134 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
This last notion, I suppose, must have mingled with my 
dreams, for not long afterwards X found myself in full 
swing towards a Russian battery, that banged and 
bellowed, and cannonaded about my ears in a fashion 
frightful to hear. Apparently X was serving in the 
French attack, for clear and shrill above the tempest rose 
the cry, “ Alerte! alerte! aux armes, Monseigneur! 
aux armes ! ” The ground shook, volumes of smoke rose 
before my eyes, and completely hid the defences of 
Sebastapol; which fact, on reflection, I perceived to be 
the less extraordinary, as X was standing in my shirt at 
the door of a tent in Iceland. The premonitory symp¬ 
toms of an eruption, which I had taken for a Russian 
cannonading, had awakened the French sleepers,-—a 
universal cry was pervading the encampment,—and 
the entire settlement had turned out—chiefly in bare 
legs—to witness the event which the reverberating 
earth and steaming water seemed to prognosticate. 
Old Geysir, however, proved less courteous than we 
had begun to hope, for after labouring uneasily in his 
basin for a few minutes, he roused himself on his hind¬ 
legs—fell—made one more effort,—and then giving it up 
as a bad job, sank back into his accustomed inaction, 
