rning liquid had then
spread through the forest of the Far West. At this period of the year,
when the trees were dried up by a tropical heat, the forest caught fire
instantaneously, in such a manner that the conflagration extended itself
both by the trunks of the trees and by their higher branches, whose
interlacement favoured its progress. It even appeared that the current
of flame spread more rapidly among the summits of the trees than the
current of lava at their bases.

Thus it happened that the wild animals, jaguars, wild boars, cabybaras,
koulas, and game of every kind, mad with terror, had fled to the banks
of the Mercy and to the Tadorn Marsh, beyond the road to Port Balloon.
But the colonists were too much occupied with their task to pay any
attention to even the most formidable of these animals. They had
abandoned Granite House, and would not even take shelter at the
Chimneys, but encamped under a tent, near the mouth of the Mercy.

Each day Cyrus Harding and Gideon Spilett ascended the plateau of
Prospect Heights. Sometimes Herbert accompanied them, but never
Pencroft, who could not bear to look upon the prospect of the island now
so utterly devastated.

It was, in truth, a heartrending spectacle. All the wooded part of the
island was now completely bare. One single clump of green trees raised
their heads at the extremity of Serpentine Peninsula. Here and there
were a few grotesque blackened and branchless stumps. The site of the
devastated forest was even more barren than Tadorn Marsh. The irruption
of the lava had been complete. Where formerly sprang up that charming
verdure, the soil was now nothing but a savage mass of volcanic tufa.
In the valleys of the Falls and Mercy rivers no drop of water now flowed
towards the sea, and should Lake Grant be entirely dried up, the
colonists would have no means of quenching their thirst. But,
fortunately, the lava had spared the southern corner of the lake,
containing all that remained of the drinkable water of the island.
Towards the north-west stood out the rugged and well-defined outlines of
the sides of the volcano, like a gigantic claw hovering over the island.
What a sad and fearful sight, and how painful to the colonists, who,
from a fertile domain covered with forests, irrigated by watercourses,
and enriched by the produce of their toils, found themselves, as it
were, transported to a desolate rock, upon which, but for their reserves
of provision