, for, though the soft steamy cloud
floated over the land as before, shutting them off from the mountain
slope, the volcano had been for days perfectly quiet--there had been no
explosions, no subterranean rumblings or shocks, everything pointed to
the fact that the eruption was at an end, and the mountain settling down
into a state of quiescence.

"I should like to go with you very much," said the mate. "I've had a
short ladder knocked together for mounting steep bits and making a
bridge over rifts and cracks, and I have a kind of longing to see what a
crater is like."

"Well, you are coming, of course," said Oliver.

"No, I'm going to stay and take care of my ship. Why, if I went with
you I should take it as a matter of course that a canoe would land close
to our boat, and the savages come straight across to the brig and
plunder her. It would be sure to happen if I went away."

"Nonsense!" cried Oliver, laughing.

"Ah! you may call it so, young gentleman, but I know how these things
will happen. No, I stop by my ship, and if the beggars do come, the men
and I will make a stiff fight of it till you folk come back to help me
drive them to their canoe."

No persuasion would alter the mate's plans, but he eagerly forwarded
those of the naturalists, and arranged for Smith and Wriggs to bear them
company, even offering two more men, but Panton was of opinion that the
smaller their number was the more likely they were to be successful, and
the next morning they started--a well armed party, Wriggs and Smith
carrying a ladder and little tent, the others the food and water.

Then in due time the boat was reached and rowed along the lagoon till
the end of the mist and the effervescent water were passed, and at last,
a good mile farther than the attempt had been before, they put ashore,
drew up their boat in the cocoa-nut grove which went on far as eye could
reach, and, with the men shouldering the traps after the boat had been
hidden, they started over fresh ground for the slope.

The route was plain enough if they could follow it, for there, high
above them, was the balloon-like cloud of steam and smoke floating over
the crater, the only mist in the pure blue sky, and looking dazzling in
the sunshine as a film of silver.

"I don't see why we cannot easily do it," said Panton, as he shifted his
gun from one shoulder to the other. "What we have to do is to avoid the
thick forest and make at once for the slope of cin