Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/200

178 said Ezariel, pointing to the blazing, copperous-looking fires.

"The heat is like the blast of a furnace" I said."It reminds me of Hecla on Earth in a state of eruption; but no Earth-volcano for many thousands of years has ever blazed like this. The air would even now be insupportably hot to any terrestrial animal. Men would call this the heat of boiling water, and still we are miles off. Had we not better turn away from this eruption? The instruments will soon be affected by the heat, and some of our collections destroyed."

Ezariel consented, and we upraised the ether-car a mile or two, the better to contemplate the terrific conflagration. There were rising out of the waters, surrounded by huge piles of scorias and ashes, some hundreds of miles of blazing flames and incandescent matter. Out from the deep rushed vast columns of smoke and steam and ashes, whilst glowing rivers of lava flowed towards the hissing seas, which, in a cloud of mist and steam, from time to time enveloped the volcanoes. Stromboli, Vesuvius, Etna, Hecla, indeed all the volcanoes of either hemisphere on Earth together, in full eruption, would not produce such an effect as this.