CHAPTER XXII.
A PYTHON DISCOVERED AND A GEYSER INTERVIEWED.
"It never rains but it pours" is a well-known proverb which finds,frequent illustration in the experience of almost every one. At allevents Verkimier had reason to believe in the truth of it at that time,for adventures came down on him, as it were, in a sort of deluge, moreor less astounding, insomuch that his enthusiastic spirit, bathing, ifwe may say so, in an ocean of scientific delight, pronounced Sumatra tobe the very paradise of the student of nature.
We have not room in this volume to follow him in the details of hiswonderful experiences, but we must mention one adventure which he had onthe very day after the tiger-incident, because it very nearly had theeffect of separating him from his travelling companions.
Being deaf, as we have said--owing to the explosion of his revolver inthe hole--but not necessarily dumb, the professor, after one or twofutile attempts to hear and converse, deemed it wise to go to bed andspend the few conscious minutes that might precede sleep in watching Vander Kemp, who kindly undertook to skin his tiger for him. Soon theself-satisfied man fell into a sweet infantine slumber, and dreamed oftigers, in which state he gave vent to sundry grunts, gasps, andhalf-suppressed cries, to the immense delight of Moses, who sat watchinghim, indulging in a running commentary suggestive of the recent event,and giving utterance now and then to a few imitative growls by way ofenhancing the effect of the dreams!
"Look! look! Massa Nadgel, he's twitchin' all ober. De tiger's comin' tohim now."
"Looks like it, Moses."
"Yes--an', see, he grip de 'volver--no, too soon, or de tiger's goedaway, for he's stopped twichin'--dare; de tiger comes agin!"
A gasp and clenching of the right hand seemed to warrant thisassumption. Then a yell rang through the hut; Moses displayed all, andmore than all his teeth, and the professor, springing up on one elbow,glared fearfully.
"I'n't it awrful?" inquired Moses in a low tone.
The professor awoke mentally, recognised the situation, smiled animbecile smile, and sank back again on his pillow with a sigh of relief.
After that, when the skinning of the tiger was completed, the dreamsappeared to leave him, and all his comrades joined him in the land ofNod. He was first to awake when daylight entered their hut the followingmorning, and, feeling in a fresh, quiescent state of mind after theexcitement of the preceding night, he lay on his back, his eyes fixedcontentedly on the grand tiger-skin which hung on the opposite wall.
By degrees his eyes grew wearied of that object, and he allowed them totravel languidly upwards and along the roof until they rested on thespot directly over his head, where they became fixed, and, at the sametime, opened out to a glare, compared to which all his previous glaringwas as nothing--for there, in the thatch, looking down upon him, was theangular head of a huge python. The snake was rolled up in a tight coil,and had evidently spent the night within a yard of the professor's head!Being unable to make out what sort of snake it was, and fearing that itmight be a poisonous one, he crept quietly from his couch, keeping hiseyes fixed on the reptile as he did so. One result of this mode ofaction was that he did not see where he was going, and inadvertentlythrust one finger into Moses' right eye, and another into his openmouth. The negro naturally shut his mouth with a snap, while theprofessor opened his with a roar, and in another moment every man wason his feet blinking inquiringly.
"Look! zee snake!" cried the professor, when Moses released him.
"We must get him out of that," remarked Van der Kemp, as he quietly madea noose with a piece of rattan, and fastened it to the end of a longpole. With the latter he poked the creature up, and, when it haduncoiled sufficiently, he slipped the noose deftly over its head.
"Clear out, friends," he said, looking round.
All obeyed with uncommon promptitude except the professor, who valiantlystood his ground. Van der Kemp pulled the python violently down to thefloor, where it commenced a tremendous scuffle among the chairs andposts. The hermit kept its head off with the pole, and sought to catchits tail, but failed twice. Seeing this the professor caught the tail asit whipped against his legs, and springing down the steps so violentlythat he snapped the cord by which the hermit held it, and drew thecreature straight out--a thick monster full twelve feet long, andcapable of swallowing a dog or a child.
"Out of zee way!" shouted the professor, making a wild effort to swingthe python against a tree, but the tail slipped from his grasp, theprofessor fell, and the snake went crashing against a log, under whichit took refuge.
Nigel, who was nearest to it, sprang forward, fortunately caught itstail, and, swinging it and himself round with such force that it couldnot coil up at all, dashed it against a tree. Before it could recoverfrom the shock, Moses had caught up a hatchet and cut its head off withone blow. The tail wriggled for a few seconds, and the head gaped onceor twice, as if in mild surprise at so sudden a finale.
"Zat is strainch--very strainch," slowly remarked the professor, as,still seated on the ground, he solemnly noted these facts.
"Not so _very_ strange, after all," said Van der Kemp; "I've seen thehead of many a bigger snake cut off at one blow."
"Mine frond, you mistake me. It is zee vorking of physical law in zeespiritual vorld zat perplexes me. Moses has cut zee brute intwo--physical fact, substance can be divided. Zee two parts are stillalife, zerfore, zee life--zee spirit--has also been divided!"
