Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/137

 OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 131 The spots of verdure that he had succeeded in producing on the Summit, not only relieved and refreshed his eyes, but they were truly delightful as aids to the view, as well as grateful to Kitty, which poor creature had, by this time, cropped them down (o a pretty short herbage. This Mark knew, however, was an advantage to the grass, making it finer, and causing it to thicken at the roots. The success of this experiment, the annoyance to his eyes, and a fever ish desire to be doing, which succeeded the disappearance of Betts, set Mark upon the project of sowing grass-seed over as much of the plain of the crater as he thought he should not have occasion to use for the purposes of tillage. To work he went then, scattering the seed in as much profusion as the quantity to be found in the ship would justify. Friend Abraham White had provided two barrels of the seed, and this went a good way. While thus em ployed a heavy shower fell, and thinking the rain a most favourable time to commit his grass-seeds to the earth, Mark worked through the whole of it, or for several hours, perspiring with the warmth and exercise. This done, a look at the garden, with a free use of the hoe, was the next thing undertaken. That night Mark slept in his hammock, under the crater-awning, and when he awoke in the morning it was to experience a weight like that of lead in his forehead, a raging thirst, and a burning fever. Now it was that our poor solitary hermit felt the magnitude of his imprudence and the weight of the evils of his peculiar situation. That he was about to be seriously ill he knew, and it behoved him to improve the time that remained to him, to the utmost. Everything useful to him was in the ship, and thither it became indis pensable for him to repair, if he wished to retain even a chance for life. Opening an umbrella, then, and support ing his tottering legs by a cane, Mark commenced a walk of very near a mile, under an almost perpendicular sun, at the hottest season of the year. Twenty times did the young man think he should be compelled to sink on the bare rock, where there is little question he would soon have expired, under the united influence of the fever within and the burning heat without. Despair urged him on, and, after pausing often to rest, he succeeded in entering