these heated spots the fertility and growth of the plants was
astounding. They seemed to be shooting up out of a natural hothouse,
but where to attempt to pass them meant a terrible and instant death.

"Look out, Mas' Don! This here's what I once heard a clown say, `It's
dangerous to be safe.' I say, figgerhead, arn't there no other way?"

"Ship! Men! Catchee, catchee," said Ngati, in a whisper.

"Hear that, Mas' Don? Any one'd think we was babbies. Ketchy, ketchy,
indeed! You ask him if there arn't no other way. I don't like walking
in a place that's like so much hot soup."

"Be quiet, and follow. Hist! Hark!"

Don stopped short, for, from a distance, came a faint hail, followed by
another nearer, which seemed to be in answer.

"They're arter us, sir, and if we're to be ketched I don't mean to be
ketched like this."

"What are you going to do, Jem?"

"Do?" said Jem, unrolling his bundled-up clothes, and preparing to sit
down, "make myself look like an ornery Chrishtun."

"Don't sit down there, Jem!" cried Don, as Ngati gave a warning cry at
the same moment, and started back.

But they were too late, for Jem had chosen a delicately green mossy and
ferny patch, and plumped himself down, to utter a cry of horror, and
snatch at the extended hands. For the green ferny patch was a thin
covering over a noisome hole full of black boiling mud, into which the
poor fellow was settling as he was dragged out.

"Fah!" ejaculated Jem, pinching his nose. "Here, I've had 'most enough
o' this place. Nice sort o' spot this would be to turn a donkey out to
graze. Why, you wouldn't find nothing but the tips of his ears
to-morrow morning."

Another hail rang out, and was answered in two places.

"I say, Mas' Don, they're hunting for us, and we shall have to run."

He made signs to the chief indicative of a desire to run, but Ngati
shook his head, and pointed onward.

They followed on, listening to the shouts, which came nearer, till Ngati
suddenly took a sharp turn round a great buttress of lava, and entered a
wild, narrow, forbidding-looking chasm, where on either side the black,
jagged masses of rock were piled up several hundred feet, and made
glorious by streams which coursed among the delicately green ferns.

"Look's damp," said Jem, as Ngati led them on for about fifty yards, and
then began to climb, his companions following him, till he reached a
shelf about a hundred feet up, and beckoned to them to