04 Volcano Adventure

by Willard Price

  Roger looked anxious, forgetting his own hurt feelings. He had been pretty sore at not being allowed to go down in the bell. He felt that the Japanese regarded him as only a youngster and of no real importance to the expedition.

  ‘How did they happen to bring you along?’ Mr Sanada had said. ‘You can’t be more than fifteen years old.’

  Roger, big for his age, actually had a year to go yet before he would be fifteen, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I guess age doesn’t matter so much as experience.’ ‘Oh, so you’ve had a lot of experience with volcanoes?’ ‘Quite a bit.’ He wouldn’t tell the man that this was only the second volcano he had ever seen in his life.

  ‘I suppose it takes a lot of study to become a volcanologist.’ ‘Yes, it does.’

  Mr Sanada was looking at Hira with new respect. ‘I’m afraid I under-rated you. I thought you were just a kid who had come along for the ride. Now I see you’re a trained scientist - quite remarkable in one so young.’

  Roger turned away to hide a laugh. It was fun bluffing this fellow. But somehow he wasn’t quite happy about it. Truth to tell, he was a little ashamed. Oh well, now that be had made the bluff, he would have to live up to it. He fried to look important, and to make scientific remarks about the crater and its boiling contents.

  But when he saw the bell in great danger he dropped his pretence and was just an anxious boy worrying about his brother.

  After all attempts to get the bell past the ledge had failed, the man at the crane stopped trying. He turned off

  his motor. The Japanese gazed blankly at each other. Mr Sanada turned to Roger.

  ‘You’re a trained volcano man,’ he said. ‘What do you think we should do?’

  Roger felt very small. If there had been a hole as big as a mousehole he would have crawled through it.

  ‘I… don’t… know,’ he admitted.

  ‘What do you do in similar cases?’

  ‘Well,’ stumbled Roger, ‘we … usually send a man down. He could push the bell out a couple of inches -then it would get by the rock.’

  ‘Of course!’ exclaimed Mr Sanada. ‘Why didn’t we think of that? We have plenty of rope here and we can let you right down to the ledge.’

  ‘Me!’ cried Roger.

  ‘Yes - not that any one of us wouldn’t be willing to go. But this is obviously a job for a man who knows volcanoes.’

  Roger gulped. He looked down to the ledge. The stinging smoke and suffocating gases flooded up into his face. He stood up, feeling green and cold. The Japanese were waiting, and Mr Sanada was looking at him curiously.

  ‘Where’s the rope?’ said Roger.

  It was brought and he had it looped about his chest just as he had seen Dr Dan put it on.

  Then he stepped to the edge of the crater. He did not look down into it again - he didn’t dare. He turned his back to it and, while the men held the line taut, he let himself down over the edge.

  Now he was dangling in space like a spider at the end of a thread. Down he went, rather jerkily, past the red wall. The explosions from below terrified him. He thought at that moment that if there was anything he would never want to do it was to be a volcanologist

  The fumes were stifling. If he only had a gas mask! He was being cooked by the rising heat. Luckily there were strong air currents so that occasionally the heat and gas and smoke were carried away from him and then he could take in deep breaths of almost pure air. He made a practice of holding his breath until these moments came.

  His feet struck the ledge. Now he was standing on the rocky shelf. He got down on his hands and knees and crept to the edge. The roof of the bell was caught firmly under the rim.

  Roger looked up. He could see the Japanese peering down. He signalled for the bell to be lowered. There was a moment’s delay, then the bell eased down an inch or two.

  Roger lay flat on the shelf, his head and shoulders over the edge. He could reach the roof of the bell. He signalled for the bell to be raised. Up it came, slowly. Roger, with his hands on the rim of the roof, pushed with all his strength. The bell cleared the ledge with an inch to spare and continued its ascent. As it went by, two grinning feces looked out to the boy on the ledge.

  Roger was hauled up and arrived at the top a moment after the bell had landed. Dr Dan and Hal were released from their gassy prison. They were very happy, though dizzy and faint from the effects of the gas.

