t waste of water, into the pool, sinking with pulsations as on an
elastic cushion a foot below the bottom of the pool. One could stride
the opening like a colossus for five and one half minutes without fear.
He might be using the calm depth for a mirror. But stay a moment too
long and he is scalded to death by the sudden outburst.

The next lesson required more patience and gave more abundant reward.
I found a great raised platform on which stood a castellated rock, more
than twenty feet square, that had been built up particle by particle
into a perfect solid by deposits from the fiery flood. In the center
was a brilliant orange-colored throat that went down into the bowels of
the earth. That was not the geyser--it was only the trump through
which the archangel was to blow. I had heard the preliminary tuning of
the instrument.

The guide book said the grand play of this "Castle" geyser began from
eight to thirty hours after a previous exhibition, and was preceded by
jets of water fifteen to twenty feet high, and that these continued
five or six hours before the grand eruption. I hovered near the grand
stand till the full thirty hours and the six predictive hours were
over, and then, as the thunder above roared threateningly and the rain
fell suggestively, I took a rubber coat and camped on the trail of that
famous spouter.

Geysers are more than a trifle freaky. "Old Faithful" is a notable
exception. Every sixty-five minutes, with almost the regularity of
star time, he throws his column of hissing water one hundred and fifty
feet high. Others are irregular, sometimes playing every three hours
for a few times, and then taking a rest for three or more days. This
Castle geyser is not registered to be quiet more than thirty hours, nor
to indulge in preparatory spouts for more than six hours. When I
finally camped to watch it out all these premonitory symptoms had been
duly exhibited. I first carefully noted the frequency and height of
the spouts, that any change might foretell the grand finale. There
were ten spouts to the minute, and an average height of twenty feet.
Hours went by with no hint of a change: ten to the minute, twenty feet
in height. People by the dozen came and asked when it would go off. I
said, "Liable to go any minute; it is long past due now." Stage loads
of tourists, scheduled to run on time, drove up, waited a few minutes,
and drove on, as if the grand object of the trip was to make t