138 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



face it gives rise to the most intense and impressive 

 of all geological phenomena." My pity goes out to 

 the student of earth and her rocks who has never 

 yelled with sheer, unscientilSc, inarticulate enthu- 

 siasm at flowing lava, or been silent with awe at 

 such a sight as confronted us. 



When I recovered from the first great wave of 

 realization of what good fortune had brought us, I 

 perceived the astonishing details. The lava had 

 crept slowly, week after week, down the slopes be- 

 neath the surface imtil it finally reached the end 

 of the island flow. The amazing color of the whole 

 was the most outstanding feature; the smoke, as I 

 have said, was white and grey, the dead island jet- 

 black, out of which spouted scarlet and white hot 

 lava into water of unbelievable color. The sea 

 around us and everywhere beyond the influence of 

 this sudden eruption was a deep indigo blue, spat- 

 tered and capped with white. When we first ap- 

 proached the lava streams, there stretched out into 

 the blue water a narrow neck of clear, pure lumiere 

 green, enlarging at once into a shape which, from 

 the crow's-nest, was exactly that of an old-fash- 

 ioned powder-flask. For a time the Captain de- 

 murred about approaching this area, so perfectly 

 did it resemble the green of extremely shallow 

 water, but when within a hundred yards we could 

 see that the surface agitation was the same as that 

 of the blue water all around, and we knew its tint 

 was due to some other cause. I have never seen two 

 colors marked in liquid by so sharp a line. The 

 normal temperature of the surface water off north- 



