When I returned to the plateau from my investigation of the crater, I
realized that I had descended the grassy pit as far as any human being
could descend. No living creature could pass that barrier of flame and
vapour. Of that I was convinced.
Now, not only the crater but its steaming effluvia was utterly unlike
anything I had ever before beheld. There was no trace of lava to be
seen, or of pumice, ashes, or of volcanic rejecta in any form whatever.
There were no sulphuric odours, no pungent fumes, nothing to teach the
olfactory nerves what might be the nature of the silvery steam rising
from the crater incessantly in a vast circle, ringing its circumference
halfway down the slope.
Under this thin curtain of steam a ring of pale yellow flames played and
sparkled, completely encircling the slope.
The crater was about half a mile deep; the sides sloped gently to the
bottom.
But the odd feature of the entire phenomenon was this: the bottom of
the crater seemed to be entirely free from fire and vapour. It was
disk-shaped, sandy, and flat, about a quarter of a mile in diameter.
Through my field-glasses I could see patches of grass and wild flowers
growing in the sand here and there, and the sparkle of water, and a crow
or two, feeding and walking about.
I looked at the girl who was standing beside me, then cast a glance
around at the very unusual landscape.
We were standing on the summit of a mountain some two thousand feet high,
looking into a cup-shaped depression or crater, on the edges of which we
stood.
This low, flat-topped mountain, as I say, was grassy and quite treeless,
although it rose like a truncated sugar-cone out of a wilderness of trees
which stretched for miles below us, north, south, east, and west,
bordered on the horizon by towering blue mountains, their distant ranges
enclosing the forests as in a vast amphitheatre.
From the centre of this enormous green floor of foliage rose our grassy
hill, and it appeared to be the only irregularity which broke the level
wilderness as far as the base of the dim blue ranges encircling the
horizon.
Except for the log bungalow of Mr. Blythe on the eastern edge of this
grassy plateau, there was not a human habitation in sight, nor a trace of
man's devastating presence in the wilderness around us.
Again I looked questioningly at the girl beside me and she looked back at
me rather seriously.
"Shall we seat ourselves here in the sun?" she asked.