04 Volcano Adventure (4 page)

The six mud-men staggered on through the unnatural night. What if they should lose their way? Hal looked anxiously at Dr Dan. He hoped that the doctor wouldn’t begin to sing and that the strange attack that had turned him to stone at the edge of the crater would not be repeated. They depended upon the doctor to guide them to safety.

But the doctor seemed calm enough as he clambered over the rocks as nimbly as the heavy caking of mud on his body would let him. Toguri also seemed to know the way.

Gradually a light became visible ahead. It turned out to be a lamp in the entrance to a Japanese inn.

What a relief to step under the projecting roof and be sheltered from that crazy shower of mud! They tried to clap their hands to call the maid. But no sound came from those mittens of mud.

They shouted, ‘Ohaiyo!’ There was a pattering of sandals in the corridor and a maid appeared. She cried out when she saw six mud statues standing in the vestibule. More maids appeared and the proprietor, all with cries of concern and sympathetic laughter.

Muddy shoes were removed, feet were tucked into sandals called zori, and the six mud-men were hurried straight to the bath. They were shivering with cold, for the heat of the day had vanished when the darkness and rain began.

Off came the mud-plastered clothes and were taken away at once to be washed and ironed.

Then six dirty men poured buckets of hot water over themselves, applied soap generously, and rinsed themselves clean under more bucketfuls of hot water.

Then they stepped down into the bath. There is nothing in the world quite like a Japanese bath. It is a tub of very hot water three feet deep. This one was large, about fifteen feet square, more like a miniature swimming pool than a tub.

You don’t go into a Japanese tub to get clean. You get clean first, then you enter the tub and squat in it so that only your head is above water. And there you soak for a half-hour or more, enjoying the warmth that seems to relax every muscle and nerve in your body, smoothes away your troubles, and leaves you perfectly content with the world and hungry for dinner.

So they happily soaked and relaxed. Then they stepped out to dry themselves and each slipped on a yukata provided by the inn, a sort of light-weight kimono, and they were led to the room that had been assigned to them.

Here they sat down on the soft mat-covered floor before an ankle-high table and were soon manipulating chopsticks over a delicious dinner of hot rice, baked fish, fried prawns, wafers of seaweed, a steamed custard of eggs, mushrooms, and chicken, and a dessert made of beans in a syrup of sugar and honey.

Dinner over, the maids carried away the tables and the six were left to themselves.

The Japanese felt perfectly at home, but the others found the room a bit strange. It was nothing like the sort of hotel room they were used to. There was not one stick of furniture in it - no chairs, no bed, no table, no telephone stand, no writing desk, no chest of drawers, no dressing table, no carpet, no curtains.

There was also no dirt. The room was spotlessly clean. Even the floor was as clean as a dinner plate for no one ever came into the room with shoes on. The sandal-like zori were left outside in the corridor. The room was floored with straw mats called tatami, three inches thick, soft and springy, and as clean as a whistle.

The three Japanese lazily stretched themselves out on the floor, and the others followed their example. They were surprised to find how good it felt.

‘Not bad at all!’ exclaimed Roger. ‘A lot better than sitting up in a chair when you’re tired.’

They talked over the events of the day. Hal drew Kobo into the conversation and painstakingly corrected his faulty English.

The mud rain thudded on the tile roof. Already there must be a heavy blanket of mud on the roof. Roger looked up.

‘I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to be buried alive,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we’ll find out.’

Dr Dan laughed. ‘I think the rain will finally conquer the mud and wash it away. But of course there’s always the chance that it won’t. This was the way Vesuvius buried Herculaneum - under a sea of mud.’

‘Have you climbed Vesuvius?’ Hal asked.

‘Yes. It’s easy compared with Asama. It’s only four thousand feet high. From the top you get a marvellous view of Naples and the bay and the Isle of Capri. And you can look down into a very angry crater. Vesuvius has blown her top many times, and will probably do it again. But the worst was when she buried Pompeii and Herculaneum.’

‘What year was that?’