  Hal looked proudly at his younger brother. ‘Good work,’ he said, and put his arm about the boy’s shoulders. Mr Sanada burst in with:

  ‘How fortunate we had a good man to send down after you! Remarkable - so young, and yet he’s made such a study of volcanology, visited so many craters - he was telling us about it.’

  Dr Dan looked at Roger and chuckled. Roger blushed to the roots of his hair. What would the doctor think of him? He waited for Dr Dan to tell Sanada just how much he really knew about craters.

  He glanced up. But there was no sarcasm on the doctor’s face, only a friendly smile, and all he told Mr Sanada was:

  ‘Roger is a good volcano man.’

  Chapter 8

  The boiling lakes

  The good ship Lively Lady sailed west.

  Behind loomed a volcano sending up a mile-high column of rose-and-blue smoke. It was Mihara, into which Dr Dan and Hal had descended in the diving bell.

  Ahead lay more volcanoes. Hal and Roger were not anxious to get to them too soon.

  Their adventures on and in Mihara had tired them and they were glad to lie on the deck in the sun. They felt at home. How good it was to be in the arms of the Lively Lady once more.

  It seemed a long time since they had set out from San Francisco in this gallant little sixty-foot, Marconi-rigged sailing schooner to capture creatures of the deep sea for their animal-collector father.

  They had learned much about the Pacific and what goes on beneath its waves. They had found Captain Ike Flint a fine captain and a good friend. Now the ship had been chartered by the American Museum of Natural History for its study of Pacific volcanoes. But Captain Ike remained as master while Hal, Roger and their Polynesian friend, Omo, had been kept along with the ship. Dr Dan Adams believed that though they knew nothing

  about volcanoes they were strong in body and brain and would be quick to learn.

  Hal, as he stretched out wearily in the soft sunlight, hoped the doctor had not been disappointed.

  He would have been encouraged if he could have heard the conversation up forward between Dr Dan and Captain Ike.

  ‘They’re tough,’ the doctor was saying. ‘Hal insisted on going down in the bell with me. When we got stuck, the kid came down at the end of a rope and pushed us off.’

  Leather-faced little old Captain Ike chewed the stem of his pipe. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘After the things I’ve seen them do, diving for shark and octopus and such, I wouldn’t expect them to be scared by a bit o’ smoke and gas.’

  Dr Dan smiled. ‘Captain, have you ever looked down into a crater?’

  ‘Can’t rightly say I have.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you it’s more than a bit of smoke and gas. The thundering racket, the heat, the earthquakes, the fountains of fire, the explosions, the flying rocks, the fumes - well, it’s hell let loose. And to go down into a crater - it can be pretty terrifying. I once had an experience …’

  Captain Ike waited for him to continue, but the doctor’s face had become as still as marble and the eyes were fixed and staring as if made of glass.

  ‘You were saying …’ the captain prompted. But there was not the slightest movement in the scientist’s face or body. For a full minute he remained so. Then his features melted, his eyes moved, and life seemed to flow through him once more.

  ‘Let’s see,’ he said, ‘where were we? Oh, I was telling you about the boys …’

  But Captain Ike was thinking to himself: ‘This poor fellow remembers something that he might better forget.’ Kobo, the Japane
se student in search of English, sat beside Hal and Roger and kept them talking in that language. He was learning fast.

  Handsome, brown Omo in his perch in the crow’s-nest listened to the deck talk as he scanned the shore of Japan, looking for the passage that would take them to their next Japanese volcano.

  ‘Bungo!’ he cried at last. Three points to starboard.’ The little ship swung to the right to brave the tide rips and whirlpools of the Bungo Channel.

  Then Japan’s inland sea, probably the most beautiful sea in the world, with its three thousand fantastic islands and its surrounding mountains crowned with old castles and temples, opened up before them.

  The ship rounded to port, and ahead lay one of the strangest sights of the world - a whole mountainside bristling with geysers of steam. Among the geysers were houses, for this was the city of Beppu. Beyond rose a column of smoke from Aso volcano.

