which had rent a
passage for the sunshine, with the consequence that a dense mass of
lower growth had sprung up.
In these openings, in spite of heat and weariness, the young naturalist
forgot all his troubles for a few brief moments in his wonder and
delight, till the knowledge that he must push on roused him once more to
action. For there before him were in all their beauty the various
objects which he had come thousands of miles to seek. Beetles with wing
cases as of burnished metal crawled over leaves and clung to stems;
grotesque locust-like creatures sprang through the air, through which
darted birds which in their full vigour and perfect plumage looked a
hundred times more beautiful than the dried specimens to which he was
accustomed in museums and private collections. Here from a dry twig
darted a kingfisher of dazzling blue, not upon a fish, but upon a
beetle, which it bore off in triumph. Away overhead, with a roar like a
distant train, sped a couple of rhinoceros hornbills, to be succeeded by
a flash of noisy, harsh-shrieking paroquets, all gorgeous in green,
yellow, crimson and blue, ready to look wonderingly at the intruder upon
their domain, and then begin busily climbing and swinging among the
twigs of a bough, whose hidden fruit they hunted out from among the
leaves.
One tree close at hand was draped with a creeper of convolvulus-like
growth, hanging its trumpet-shaped flowers in every direction, ready for
a number of glittering gem-like birds to hover before them, and probe
the nectaries for honey or tiny insects, with their long curved bills.
So rapid in their movements were some of these, that their insect-like
buzzing flight was almost invisible to the watcher, till they hovered
before a blossom in the full sunshine, when their burnished, metallic
plumage, shot with purple, crimson, and gold, flashed in the sun's rays,
and literally dazzled the eye.
Oliver was in the home of the sun-birds, the brilliant little creatures
which answer in the old world to the humming-birds of the new, with
their crests and gorgets of vivid scales.
"It's grand, it's wonderful," he muttered, with a sigh. "But I must get
on."
He forced his way through these openings, with the birds so tame that he
could easily have knocked them down with a stick, or caught them with a
butterfly-net. But leaving his collecting for a future time, he pressed
on, satisfied with the knowledge that he was in the midst of nature's
wonders, for the farther he progressed the more was he impressed with
the conviction that he and his companions had happened upon a place
which exceeded the most vivid paintings of his imagination, so rich did
it reveal itself in all they desired.
The progress he made was slower and slower, for he was nearly at the end
of his forces, and the matted-together tangle seemed in his weakness to
grow more dense. Where there was opening enough overhead he could see
that the sun was sinking rapidly, and he knew that it would be dark
almost directly it had disappeared.
"It is hopeless," he said to himself; "I shall never get out to-night;"
and with the idea forced upon him that he must be on the look-out for a
resting-place, or an opening where he could light a fire, and, if
possible, at the foot of some tree, in whose branches he could make
himself a shelter, he still toiled on.
This proved to be a less difficult task, for before long, as he crept
beneath the tangle of a climbing cane-like palm, he saw that it was more
light ahead, and in a few minutes he reached one of the natural
clearings, close to a huge short-trunked, many-branched fig. There was
dead wood in plenty, shelter, and fruit of two kinds close at hand,
while, greatest treasure of all, a tiny thread of water trickled among
some ancient, mossy fragments of volcanic rock, filling a little
basin-like pool with ample for his needs. To this he at once bowed his
head and drank with avidity, sublimely unconscious of the fact that a
tiny, slight, necklace-like snake was gliding over the moistened rock
just overhead, and that a pair of bright gem eyes were watching his
every motion from the great fig-tree, where its branches rose in a
cluster from the trunk.
"Hah!" sighed Oliver, as he rose from his long deep drink. "What a
paradise, but how awfully lonely!"
He noted then that the top of the mountain was in view, but apparently
no nearer; and setting to work he soon collected enough wood for a fire,
and lit it as a protection, before gathering some of the little figs and
some golden yellow fruits from a kind of passion-flower, both proving
agreeable to the palate. These supplemented by the food he had in a
satchel, formed a respectable meal, which he ended as the last light
died out; while before him as he sat by his fire there was a great
glowing ball of light high up, one which resolved itself into the cloud,
evidently lit up by the glowing lava within the crater.
"A nice companion for a traveller," said Oliver, half aloud. "Now,
then, for my cool lofty bedroom in the tree-fork. I wonder whether I
shall sleep?"
His inner consciousness said immediately "No;" for as he made his way in
among the buttress-like roots of the tree to try and climb up, there
came from within a few feet of his face a deep-toned snarling roar.