when — hark! — a sullen, slow rolling sounded in his ear! He halted — and turned back to gaze. The fire had overflowed its course: it had opened itself a channel amidst the furrows of the mountain. The stream pursued him fast — fast; and the hot breath of the chasing and preternatural foe came closer and closer upon his cheek! He turned aside: he climbed desperately with hands and feet upon a crag that, to the right, broke the scathed and blasted level of the soil. The stream rolled beside and beneath him, and then, taking a sudden wind round the spot on which he stood, interposed its liquid fire — a broad and impassable barrier between his resting-place and escape. There he stood, cut off from descent, and with no alternative but to retrace his steps towards the crater, and thence seek, without guide or clue, some other pathway.
For a moment his courage left him: he cried in despair, and in that overstrained pitch of voice which is never heard afar off, to the guide — to Mervale, to return to aid him.
No answer came; and the Englishman, thus abandoned solely to his own resources, felt his spirit and energy rise against the danger. He turned back, and ventured as far towards the crater as the noxious exhalation would permit; then, gazing below, carefully and deliberately he chalked out for himself a path, by which he trusted to shun the direction the fire-stream had taken; and trod firmly and quickly over the crumbling and heated strata.
