FIRE MOUNTAIN
Within the hour, Captain Dabney’s words bore fruit. The spanking
ten-knot breeze dropped abruptly to a gentle four-knot power. Then in
the twinkling of an eye, as it were, the fog enveloped them.
Martin, at the wheel, was straining his eyes, trying to make out the
land ahead that he had seen from aloft. Abruptly before his eyes rose a
wall of opaque gray.
It was a typical Smoky Sea fog, a wet, dense, Bering blanket. From his
station near the stern, Martin could not see the rail at the break of
the poop, could hardly, indeed, discern objects a dozen paces distant.
Familiar figures, entering his circle of vision, loomed gigantic and
grotesque. The _Cohasset_ sailed over a ghostly sea, whose quiet was
broken only by the harsh squawking of sea-birds flying high overhead.
Of recent weeks, Martin had become accustomed to fog. But there was
about this fog a peculiarity foreign to his experience, though he had
been informed during the cabin talks of the frequent occurrence of this
particular brand of mist in these waters. For, though Martin, standing
on deck, was surrounded by an impervious wall of fog that pressed
upon him, though he could not see the water overside or forward for a
quarter of the little vessel’s length, yet he could bend back his head
and see quite plainly the round ball of the sun glowing dully through
the whitening mist overhead.
He understood the wherefor. The fog was a low-lying bank, and thirty
feet or so above his head it ended. He could not, from the wheel,
distinguish the upper hamper, but he knew the topmasts were free of the
mist that shrouded the deck. Presently, from overhead, and ghostily
piercing the gray veil, came Ruth’s clear hail. She ordered him to
shift the course a couple of points. So he knew his officer was aloft,
up there in the sunshine, in a position that enabled her to direct
their course.
In such a fashion, creeping through the fog, the _Cohasset_ came at
last to Fire Mountain. The fog delayed, but did not daunt, the mariners
of the happy family.
After the hurried noon meal, Ruth returned to her station aloft and
resumed conning the vessel by remembered landmarks on the mountain’s
face. On deck, Martin, in company with his fellows, labored under the
boatswain’s lurid driving to prepare the ship for anchoring. They
cockbilled the great hooks, overhauled the cables, and coiled down
running braces and halyards; for, said the captain, attending upon
their bustle with his abnormally sharp ears:
“It’s a wide breach in the reef that makes the cove, and the water is
deep right up to the beach. The lass should have no trouble conning us
in, for she has a clean view aloft. But just have everything ready for
quick work, bosun, in case we get into trouble.”
Hence it was that Martin, a-tingle though he was with curiosity, found
no opportunity to run aloft into the sunshine and view the place he had
talked and dreamed so much about. Other men went aloft on ship’s work,
but Martin’s duty kept him racing about the wet decks.
The fog pressed closer upon them as the day advanced, it seemed to
Martin. It required an effort of his imagination to admit that a few
feet above him the sun shone.
The ship seemed to be crawling blindly about in a limitless void. Anon
would come Ruth’s cheering and mellow halloo, cleaving sweetly through
the drab enveloping blanket, and seeming to Martin’s eager ears to be a
good fairy’s voice from another world.
The screaming of the sea-birds grew in volume—but not a wing did Martin
spy. The air appeared to take on an irritating taint; the fog tasted
smoky.
Added to other sounds, slowly grew a great surging rumble. Aided by
Ruth’s calls, Martin knew he heard the sea beating against the reef
that encircled the mountain; but he saw nothing overside but that dead
gray wall.
The upper canvas was clewed up and left hanging, and the brig’s slow
pace became perceptibly slower.
A boat was lowered, and Little Billy was pulled into the void ahead;
and directly his musical chant came back, as he sounded their path with
the lead.
The surging thunder came from both sides, and Martin knew they were
entering the haven. The voices of Ruth and Little Billy brought echoes
from the giant sounding-board ahead.
A sharp command from Captain Dabney, a moment’s rush of work to the
accompaniment of a deal of fiery swiggling on the boatswain’s part, the
ship lost way and rounded up, the anchor dropped with a dull _plub_,
the chain roared through the hawse-pipe and brought a vastly multiplied
echoing roar from the invisible cliffs, and there was a sudden,
myriad-voiced screeching from the startled birds. Succeeded an ominous,
oppressive quiet, broken only by the dull thunder of the surf.
Martin drew a long breath and stared at the blank, impervious void
about him.
“So this,” he thought whimsically, “is the terrible Fire Mountain!” He
was excitedly happy.
A few moments later, when he went aloft to furl sail, he saw the shore,
this unmarked, unknown rock that had filled his thoughts for months.
It was a sudden and eery transition as he mounted the rigging,
from gray night to sunshine in the space of a few ratlines. On the
foretopgallant-yard he was above the fog, the very roof of the bank
lying a dozen feet below. The decks were concealed from him.
Overhead, the sky was blue and the gulls drove past and circled about
in white screaming clouds. Before him, and on either side, not five
hundred yards distant, loomed the mountain.
Martin stared intently and curiously, and, despite himself, that bleak
and desolate outlook sobered the gaiety of his mood. On three sides the
rock reared skyward, bare and black, with never a hint of vegetation.
The mountain formed a rough cone; some two thousand feet overhead was
the summit, and over it hovered a cloud of white steam vapor, and a
twisting column of curiously yellow-brown smoke that trailed away
lazily on a light wind. Martin, staring at it, decided that the air he
breathed did have an alien, a sulphurous taint.
There were no raw fissures about the crater edge, and no evidence
beyond the rather thin volume of smoke that the volcano contained life.
Yet Martin seemed to hear, above the thunder of the surf in the fog
beneath him, a distant, ominous rumbling, as if the slumbering Vulcan
of the mountain were snoring in his sleep.
But it was the mountainside that longest held Martin’s fascinated gaze.
For, in her fiery past, the volcano had clad her flanks with black lava
that was now molded into a vast chaos of fantastic architecture and
sculptures. It was as if an army of crazy artists had here expended
their lunatic energies.
He saw huge, round towers, leaning all awry; a vast pile fashioned
like a church front, with twin steeples canting drunkenly; the
tremendous columns the captain had told him of; jutting masses that
hinted in their half-formed outlines of gigantic, crouching beasts.
And everywhere in that weird field of shapes were the openings of
caves—dark blots in the black stone.
The mountain was truly a sponge-like labyrinth, Martin perceived. He
could not see the strip of beach, however, or the cavern mouth, shaped
like an elephant’s head, of the whaleman’s log. The fog hid them from
view.
But what he did see was sufficient. It was an evil landscape. It loomed
black and forbidding against the background of blue sky, and the sun
failed to lighten the aspect. It threatened. The stark desolateness of
the place was enhanced by the wild cawing of the gulls and the mournful
booming of the sea upon the reef.
Martin was depressed, as by a foreboding of ill fortune. He turned
to Rimoa, who was on the yard-arm with him, and spoke with forced
lightness—
“A cheerful-looking place, eh, Rimoa?”
The Maori shuddered, and there was fear in his eyes.
“No like!” he said. “This place bad, bad, bad!”
Then, as they bent to their work, the fog-bank suddenly lifted,
enveloped them, and hid the black mountain from view.