sailor, and light after light began
to burn, showing the shape of the place--a fairly wide rift, whose sides
came together about twenty feet overhead. The floor was wonderfully
level and some forty feet wide, the stream being another nine or perhaps
but eight, but widening as it went on.

As soon as the candles were lit Smith held up three, and Wriggs two,
right overhead, so as to illuminate the place, and Oliver and Drew gazed
with a feeling of awe at the sloping sides which glistened with
magnificent crystals, many of which were pendent from sloping roof and
sides, though for the most part they were embedded in the walls.

"Well, is that wet, dark, and creepy?" cried Panton.

"It is very wonderful," replied Drew. Oliver said nothing, for he was
peering right before him into the darkness, and trying to master a
curious feeling of awe.

"This is something like a find," cried Panton, triumphantly.

"How far does it go in?" said Oliver, at last.

"Don't know. We are going to explore."

"Will it be safe? This may lead right down into the bowels of the
volcano."

"I think not," said Panton, "but right away underground somewhere. Once
upon a time when the volcano was in action it overflowed here or cut a
way through the wall, and then the fiery stream forced its way onward,
and was, no doubt, afterwards covered in by the stones and cinders
hurled out by the mountain. Then, of course, after the volcano had
played itself out, and the lake formed in the crater, it in turn
overflowed, and the water ate its way along, as you see, right in the
river of lava, which it followed naturally downwards."

"And do you want us to follow the stream naturally downwards?" said
Oliver.

"Of course. I've only been in about fifty yards, but it is certainly
the most wonderful place I have ever seen. Look here."

He picked from a crevice a great bunch of soft dark brown filaments,
somewhat resembling spun glass.

"What's that? Some kind of fibre?" cried Drew. "But how does it come
here?"

"Is it fibre?" said Panton, smiling.

"No; too brittle. It is glass."

"Yes. Obsidian--a volcanic glass."

"But it looks like the result of glass-blowing," said Oliver.

"Right; so it is. Volcanic glass-blowing. This must have been driven
out of some aperture in the burning mountain during an eruption, steam
acting upon flint and lime when in a state of fusion."

"But where are you going to get your flint and lime from to make