a dull thud came up
at intervals like nothing else but the knocking of a man buried alive
at the sealed door of his tomb.

Beneath this spot the heart of the solfatara was expected to lie, and
Jason and Sunlocks were commanded to open it. Obeying gloomily, they
took the bore first and pierced the scaly surface, and instantly a
sizzling and bubbling sound came up from below. Then they followed
with the spades, but scarcely had they lifted the top crust when
twenty great fissures seemed to open under their feet, and they could
see lurid flames rushing in wild confusion, like rivers of fire in
the bowels of the earth.

It was a sight at which the stoutest heart might have quailed, and
Jason leapt back to the bank and dragged Sunlocks after him.

"This is not safe,"was recalled to himself by a dull hum of words that seemed to
be spoken from the Mount. Someone was asking why he had come there,
and brought Michael Sunlocks along with him. So he lifted his hand,
partly to call attention, partly to steady himself, and in a broken
voice he said these words:--

"Men and women, if you could only know what it means that you have
just witnessed, I think it would be enough to move any man. You know
what I am--a sort of bastard who has never been a man among men, but
has walked alone all the days of his life. My father killed my
mother, and so I vowed to kill my father. I did not do it, for I
saved him out of the sea, and he died in my