Chapter LXXV

The next night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of the crater, for
we desired to traverse its floor and see the "North Lake" (of fire) which
lay two miles away, toward the further wall. After dark half a dozen of
us set out, with lanterns and native guides, and climbed down a crazy,
thousand-foot pathway in a crevice fractured in the crater wall, and
reached the bottom in safety.

The irruption of the previous evening had spent its force and the floor
looked black and cold; but when we ran out upon it we found it hot yet,
to the feet, and it was likewise riven with crevices which revealed the
underlying fires gleaming vindictively. A neighboring cauldron was
threatening to overflow, and this added to the dubiousness of the
situation. So the native guides refused to continue the venture, and
then every body deserted except a stranger named Marlette. He said he
had been in the crater a dozen times in daylight and believed he could
find his way through it at night. He thought that a run of three hundred
yards would carry us over the hottest part of the floor and leave us our
shoe-soles. His pluck gave me back-bone. We took one lantern and
instructed the guides to hang the other to the roof of the look-out house
to serve as a beacon for us in case we got lost, and then the party
started back up the precipice and Marlette and I made our run.
We skipped over the hot floor and over the red crevices with brisk
dispatch and reached the cold lava safe but with pretty warm feet. Then
we took things leisurely and comfortably, jumping tolerably wide and
probably bottomless chasms, and threading our way through picturesque
lava upheavals with considerable confidence. When we got fairly away
from the cauldrons of boiling fire, we seemed to be in a gloomy desert,
and a suffocatingly dark one, surrounded by dim walls that seemed to
tower to the sky. The only cheerful objects were the glinting stars high
overhead.

By and by Marlette shouted "Stop!" I never stopped quicker in my life.
I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He said
we must not try to go on till we found it again, for we were surrounded
with beds of rotten lava through which we could easily break and plunge
down a thousand feet. I thought eight hundred would answer for me, and
was about to say so when Marlette partly proved his statement by
accidentally crushing through and disappearing to his arm-pits.

He got out and we hunted for the path with the lantern. He said there
was only one path and that it was but vaguely defined. We could not find
it. The lava surface was all alike in the lantern light. But he was an
ingenious man. He said it was not the lantern that had informed him that
we were out of the path, but his feet. He had noticed a crisp grinding