ad gazed with feelings of awe at this
curious exhibition of the tremendous internal forces with which the
Creator has endowed the earth.

"Vonderful!" exclaimed the professor, whose astonishment was such, that
his eyebrows rose high above the rim of his huge blue binoculars.

Moses, to whom such an exhibition of the powers of nature was familiar,
was, we are sorry to say, not much impressed, if impressed at all!
Indeed he scarcely noticed it, but watched, with intense teeth-and-gum
disclosing satisfaction, the faces of two of the native porters who had
never seen anything of the kind before, and whose terrified expressions
suggested the probability of a precipitate flight when their trembling
limbs became fit to resume duty.

"Will it come again soon?" asked Nigel, turning to Van der Kemp.

"Every fifteen or twenty minutes it goes through that process all day
and every day," replied the hermit.

"But, if I may joodge from zee stones ant scoriae around," said the
professor, "zee volcano is not always so peaceful as it is joost now."

"You are right. About once in every three years, and sometimes oftener,
the crops of coffee, bananas, rice, etcetera, in this region are quite
destroyed by sulphur-rain, which covers everything for miles around the
crater."

"Hah! it vould be too hote a place zis for us, if zat vas to happin
joost now," remarked Verkimier with a smile.

"It cannot be far off the time now, I should think," said Van der Kemp.

All this talk Moses translated, and embellished, to the native porters
with the solemn sincerity of a true and thorough-paced hypocrite. He
had scarcely finished, and was watching with immense delight the
changeful aspect of their whitey-green faces, when another volcanic fit
came on, and the deep-toned roar of the coming explosion was heard. It
was so awesome that the countenance even of Van der Kemp became graver
than usual. As for the two native porters, they gazed and trembled.
Nigel and the professor also gazed with lively expectation. Moses--we
grieve to record it--hugged himself internally, and gloated over the two
porters.

Another moment and there came a mighty roar. Up went the mud-lake
hundreds of feet into the air; out came the steam with the sound of a
thousand trombones, and away went the two porters, head over heels, down
the outer slope of the cone and across the sawah as if the spirit of
evil were after them.

There was no cause, however, for alarm. T