Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/251

Rh of the six souls there, five of us were Catholics, unable to hear Mass. We knelt down, and I said aloud a Paternoster, Ave Maria, and Gloria Patri, and offered to our Lord the hearts of all present with genuine thanksgiving, and with a silent prayer that the one dear to me, the only unbeliever of our small party, might one day receive the gift of faith.

We arose, and continued our now almost painful way, and at 6.45 reached the base of the dirty-white sugar-loaf. Here we breathed; and what had seemed to me to be a ridge from below was a small plain space round the base of the Cone. The thermometer stood at 120° in the steam, but there was no smell of sulphur till we reached the top. Manuel and Richard start, pike in hand. My muleteer took off his red sash, tied it round my waist, and took the other end over his shoulder, and with a pike in my hand we did the last hard work; and it was very hard after the Mal Pais. The Cone is surrounded, as I have just said, by a little plain base of pumice, and its own soil is broken, fine pumice—out of which, from all parts, issue jets of smoke, which burn you and your clothes: I think I counted thirty-five. We had five hundred and twelve feet more to accomplish, and we took three-quarters of an hour. The top consists of masses of rock, great and small, covered with bright, glistening, yellow sulphur, and frost; and from which issue powerful jets of smoke from the volcano within. Richard helped me up to stand on the corona, the top stone, at 7.40 a.m. It is so narrow there is only room for one person to stand there at once. I stood there a minute or two.