beauty that no one cared to
leave, but the captain soon gave the word, for he was desirous of
finding some sign of the strange creature that had caused so much alarm.

They had climbed far above the spot whence the sounds seemed to come,
but all felt that probably the beast would come down from the mountain
and make that his home; and in this belief the party once more started,
directing their course so as to go down and round the rocky eminence in
face of where they stood, and then begin to climb the mountain where it
steadily rose in one long slope to the summit.

The major was leading as they went down, and he had no sooner reached a
spot whence he could see beyond the long mass of rock than he waved his
hand for the party to come on.

Mark was the first to reach him, and as he did so it was to see a tall
column of water as big as a man's body rush down a hole, which seemed to
have been formed in the centre of a pale stony-looking basin.

"Look, my lad, look!" cried the major.

There was no occasion for him to speak, for Mark was already gazing with
a feeling of shrinking awe at another of these stony basins, in which a
quantity of clear hot water was boiling up and steaming. It rose from a
hole in the middle, quite four feet in diameter, and simmered and
bubbled and danced, and then suddenly disappeared down the hole with a
hideous gurgling, rushing sound, followed by horrible rumblings and
gurgitations in what seemed to be an enormous pipe of stone.

Once more it rushed to the surface, and then disappeared again, leaving
the opening clear of water, so that the major went to the stony bottom
of the basin, or saucer, to try whether it was slippery; and finding it
firm, he walked on to where he could gaze down the well-like hole.

He did not stop many moments, but stepped back.

"Horrid!" he said. "Right down into blackness. Come and look."

Mark hesitated for a moment, and then took the hand his father extended,
and they walked down the slope of the basin to where the opening gaped.

As they reached it there was a puff of hot vapour sent up, followed by
hollow roaring sounds, mingled with the gurgling of water. Then there
was such a furious hissing rush that they started back, and had just
stepped clear of the basin when a fount of boiling water rushed up with
terrific violence, maintaining the shape of the tube through which it
had risen to the height of a hundred feet in the air, and keeping to
that