04 Volcano Adventure

by Willard Price

  ‘Why else would he invent such stories - that I lost consciousness on the edge of Asama crater - that I went wild when an earthquake struck the inn - that I got drunkenness of the deeps when we dived at Falcon? He wants to do me in. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘You’d have been done in several times if it hadn’t been for Hal,’ Captain Ike reminded him. ‘Who was it that thought of using aqualungs to escape the gas? Who was it took us down into the water when we would have died of the heat? Who was it figured a way to get out when the pumice roofed us over? Who was it got my ship out of Tin Can by blowing open the pass?’

  Dr Dan said no more but he was not convinced. ‘Yes,’ he thought to himself, ‘I’m quite aware that Hunt did all those things. And that’s just the trouble. I’m supposed to be the leader of this expedition - but half the time he’s leading it. He’s coming up with the ideas. He’s as smart as he is crooked. He wants to make me look like a fool and build himself up at my expense. Well, he won’t put it over. I’ll fire him and all his gang the moment we set foot on Hawaii.’ But he didn’t.

  He was on the point of acting when they stepped ashore at Hilo. Something held him back. In some strange way, he felt that he had need of Hal.

  The fiery serpents were approaching the city of Hilo and the people were in a panic. It was a difficult and

  dangerous situation. Ideas were needed, and Hal had a way of coming up with ideas. He would not fire Hal just yet.

  There was something of nobility in his decision. He saw it to his own advantage to dismiss Hal - but to the advantage of Hilo to keep him. So he would keep him for the sake of thirty thousand terrified people who needed all the help they could find. Hal lacked technical knowledge of volcanic phenomena, but he had a way of getting people out of tight places.

  So Hal and his friends could stay a little longer, just until this emergency was over. Then they must go.

  Dr Dan was met on the dock by a brisk, intelligent-looking man, Dr Janno, volcanologist in charge of the volcano observatory on the slope of Mauna Loa.

  ‘We were glad to hear you were coming,’ said Dr Janno. ‘Several villages have already been burned out. If something isn’t done within the next two days this beautiful city will be destroyed. We need your advice.’

  Dr Dan introduced Hal and Roger. Captain Ike and Omo had remained on the Lively Lady.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Dr Janno, ‘we won’t waste any time. If you’ll come back to my car I’ll take you up the mountain.’

  Before them as they walked along the dock rose the city of Hilo in all its beauty, with its fine buildings and lovely gardens and palms. Behind it towered the giant that was threatening to stamp it out, the mighty volcano of Mauna Loa. It was so huge that it seemed about to topple over on to the city although the peak of it was really thirty-five miles away.

  Roger was fascinated and a little frightened. Is it true,’ he asked, ‘that Mauna Loa is the biggest volcano on earth?’

  ‘Quite true,’ said Dr Janno. ‘Not only that, but it is probably the largest single mountain of any sort on the globe. If rises 13,700 feet above sea level and goes down 18,000 feet below, so its total height is 31,700 feet. Its volume is about ten thousand cubic miles. Compare that with eighty cubic miles for Mt Shasta. Vesuvius is a child’s toy compared with Mauna Loa.’

  They stepped into the car, drove back through the city and up into the country. There was a continuous booming sound like the firing of heavy cannon. Frequent quakes shook the ground and opened up cracks in the road. Crews of men were working to fill the cracks so that cars could pass. But new cracks were continually opening.

  One split the pavement directly ahead and the car came to a stop just in time. The crack was ten feet wide and all of fifty feet deep.

  Dr Janno was not disturbed. ‘We can drive around through the field,’ he said, and they did so.

  They were not more than half a mile out of Hilo when Dr Janno stopped the car. They got out and looked up at a huge black monster creeping along over the fields towards the city. It was thirty or forty feet high and perhaps an eighth of a mile wide. The front of it was steep like a cliff. But this was a moving cliff. It was a liquid cliff, made of yellow lava, blazing hot, steadily oozing forward towards the city. The sides and top of the lava river were black where the lava had cooled somewhat and hardened. Every once in a while a burst of gas would explode through the black shell and break a hole through which the yellow lava could be seen. Geysers of steam shot up here and there. The whole river smoked. It made a grinding, crunching sound as it inched along.

  ‘At the rate it is moving,’ said Dr Janno, ‘it will reach Hilo in two days.’

  The yellow front of the river touched a group of trees and they went up in flames as if they had been made of paper. Behind the trees was a house. Its family had deserted it and it stood there looking small and terrified in the path of the fiery colossus. A yellow finger reached out and touched the house. It seemed to explode rather than burn and in a few minutes it had completely disappeared in smoke.

