Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/152

 90 there were no subterranean signs of an imminent eruption. Fifteen, twenty minutes passed, with very little change.

When thirty minutes had gone there was a rumble, then a splash of water. The people near the geyser backed away. Two or three more splashes followed, and each was higher than its predecessor. Then came a hoarse roar, a rush of steam, and up past a low, sulphur-dyed sinter wall flashed a column of water carrying clouds of steam. Soap, just common washing-soap, had conquered Wairoa and forced it from its lair. Up it continued to go—fifty, sixty, eighty, one hundred and twenty feet.

"Wairoa would have gone higher if it had n't been for the wind," the caretaker told me. "It has been known to go one hundred and eighty feet."

While Wairoa played it played magnificently. In its shaft it rumbled, it flung its hot breath upon the venturesome, and for more than one hundred feet around it shook the ground until the earth trembled. For ten minutes it rose and fell. Then down it went, like a thermometer on a frosty night, until it was a mere splasher.

Kathleen, Wairoa's tempter, wore shoes at the soaping ceremony; but where were they now, after the people had dispersed? She was barefooted as she and other guides wended their way to the village square.

"Where are your shoes, Kathleen? " asked Georgiana.

"Oh, I left them at the geyser," was the reply, in a tone that indicated its communicator would not have