140 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



ported except by its own momentum. One spout 

 of lava cooled so quickly that twenty feet from its 

 appearance, great blobs of black appeared floating 

 on its surface — irregular, cinderous corpuscles toss- 

 ing on this veritable vein of molten metal. Once I 

 saw a great lava river split into five separate 

 streams, which crawled down the hundred-foot 

 cliffs like the tentacles of some huge scarlet octopus. 

 These dripped down into the boiling green water, 

 while sulphurous fumes bubbled up in yellow froth. 



There seemed a strange sort of irregular 

 sequence of force. First one stream would increase, 

 pulsating forth with greater violence, and im- 

 mediately the sea would answer by catching great 

 quantities of the scarlet fluid and moulding them 

 instantly into gigantic, black bombs whose inner 

 gases would explode simultaneously, and shoot 

 forth a rain of half solid, half liquid boulder spray, 

 the jagged projectiles trailing comet-wise, fire, gas 

 and water in their wake. Then the steam from this 

 particular jet would billow up above all the others, 

 until a neighboring lava river in turn flooded its 

 banks. 



We were close enough to see every detail, but 

 the fierce on-shore wind muffled every hiss and roar, 

 every bubble and crash, and we might have been 

 looking at the reproduction of some of the movies 

 we were taking. From time to time, a huge por- 

 tion of cliff would seemingly rise a little, tremble, 

 and very slowly and gently topple forward, send- 

 ing up a mountain of spray which alternately 

 crashed in great breakers against the living and 



