xtorting from this wild
country everything necessary for the life of himself and his companions;
the latter feared nothing, just because Cyrus Harding was with them.
Pencroft especially, since the incident of the relighted fire, would
not have despaired for an instant, even if he was on a bare rock, if the
engineer was with him on the rock.

"Pshaw," said he, "we left Richmond without permission from the
authorities! It will be hard if we don't manage to get away some day or
other from a place where certainly no one will detain us!"

Cyrus Harding followed the same road as the evening before. They went
round the cone by the plateau which formed the shoulder, to the mouth of
the enormous chasm. The weather was magnificent. The sun rose in a pure
sky and flooded with his rays all the eastern side of the mountain.

The crater was reached. It was just what the engineer had made it out to
be in the dark; that is to say, a vast funnel which extended, widening,
to a height of a thousand feet above the plateau. Below the chasm, large
thick streaks of lava wound over the sides of the mountain, and thus
marked the course of the eruptive matter to the lower valleys which
furrowed the northern part of the island.

The interior of the crater, whose inclination did not exceed thirty five
to forty degrees, presented no difficulties nor obstacles to the ascent.
Traces of very ancient lava were noticed, which probably had overflowed
the summit of the cone, before this lateral chasm had opened a new way
to it.

As to the volcanic chimney which established a communication between the
subterranean layers and the crater, its depth could not be calculated
with the eye, for it was lost in obscurity. But there was no doubt as to
the complete extinction of the volcano.

Before eight o'clock Harding and his companions were assembled at the
summit of the crater, on a conical mound which swelled the northern
edge.

"The sea, the sea everywhere!" they cried, as if their lips could not
restrain the words which made islanders of them.

The sea, indeed, formed an immense circular sheet of water all around
them! Perhaps, on climbing again to the summit of the cone, Cyrus
Harding had had a hope of discovering some coast, some island shore,
which he had not been able to perceive in the dark the evening before.
But nothing appeared on the farthest verge of the horizon, that is to
say over a radius of more than fifty miles. No land in sight. Not a