  ‘You can see what is going to happen when the lava flow reaches the city,’ Dr Janno said. ‘Well, come along. I have more to show you.’

  They drove on over broken and patched roads, steadily climbing the mountain slope. They stopped at last on the brink of a crater. They looked down into a pit six hundred feet deep to a lake of boiling lava.

  ‘This is Kilauea,’ Dr Janno said. ‘Anywhere else on earth it would be called a great volcano. But here it plays second fiddle to Mauna Loa. See that hotel on the edge of the crater? It’s entirely heated by steam from the volcano.’

  They drove several thousand feet higher, then left the car and walked. They came again to the river of lava. Here, too, it was more than thirty feet high but only about a hundred feet wide. And now they could see where it all came from. It did not issue from the crater of Mauna Loa but from a fissure on the slope. It came out in tremendous spurts and fountains, shooting five hundred feet high, a sight to take the breath away. The sound was like the roar of a great waterfall. The liquid rock fell all about the crack and then flowed down the mountainside. For several hundred yards it kept its yellow colour. Then it darkened as the outside was cooled by the mountain air. A little further down the outside crust was black and stiff. But the river of fire flowed on inside it.

  ‘That is the way our lava tunnels are formed,’ Dr Janno said. ‘If the fountain should suddenly stop all the lava in the tunnel would keep on flowing until it had come out the lower end. Then you would have a hollow tunnel. We have one twenty-seven miles long on this island, and another six miles long. People sometimes make their homes inside these tunnels, and thieves use them as their hide-out.’

  Roger was fascinated by the five-hundred foot geysers of fire.

  They look like devils dancing,’ he said.

  Dr Janno laughed. ‘That’s what the Hawaiians think, but they regard them as goddesses, not devils. Let me tell you a little of the story of this volcano - it’s rather thrilling. The chief goddess in charge is Pele - when the craters erupt the natives say that Pele and her sisters are

  dancing, and they will dance down the mountainside and kill the people unless something is done to please them. Pele is supposed to be fond of pigs and ohelo berries, so these are tossed into the flames as offerings.

  ‘Once, in the year 1790, an army camped near by and failed to make offerings to Pele. There was a frightful eruption and four hundred people were killed.

  ‘When new eruptions came eleven years later the priests tried to satisfy the goddesses by throwing live hogs into the burning stream, but it did no good. Finally, the great King Kamehameha cut off his own hair and gave it as an offering. Pele was apparently satisfied and the lava ceased to flow.

  ‘But a few years later Pele was once more making mischief. The people begged the royal lady Kapiolani to make offerings to the angry goddess. But she had been to school and had no use for the old superstitions. She walked to the edge of Kilauea crater, broke
off a branch of berries from an ohelo tree and, instead of throwing half of them in to Pele as was the custom, she ate them all. The people trembled and waited for her to be struck down by a shaft of fire, but she was not harmed.

  ‘You would have thought that that would kill the superstition for good and all. But it did not. In 18S0 a great lava flow came dangerously close to Hilo and the people begged Princess Ruth to save them. She went to the river of fire, made a prayer to Pele, then tossed in a bottle of brandy and six red silk handkerchiefs. The flow stopped at the very edge of the town.

  ‘Of course that revived the old superstition. When there was another eruption in 1887 the native priests said it could be satisfied only by the sacrifice of a victim of royal blood. The Princess Likelike starved herself to death to appease the anger of Pele. That time it didn’t work - Pele went right on making trouble.

  ‘You would think the Hawaiians would have grown out of such a notion by this time but, believe it or not, many of the natives are throwing pigs and ohelo berries into this river in an attempt to stop it before it reaches their homes. They pray to Pele - then they go to the churches and pray to the Christian God.’

  Dr Dan said, ‘With their homes in danger, they must feel desperate. You can hardly blame them for trying everything.’

  ‘It’s human nature,’ agreed Dr Janno. ‘But if their prayers are going to be answered I’m afraid it is we volcano men who will have to do something about it. It’s our job - but I’ve racked my brain and can’t think of any way to stop that flow before it reaches Hilo.’

  It was a magnificent and terrible sight, the great river, yellow near its source, black lower down, zigzagging around hills and through ravines, down thirty-five miles of mountain slope to within half a mile of the city.

  About a thousand feet below where they stood the river bent sharply to the right to get past a rocky knoll. ‘Down there where it turns right,’ Hal said. ‘What would happen if it could be made to turn left instead?’

