Aleriel/Part 4/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THE LAND OF FIRE.
When we came to the surface, we again resolved to rise into the air. We rose over the mighty heaving ocean of the giant planet.
"There is no chance," said Arauniel, "of conversing with these huge beings, as we did on the gorgeous planet we have left. Whatever may be their polity, their thoughts, their faith, their hopes, we cannot know. They seem of another order to us,—another class of beings. The inner and lesser planets, such as the Earth, or our own planet of love, and the one we have left, all have much alike, and so life in them is like; but here we have life of another type, and one with which we cannot well communicate."
"Not quite another type," I said. "On earth, as I told you, they have this type, but in a low and soulless state, in the fishes of the ocean. In the earlier ages of the earth it was more developed than now. Men now place these fish in aquaria, and watch their movements. The scene we have just beheld somewhat reminds me of the monsters of Earth's ocean,—of the type of life in their seas. Here it is still more gigantic,—still more marvellous; and it would seem that in these huge frames intelligences are enshrined it may be, for aught we know, of a nobler order. That crystal city was grand and wonderful; design and beauty was there, but of strange kind. It is not for us to judge these singular, vast beings, whom we cannot understand."
"It looks like the fish type exaggerated and developed," said Ezariel.
"But is there not some truth in the old beliefs of mankind on the Earth, which are now exploded—of Titans, and Mermaids, and ocean-beings endowed with life and intelligence? On Earth there are none such, and never were; but it may be that man, by inspiration, or by instinct, or by contact with spirits superior to himself, has gained the thought of such a type of life as this endowed with intelligence. On earth once it was the hugest type of life, and still it is so, for the animals of the sea are greater than on the land."
"What is this light to which we are coming?" said Ezariel. "I see a vast fire raging over the sea."
Then we looked from our windows and saw, far over the heaving waves, a long line of blazing fire, as of huge masses burning.
"Perhaps this world," said Arauniel, "is still unformed. As you saw in the Moon a dead world, worn out, exhausted, where life is destroyed and finished with,—here may be an imperfect world, a huge mass yet developing, which has not thoroughly cooled."
"Perhaps so," I replied, "as upon the Earth it would seem, when the cooling process had gone on for many ages, the sea was first inhabited by living beings, before the land was properly formed."
"One thing has struck me," he said, "ever since I came here,—the much greater heat of this world than we expected. Men, as you say, supposed that this giant planet would be too cold for an abode of life because it is so far from the Sun, and yet now the air is far hotter than it is even in our own sunny world, and even the tropics of Earth are never so hot as this. But the heat here is plainly internal, not solar. It is from Jupiter himself, and not from the Sun."
"There is one origin of the heat plainly," said Ezariel, pointing to the blazing, copperous-looking fires.
"The heat is like the blast of a furnace" I said."It reminds me of Hecla on Earth in a state of eruption; but no Earth-volcano for many thousands of years has ever blazed like this. The air would even now be insupportably hot to any terrestrial animal. Men would call this the heat of boiling water, and still we are miles off. Had we not better turn away from this eruption? The instruments will soon be affected by the heat, and some of our collections destroyed."
Ezariel consented, and we upraised the ether-car a mile or two, the better to contemplate the terrific conflagration. There were rising out of the waters, surrounded by huge piles of scorias and ashes, some hundreds of miles of blazing flames and incandescent matter. Out from the deep rushed vast columns of smoke and steam and ashes, whilst glowing rivers of lava flowed towards the hissing seas, which, in a cloud of mist and steam, from time to time enveloped the volcanoes. Stromboli, Vesuvius, Etna, Hecla, indeed all the volcanoes of either hemisphere on Earth together, in full eruption, would not produce such an effect as this.