1 18 BOOK OF A HUNDRED BEARS 



lip of the pool. It looks threatening and you 

 retreat. But an invincible fascination draws you 

 back. The crepitation increases. The boiling 

 waters surge higher and higher, till there is an 

 outpouring perhaps ten feet in height. Then you 

 fall back, for this is the preliminary warning. You 

 wait and wait, and then, suddenly — without warn- 

 ing or premonitory sound — a vast jet of hot water 

 and steam and spray soars upward. Up and up 

 and up, until it seems as though it would never 

 stop. The sun strikes its edges into prismatic 

 brilliance. A drapery of mist enfolds it and one 

 wide pennant of steam and foam floats away to 

 the leeward. It is solid, yet intangible. Palpa- 

 ble, evanescent, fugacious, and when at night they 

 turn the great searchlight on it, and it sparkles 

 and glows with an inward fire, and melts and dis- 

 solves and re-forms, you feel so inadequate, so 

 petty, your little store of language so futile to 

 describe it. 



And then you think how long it has performed 

 that hourly miracle when no eye saw it ; you imagine 

 the thousands and thousands of years during which 



