Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/366

107 I looked down the ascent we had just climbed. The mountain was only about 700 feet high from that plain we had left, but on the other side it looked down twice the height to the depths of the Atlantic. My gaze roamed over a vast space, lighted up by a violent conflagration. The mountain was, in fact, a volcano. Fifty feet below the summit a large crater was vomiting torrents of lava in the midst of a rain of stones and scoriæ; the volcano lit up the plain below like an immense torch, even to the limits of the horizon.

I have said that the volcano cast up lava but no flames. To have flame oxygen of the air is necessary, and flame cannot be developed under water, but lava possesses in itself the principle of incandescence, and reaches a white heat, and, in contact with the liquid element, gains the upper hand and vaporises it. Rapid currents, carrying all the gases in diffusion, and the lava torrents, flowed to the base of the mountain, like the eruptions of Vesuvius upon another Torre del Greci.

In fact, beneath my eyes, ruined and destroyed, appeared the remains of a town, its roofs open, its temples fallen, its architecture gone, and, in the columns still remaining, the Tuscan style could be recognised.

Further on were the traces of a gigantic aqueduct, and again the base of an Acropolis, with the dim outlines of a Parthenon. Here were vestiges of a quay, as if an ancient harbour had been existent, and had sunk, with its merchant-men and ships of war, to the bottom. At a greater distance still were long lines of sunken walls and streets—a Pompeii engulfed in the ocean.

Where was I? I was determined to know at any hazard. I wished to speak, and would have taken off my helmet had not Captain Nemo stopped me by a gesture. He then