Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/219

 OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 213 physical phenomena, to have its precursors, that were easily seen and understood. On the present occasion, the boat ran across the passage in very good time, smaking the crater in about five hours, and the ship s masts in six Mark made a good land-fall coming in to leeward of the cape, or low promontory already mentioned Cape South he called it while there still remained several hours of day. Bridget was greatly struck with the vast difference she could not help finding between the appearance of these low, dark, and so often naked rocks, and that of the Eden she had just left. Tears came into her eyes, as she pic tured her husband a solitary wanderer over these wastes, with no water, even, but that which fell from the clouds, or which came from the casks of the ship. When, how ever, she gave utterance to this feeling, one so natural to her situation, Mark told her to have patience until they reached the crater, when she would see that he had pos sessed a variety of blessings, for which he had every reason to be grateful to God. There was no difficulty in getting into the proper chan nel, when the boat fairly flew along the rocks that lined the passages. So long as she was in rough water, the sails of so small a craft were necessarily becalmed a good deal of the time ; but, now that there was nothing to intercept the breeze, she caught it all, and made the most of it. To Mark s surprise, as they passed the Prairie, he saw all of his swine on it, now, including two half-unconsumed litters of well-grown pigs, some seventeen in number. These animals had actually found their way along the rocks, a distance of at least twenty miles from home, and by the crooked path they had taken, probable one much greater. They all appeared full, and contented. So much of the water had already evaporated as to make it tolerable walk ing on the sea-weed; and Mark, stopping to examine the progress of things, prognosticated that another year, in that climate, would convert. the whole of that wide plain into dry land. In many places, the hogs had already found their way down, through the sea-weed, into the mud ; and there was one particular spot, quite near the channel, where the water was all gone, and where the pigs had rooted over so much of the surface, as to convert two or