nd the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire,--a
broad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and escape. There
he stood, cut off from descent, and with no alternative but to retrace
his steps towards the crater, and thence seek, without guide or clew,
some other pathway.

For a moment his courage left him; he cried in despair, and in that
overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the guide,
to Mervale, to return to aid him.

No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his own
resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the danger. He turned
back, and ventured as far towards the crater as the noxious exhalation
would permit; then, gazing below, carefully and deliberately he chalked
out for himself a path by which he trusted to shun the direction the
fire-stream had taken, and trod firmly and quickly over the crumbling
and heated strata.

He had proceeded about fifty yards, when he halted abruptly; an
unspeakable and unaccountable horror, not hitherto experienced amidst
all his peril, came over him. He shook in every limb; his muscles
refused his will,--he felt, as it were, palsied and death-stricken. The
horror, I say, was unaccountable, for the path seemed clear and safe.
The fire, above and behind, burned clear and far; and beyond, the stars
lent him their cheering guidance. No obstacle was visible,--no danger
seemed at hand. As thus, spell-bound, and panic-stricken, he stood
chained to the soil,--his breast heaving, large drops rolling down his
brow, and his eyes starting wildly from their sockets,--he saw before
him, at some distance, gradually shaping itself more and more distinctly
to his gaze, a colossal shadow; a shadow that seemed partially borrowed
from the human shape, but immeasurably above the human stature; vague,
dark, almost formless; and differing, he could not tell where or why,
not only from the proportions, but also from the limbs and outline of
man.

The glare of the volcano, that seemed to shrink and collapse from this
gigantic and appalling apparition, nevertheless threw its light,
redly and steadily, upon another shape that stood beside, quiet and
motionless; and it was, perhaps, the contrast of these two things--the
Being and the Shadow--that impressed the beholder with the difference
between them,--the Man and the Superhuman. It was but for a moment--nay,
for the tenth part of a moment--that this sight was permitted to the