ery sign and portent of an awful earthquake!"

My uncle coolly shook his head.

"An earthquake," he replied in the most calm and provoking tone.

"Yes."

"My nephew, I tell you that you are utterly mistaken," he continued.

"Do you not, can you not, recognize all the well-known symtons--"

"Of an earthquake? By no means. I am expecting something far more
important."

"My brain is strained beyond endurance--what, what do you mean?" I
cried.

"An eruption, Harry."

"An eruption," I gasped. "We are, then, in the volcanic shaft of a
crater in full action and vigor."

"I have every reason to think so," said the Professor in a smiling tone,
"and I beg to tell you that it is the most fortunate thing that could
happen to us."

The most fortunate thing! Had my uncle really and truly gone mad? What
did he mean by these awful words--what did he mean by this terrible
calm, this solemn smile?

"What!" cried I, in the height of my exasperation, "we are on the way to
an eruption, are we? Fatality has cast us into a well of burning and
boiling lava, of rocks on fire, of boiling water, in a word, filled with
every kind of eruptive matter? We are about to be expelled, thrown up,
vomited, spit out of the interior of the earth, in common with huge
blocks of granite, with showers of cinders and scoriae, in a wild
whirlwind of flame, and you say--the most fortunate thing which could
happen to us."

"Yes," replied the Professor, looking at me calmly from under his
spectacles, "it is the only chance which remains to us of ever escaping
from the interior of the earth to the light of day."

It is quite impossible that I can put on paper the thousand strange,
wild thoughts which followed this extraordinary announcement.

But my uncle was right, quite right, and never had he appeared to me so
audacious and so convinced as when he looked me calmly in the face and
spoke of the chances of an eruption--of our being cast upon Mother Earth
once more through the gaping crater of a volcano!

Nevertheless, while we were speaking we were still ascending; we passed
the whole night going up, or to speak more scientifically, in an
ascensional motion. The fearful noise redoubled; I was ready to
suffocate. I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and
yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish
hypothesis or other. In such circumstances you do not choose your own
thoughts. They overcome you.

It was qui