  ‘I suppose this is the only city on earth,’ Dr Dan told the boys, ‘where hot water doesn’t cost a penny. Poke a hole in the earth anywhere and up comes hot water or steam or both. Every house gets its hot water from underground. The water never stops coming up - taps can be left running all the time, it doesn’t matter. No wood or coal is needed in the kitchen stoves. Meals are cooked by steam from below. Factories run by steam. Powerhouses use steam to make electricity to light the city. Beppu is sitting on a red-hot boiler. Some day the boiler may burst, but until it does the people cheerfully use its power to run their city.’

  ‘Judging from those geysers,’ said Hal, ‘there’s more power than they can use.’

  ‘Yes, most of the steam just shoots up into the air and goes to waste. Most of the hot water runs down into the bay. There’s enough power here to run all of Japan, if it could be harnessed.’

  The ship anchored in the bay close to the beach. Roger rubbed bis eyes.

  These people must be headhunters!’

  His brother laughed. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Look at all those heads lying on the beach.’

  Sure enough, a row of human heads lay on the sand. They were all Japanese. Some were the heads of men, some of women. There were children’s heads, too. In some cases the eyes were closed; in others, they were open, as if the heads were still alive. Roger’s eyes nearly popped out when he saw some of the heads move and begin to talk to each other.

  ‘Come ashore,’ said Dr Dan. ‘When we get close to them you’ll see what it’s all about.’

  They stepped out on to the dock and down on to the beach. Now Roger could see that the heads had bodies attached to them, but the bodies were buried in sand. Steam rose from the sand.

  ‘Beppu is famous for its sand bathing,’ said Dr Dan.

  ‘How would you like to try it?’

  It seemed a curious way to take a bath, but the boys were willing to try anything. In the nearby bathhouse they paid a small fee, removed their clothes, put on trunks, then came out on to the beach.

  Roger was the first to be buried. An old woman with a shovel dug a grave for him in the steaming sand, then told him to lie in it. He lay down, but immediately jumped out with a howl of pain for the wet sand was almost boiling hot.

  All the Japanese heads laughed at him and chattered to each other. He could imagine what they were saying, ‘These foreigners - they can’t stand much.’

  The old woman cried shame upon him. She took him by the arm and pulled and pushed him down into the steaming grave and before he could leap out again she began to shovel sand over him. When a neat burial mound had been raised, and nothing remained visible but his red-hot face, she knocked the breath out of him by giving the mound a final whack with the flat of her shovel.

  Roger was quite sure he could not stand the sizzling heat for more than five minutes. But by the time the others were buried his pain had merged into blissful comfort, he felt his muscles and nerves untying their knots and time became of no importance. For an hour they all lay stewing happily and were sorry at the end of that time to see the old woman coming with her shovel to dig them out.

  ‘And now to see the boiling lakes,’ said Dr Dan. ‘Beppu has a dozen of them. The Japanese call them

  jigoku, which means hell. And when you see them you’ll think the name fits.’

  The first was Blood Hell and it was something to remember. A small lake of blood-red water boiled and rolled, let out great gusts of steam, and threw up jets of red liquid to a great height. ‘Iron sulphide,’ explained Dr Dan. ‘Sometimes it spouts three hundred feet high. And, believe it or not, this bit of a lake is five hundred feet deep.’ He busied himself with his instruments and notes.

  Then came Thunder Hell. This was a noisy one. It growled, grumbled, hissed and screamed. Sometimes in the past it had overflowed to bury people and houses under a scalding flood. To prevent it from doing this again, the Japanese had brought in two gods to watch it. On one side of it stood a statue of the Fire God, and on the other, the Wind God.

  White Pond Hell was a vivid blue pool six hundred feet deep, continually bubbling with what Dr Dan said was natrium chloride.

  A statue of a great dragon stood guard over Gold Dragon Hell. As if this were not enough to keep the waters under control, statues of Buddhist saints had been placed around the pool. The caretaker of the pool took the boys into his house where they saw his wife cooking by steam straight out of the earth.