"It is indeed very strange," said Nigel, with a laugh. "Stranger stillthat you may cut a worm into several parts, and the life remains ineach, but, strangest of all, that you should sit on the ground,professor, instead of rising up, while you philosophise. You are nothurt, I hope--are you?"
"I razer zink I am," returned the philosopher with a faint smile; "mineonkle, I zink, is spraint."
This was indeed true, and it seemed as if the poor man's wanderingswere to be, for a time at least, brought to an abrupt close. Fortunatelyit was found that a pony could be procured at that village, and, as theyhad entered the borders of the mountainous regions, and the roads weremore open and passable than heretofore, it was resolved that theprofessor should ride until his ankle recovered.
We must now pass over a considerable portion of time and space, andconvey the reader, by a forced march, to the crater of an activevolcano. By that time Verkimier's ankle had recovered and the pony hadbeen dismissed. The heavy luggage, with the porters, had been left inthe low grounds, for the mountain they had scaled was over 10,000 feetabove the sea-level. Only one native from the plain below accompaniedthem as guide, and three of their porters whose inquiring minds temptedthem to make the ascent.
At about 10,000 feet the party reached what the natives called the dempoor edge of the volcano, whence they looked down into the sawah orancient crater, which was a level space composed of brown soilsurrounded by cliffs, and lying like the bottom of a cup 200 feet belowthem. It had a sulphurous odour, and was dotted here and there withclumps of heath and rhododendrons. In the centre of this was a conewhich formed the true--or modern--crater. On scrambling up to the lipof the cone and looking down some 300 feet of precipitous rock theybeheld what seemed to be a pure white lake set in a central basin of 200feet in diameter. The surface of this lakelet smoked, and although itreflected every passing cloud as if it were a mirror, it was in realitya basin of hot mud, the surface of which was about thirty feet below itsrim.
"You will soon see a change come over it," said the hermit, as the partygazed in silent admiration at the weird scene.
He had scarcely spoken, when the middle of the lake became intenselyblack and scored with dark streaks. This, though not quite obvious atfirst from the point where they stood, was caused by the slow formationof a great chasm in the centre of the seething lake of mud. The lake wassinking into its own throat. The blackness increased. Then a dull sullenroar was heard, and next moment the entire lake upheaved, not violently,but in a slow, majestic manner some hundreds of feet into the air,whence it fell back into its basin with an a
wful roar which reverberatedand echoed from the rocky walls of the caldron like the singing of anangry sea. An immense volume of steam--the motive power which had blownup the lake--was at the same time liberated and dissipated in the air.
The wave-circles died away on the margin of the lake, and the placid,cloud-reflecting surface was restored until the geyser had gatheredfresh force for another upheaval.
"Amazing!" exclaimed Nigel, who had gazed with feelings of awe at thiscurious exhibition of the tremendous internal forces with which theCreator has endowed the earth.
"Vonderful!" exclaimed the professor, whose astonishment was such, thathis eyebrows rose high above the rim of his huge blue binoculars.
Moses, to whom such an exhibition of the powers of nature was familiar,was, we are sorry to say, not much impressed, if impressed at all!Indeed he scarcely noticed it, but watched, with intense teeth-and-gumdisclosing satisfaction, the faces of two of the native porters who hadnever seen anything of the kind before, and whose terrified expressionssuggested the probability of a precipitate flight when their tremblinglimbs became fit to resume duty.
"Will it come again soon?" asked Nigel, turning to Van der Kemp.
"Every fifteen or twenty minutes it goes through that process all dayand every day," replied the hermit.
"But, if I may joodge from zee stones ant scoriae around," said theprofessor, "zee volcano is not alvays so peaceful as it is joost now."
"You are right. About once in every three years, and sometimes oftener,the crops of coffee, bananas, rice, etc., in this region are quitedestroyed by sulphur-rain, which covers everything for miles around thecrater."
"Hah! it vould be too hote a place zis for us, if zat vas to happinjoost now," remarked Verkimier with a smile.
"It cannot be far off the time now, I should think," said Yan der Kemp.
All this talk Moses translated, and embellished, to the native porterswith the solemn sincerity of a true and thorough-paced hypocrite. He hadscarcely finished, and was watching with immense delight the changefulaspect of their whitey-green faces, when another volcanic fit came on,and the deep-toned roar of the coming explosion was heard. It was soawesome that the countenance even of Van der Kemp became graver thanusual. As for the two native porters, they gazed and trembled. Nigel andthe professor also gazed with lively expectation. Moses--we grieve torecord it--hugged himself internally, and gloated over the two porters.
Another moment and there came a mighty roar. Up went the mud-lakehundreds of feet into the air; out came the steam with the sound of athousand trombones, and away went the two porters, head ever heels, downthe outer slope of the cone and across the sawah as if the spirit ofevil were after them.
There was no cause, however, for alarm. The mud-lake, falling back intoits native cup, resumed its placid aspect and awaited its next upheavalwith as much tranquillity as if it had never known disturbance in thepast, and were indifferent about the future.
That evening our travellers encamped in close proximity to the crater,supped on fowls roasted in an open crevice whence issued steam andsulphurous smells, and slept with the geyser's intermittent roarsounding in their ears and re-echoing in their dreams.