Terrible detonations, like heaven's artillery, began to multiply themselves with fearful intensity. I could only compare them with the noise made by hundreds of heavily-laden chariots being madly driven over a stone pavement. It was a continuous roll of heavy thunder.
And then the mad compass, shaken by the wild electric phenomena, confirmed me in my rapidly-formed opinion. The mineral crust was about to burst, the heavy granite masses were about to rejoin, the fissure was about to close, the void was about to be filled up, and we poor atoms to be crushed in its awful embrace! "Uncle, uncle!" I cried, "we are wholly, irretrievably lost!"
"What, then my young friend, is your new cause of terror and alarm?" he said, in his calmest manner. "What fear you now?"
"What do I fear now!" I cried, in fierce and angry tones. "Do you not see that the walls of the shaft are in motion? do you not see that the solid granite masses are cracking? do you not feel the terrible, torrid heat? do you not observe the awful boiling water on which we float? do you not remark this mad needle? every sign and portent of an awful earthquake?"
My uncle coolly shook his head. "An earthquake?" he questioned in the most calm and provoking tone.
"Yes."
"My nephew, I tell you that you are utterly mistaken," he continued.
"Do you not, can you not, recognize all the well-known symptoms———"
"Of an earthquake? by no means. I am expecting something far more important."
"My brain is strained beyond endurance—what, what do you mean?" I cried.
"An eruption, Harry."
"An eruption," I gasped. "We are, then, in the volcanic shaft of a crater in full action and vigor."
"I have every reason to think so," said the Professor in a smiling tone, "and I beg to tell you that it is the most fortunate thing that could happen to us."
The most fortunate thing! Had my uncle really and truly gone mad? What did he mean by these awful words—what did he mean by this terrible calm, this solemn smile?