‘Only seventy-nine years after the birth of Christ. What a day that must have been! When people came out of their houses that morning they saw a great black cloud over Vesuvius. Flashes of lightning shot through it

and the sound of thunder rolled down the slope of the mountain.

‘Then there was a violent earthquake. The ground danced, people lost their footing and fell. Great cracks opened up in the streets, so wide that chariot horses could not jump over them.

‘The mountain began to shake with explosions. The black cloud rolled down over the city. It became so dark that no one could see more than a few feet away except when a flash of lightning lit up the scene.

‘Lava puddings like those we saw today began to fall and burned many people to death. Small bits of pumice showered down. Sulphurous vapours made people choke. Then the shower of ashes began. Tons and tons and tons of ashes. At first people didn’t mind them too much. They just waded through them and laughed. The children had great fun playing in them and throwing them about. The ashes were only ankle-deep.

‘But they kept on falling. Soon the people were up to their knees in ashes. They went inside their houses. But the earthquakes began to shake the houses down upon their heads. So they went out into the street again.

‘The ashes were up to their chests. Now they really became frightened. They began to leave the city. Some escaped, others were not able to battle their way through the ashes which were now over their heads. They were buried alive.

‘Still the ashes came. They covered the houses, and then the theatres, and then the great public buildings. At last there was nothing but a smooth plain of ashes with the city completely buried far beneath.

That was what happened to Pompeii. What happened to Herculaneum was a bit different, and more terrible. Over this city rain began to come down in torrents. It turned the ashes into mud.

‘Here too the people were afraid to stay indoors because the earthquakes were tumbling the houses down around their ears. They went out into the streets and tried to wade their way out of the city. But they could not wade through the mud. It was up to their knees and it was a very sticky kind of mud, like glue or cement.

Tt held them fast. They could not move. They cried out for help but no one could help them. The mud rose to their waists; to their necks. It crawled up over mouth and nose, over the eyes, over the top of the head. On, up over the tops of the highest buildings. Still the mud came until it was one hundred and thirty feet deep.

Then the shower stopped. The mud began to dry into a hard, stony substance, very much like cement. So the people of Herculaneum stood in the streets in their great cement coffin for eighteen hundred years. People forgot that they had ever existed and new towns were built above their heads.

‘Now an attempt is being made to excavate these cities. Much of Pompeii has been uncovered, but the cement coffin defies the diggers. They cannot disturb the new towns so they bore tunnels beneath them. They have reached the theatre and several beautiful temples. It is a hard job, and perhaps most of the city will remain sealed for ever.’

‘All the things a volcano can do!’ marvelled Roger. ‘It buries these forty-eight villages under lava, Pompeii under ashes, Herculaneum under mud.’

‘But that’s not all,’ said Dr Dan. Tt can destroy a city without using lava or ashes or mud. Remember how Mt Pelee killed forty thousand people in five minutes?’

‘Tell us about it,’ prompted Hal.

Tt won’t take long to tell because it didn’t take long to happen. Mt Pelee - you know where it is, on the beautiful island of Martinique in the West Indies - had been growling for days. The people of the city of St Pierre at the foot of the mountain paid little attention to it. They weren’t as wise as the animals.

‘The wild creatures left the mountain. Even the snakes crawled away. The birds stopped singing and flew to other islands.

‘One morning at seven-thirty the volcano stopped growling. There was complete silence. ‘Ah,’ said one man to another, ‘you see we were sensible not to run away. Pelee has quieted down.’

‘The silence lasted for fifteen minutes. Suddenly there was a deafening explosion like the roar of thousands of cannon. The whole side of the mountain was blown to pieces. Out came a huge purple cloud that rolled down with the speed of a hurricane upon the city.

‘Lightning zigzagged through it and besides the lightning there were brilliant fireworks in the form of serpents and circles. The cloud was made up of burning gases, terrifically hot.

‘The people barely had time to speak before the burning cloud was upon them.

‘I said that forty thousand people died in five minutes. It really took less time than that. The effect of the blast was almost instantaneous.