  The snouts of alligators and crocodiles poked up out of Devil’s Hell. The great reptiles were kept in this hot water to speed their growth. When they reached full size they would be shot and their skins used to make shoes and jackets.

  In Sea Hell picnickers had let down a basket of eggs to boil them in the bubbling water.

  Most curious of all was a boiling waterfall. Bathers stood under it with pained expressions on their faces and let the scalding water beat upon their shoulders and backs. This was believed to be a cure for rheumatism.

  Not only humans liked the hot water, but animals as well. The boys were constantly tripping over snakes and toads that lived along the edges of the lakes, and monkeys swarmed on nearby Monkey Mountain. These monkeys were smart. They would come down to the bay, dive in, and catch fish in their hands. One had been taught to operate a small train that ran around a circular track. Dr Dan and the boys took a ride behind the monkey motorman.

  It was nearly dark. ‘How about spending the night ashore?’ Dr Dan proposed. ‘Captain Ike and Omo will take care of the ship. Here’s an inn that looks attractive. Kobo, what does it say on that sign?’

  The sign was in Japanese. ‘It says the name of this place is The-Inn-by-the-Well-by-the-Cedar-Tree.’

  Here they spent the night. The rooms were clean, the food good, and the chief attraction was the great tiled bath full of crystal-clear hot water welling up out of the earth and continually running over.

  Chapter 9

  The avalanche

  The next day they went to the crater of Aso - a long distance, so the trip had to be made by train. Then a stiff clamber up through lava boulders. At last they stood looking down into a boiling pot half a mile wide.

  Hundreds of feet down were thunderous tumbling pools of sulphurous mud sending up geysers of fire. They were like red clutching fingers that barely reached those who stood peering over the edge. Some of the rising clouds were of snow-white steam, others were pitch-black smoke.

  The gases were stifling. Everyone got out his handkerchief and tied it across his nose to keep out the stench of brimstone. An icy wind pulled and pushed as if determined to throw them in. Their backs ached with cold while the cooking heat struck them in the face. The doctor made his usual observations and records and the boys helped him whenever they could.

  They were glad to get down from the biting cold of this mile-high mountain to a tea house on the slope, where they drank hot tea and ate curious little cakes filled with sweet bean paste.

  Again the Lively Lady put to sea, and again she put in to a Japanese port, this time to visit the monster volcano called Sakura-
jima.

  ‘Sakura means cherry,’ said Dr Dan, ‘and jima means island. Cherry is all right - it describes the colour of the red-hot lava - but island is all wrong. It used to be an island until 1914 when a terrific eruption threw up so much lava that the sea was filled between the volcano and the mainland and the island was turned into a peninsula. The city on the mainland was shaken to bits and one village near the volcano was buried under 150 feet of lava. Ninety-five thousand people lost their homes.’

  ‘Is that the only time she erupted?’ Hal asked.

  ‘By no means. Old Cherry has blown up twenty-seven times in the past five centuries.’

  ‘Well, I hope she’s all done now.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. They say she’s getting ready to stage a new act. Let’s go up and see for ourselves.’

  The way led at first through orange groves and vegetable gardens. Everything was growing lushly in the soil kept warm by the fires underneath. Farther up the trees and fields disappeared and there was nothing but savage black rocks. Every once in a while the shaking of the mountain would dislodge a rock and it would come tumbling down, a great danger to climbers.

  At last they reached the dropping-off place and looked down into their fourth crater. Old Cherry deserved her name - the waves and fountains of liquid lava were cherry-red. They looked very angry and it was easy to believe that they were planning mischief.

  The doctor went to work with his instruments, and by now Hal and Roger were able to be of real help to him.

  ‘Let’s go around the crater,’ suggested Dr Dan. ‘There won’t be time for us all to make the complete circuit. Suppose we split up - two will go one way and two the other and we’ll meet at the far side. Roger will go with me.’

  The doctor and Roger struck off while Hal and Kobo went in the opposite direction. There was no path along the edge of the crater and the way was very rough. The lava here had been exploded by gases into glassy fragments as sharp as needles and pins, and when Hal stumbled and fell he came up with his hands full of slivers.