126 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



been transformed to a glassy jet substance. We 

 passed over ossified ripples and swells and even 

 curving waves with breaking tips so tissue-thin that 

 light showed through them in a thousand places, 

 and a slight blow of my hand broke off sheets 

 several yards in extent, which clanged down into 

 the hollows like steel falling upon steel. Some- 

 times we could pass dry shod like St. Peter over 

 a wide stretch of calmer obsidian ocean, with here 

 or there the fin of a shark or the head of a turtle 

 protruding, or in a Jonahesque manner would chum 

 familiarly with a mighty glass whale. Islands rose 

 here and there, upon which perched great images 

 of sea lizards and pterodactyls — all done in jet- 

 black, molasses-like lava. It compelled steep up 

 and down climbing, but was heavenly smooth. 



Our fossil river grew smaller and soon petered 

 out and we had to take to the real scoria; hellish 

 rock froth which taxed our utmost strength. 

 Imagine, if you can, a brobdignagian ploughed 

 field and we two tiny ants essaying to cross it. 

 But in place of soft and yielding earth, this was of 

 razor-edged, needle-pointed clinker, sometimes 

 steel-hard, again crumbling to a depth of yards. It 

 was reddish brown and, unlike the obsidian river, 

 had probably hardened slowly at the very surface. 

 All the enclosed gases had thus had opportunity to 

 escape, bubbling and blowing the cooling lava into 

 thinnest crusts and skeleton rocks. The metal soil 

 of this great ploughing was piled in pinnacles and 

 mounds, brittle, sharp as knife-points and varying 

 in size from a needle to a house. 