‘The wall of fire swept out into the harbour and sank sixteen ships. The water of the harbour was heated almost to boiling point. Only two ships managed to limp away to safety after most of their crew had been killed. The fire hurricane burned the others and hot whirlpools sucked them down.

‘Some of the ships were set on fire by rum - can you imagine that? Thousands of casks of rum stored in the city were exploded by the terrific heat. The blazing rum ran in rivers down the streets and out to sea, setting fire to the ships.

‘Sailors on the two ships that got away looked back upon a frightful scene. The city was blazing. Houses lay in heaps, great trees had been torn up by the roots. Not a human being moved. Not a human voice was heard. The sailors believed that every last person had perished.

‘They were wrong. One man, just one, still lived. He was discovered four days later by rescue parties. He was a prisoner in the city jail. He was locked in a cell so far underground that the gases and flames did not reach him.

‘He saw nothing - his cell had no window. But he knew from the noise and heat that something terrible was going on. Then all became quiet.

‘For four days he was without food and water, almost without air. He shouted for help. He tried to break the lock of his cell, but it was no use. He counted himself the unluckiest man in St Pierre.’

‘Then he discovered that he was the luckiest. He was found and brought out into the light and saw the ruins of the city. It was one of the strangest twists of fate in all history - this man who had committed murder and had been condemned to die, was the only one in the whole

city to live.’

So the volcano stories continued through the afternoon and evening as they rested in the snug, dry little inn, mighty thankful to be there.

After supper, the maids brought futons, thick, heavy quilts, and spread them on the floor. They made a great bed twenty feet wide. Six small, round pillows were placed on the bed and six men crawled in between the quilts.

This all seemed quite natural to the Japanese. But the visitors, who were taller, found the quilts a bit short and their feet stuck out. However, they curled them up as best they could and were soon asleep.

For some hours there was no sound but the muffled pat-pat of mud on the roof.

It must have been about two o’clock in the morning when a sharp earthquake shook the house with a clattering, crashing sound and a scream split the air - the scream not of a woman but of a man. Hal felt a sudden commotion in the covers and then someone ran over him, still screaming.

Hal groped for the light and switched it on.

Dr Dan, looking very odd in his yukata which was too short for him so that his bare legs projected beneath it, was frantically beating upon the walls with his fists. Then he smashed the wood-and-paper door that led to the garden and was about to step out when he suddenly stopped screaming, turned slowly, and blinked at the light. Five astonished men sat up in their beds and watched him. .

A puzzled look passed over the doctor’s face. He seemed surprised to find himself out of bed and standing. He turned out the light and crawled in.

‘What goes on?’ came the half-asleep voice of Roger.

‘Pipe down,’ warned Hal.

The others were soon asleep again but Hal lay staring up into the darkness, wondering and worrying about the doctor’s strange behaviour.

Why should the man be so terrified by an earthquake? Earthquakes were common in Japan. An average of four a day were reported, though most of them were too faint to be felt except by the seismograph. Especially a man who made a business of volcanoes should be used to such things.

The doctor was no coward - Hal thought of how readily Dr Dan had faced danger during that exciting day. And yet, how about those two awful minutes at the edge of the crater when the doctor had frozen stiff as he looked down into the pit? When it was over he did not seem to remember what had happened but calmly descended into the crater at the end of a rope.

It was all very puzzling. Could it be that at some time in the past the doctor had had a terrible experience in a volcano, had perhaps suffered mental shock or injury to his head or nervous system - something that would explain these moments when he seemed to lose all control of his actions? To Hal it seemed a dangerous situation - dangerous for the doctor and for Roger and himself. Were they going to explore fire-breathing volcanoes in the company of a half-crazy scientist? If he could just remain himself, there was no finer companion or abler volcano man. But suppose he lost his grip just at some critical moment? A bad accident might result.

Hal wondered if he should talk to Dr Dan about it. But Dr Dan probably didn’t realize anything was wrong. If he had had a frightful experience, he would probably rather not talk about it.