  Dr Janno was amused. ‘That is what President Roosevelt used to call an iffy question,’ he said. ‘There’s not much point in thinking about it since no power on earth could turn that river out of its course.’ ‘But H it could be done…’ persisted Hal. ‘Oh. if it could be done, of course our problem would be solved. The flow would follow that ravine to the northeast.’

  ‘Would it strike any village or town?’

  ‘No. There is nothing but wild country down that valley.’

  ‘So it could flow down and into the sea without doing any harm?’

  ‘Yes. But as I said, it can’t be done.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Hal. ‘But I was just wondering - if the river could be dammed at that point so that it would flow the other way…’

  ‘My dear young man,’ said Dr Janno impatiently, ‘how could you possibly dam that stream? It has about the volume of Niagara below the Falls. In fact, the Niagara River would be much easier to dam because it flows out in the open. This one is flowing inside a rock tunnel. How could you get at it to dam it?’

  Dr Dan saw that Janno was irritated. ‘Forget it, Hal,’ he said. ‘We mustn’t waste Dr Janno’s time with impossible schemes. We’ve got to be practical.’

  But Hal was not willing to give up yet. ‘You said no power on earth could stop it»’ he said. ‘I believe you are right.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you see that,’ said Dr Janno.

  ‘Perhaps no power on earth could do it,’ went on Hal, ‘but how about sky power? Couldn’t planes drop bombs? Or am I being too imaginative?’

  ‘I think you are,’ said Dr Janno, and he turned to Dr Dan. ‘I wonder if we could continue our discussion without further interruptions from your young friend?’

  Hal grinned. ‘Sorry, doctor. I know when I’m not wanted,’ and he wandered down the slope to take a closer look at the bend in the river.

  Chapter 17

  Bombs to save lives

  ‘A most persistent young man!’ said Dr Janno.

  But Dr Dan did not answer. He was gazing thoughtfully at the black river. It’s just possible,’ he mused.

  ‘Now, doctor,’ said Janno, ‘you’re not giving any serious thought…’

  ‘Yes, I think it’s worth considering. That crust over the lava flow - how thick do you suppose it is?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, perhaps six feet - perhaps ten.’

  ‘Would a demolition bomb break it up?’

  That’s a question that only a bomb expert could answer. I suppose if they used enough bombs they could smash the roof.’

  ‘Then the broken pieces would fall into the stream. If there were enough of them they would dam it up and make it overflow in the other direction.’

  ‘Pretty theoretical,’ objected Dr Janno. ‘Besides, where would you get the bombers?’

  ‘What’s the matter with the U.S. Army? Isn’t there a bombing squadron stationed at Luke Field?’

  ‘I believe so. But they wouldn’t touch it. Their job is war, not volcanoes. This would be an expensive operation. They wouldn’t feel justified in spending military money on a civilian project.’

  ‘I seem to remember,’ said Dr Dan, ‘that army planes have sometimes been used during national disasters, such as fires and floods. As for expense, it wouldn’t be as costly as the loss of the city of Hilo. What do you say we ask them?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Dr Janno, ‘why you give so much weight to the wild suggestion of a boy who has been reading too much science fiction. He seems to have considerable influence over you.’

  Dr Dan reddened with anger and embarrassment. ‘I don’t care to discuss that. My relations with Hunt are not as pleasant as you suppose. In fact, he’s about to be dismissed. All the same, I feel this notion of his is worth looking into. After all, it won’t do any harm to ask.’

  Dr Janno waved his hands in grudging consent. ‘Very well, we’ll ask. We’ll go down to the observatory and telephone.’

  They called Hal and returned to the car. They drove back to the edge of Kilauea crater and entered the Volcano Observatory. It was a stone building built to resist the falling fires of the volcano. It was full of fascinating machines, the magnetometer, seismograph, pyrometers, gravimeters, spectroscopes, and the walls were covered with charts and diagrams. Dr Janno took up the phone and called Major Hugh C. Gilchrist, commander of the Kilauea Military Camp. He explained Hal’s proposal to the major.

  ‘Please, understand,’ he said, ‘that this is not my suggestion. Personally, I consider it totally impractical. I doubt that any bombing squadron could deliver enough power to turn the flow from its course.’

  The others could not hear the major’s answer. Then Janno spoke again. ‘Oh, you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to imply that the Army can’t do great things with its demolition bombs. But you must realize that you are dealing here with one of the greatest forces of nature.’

  Another pause. Then Janno again: ‘Well, I’m surprised that you take the suggestion seriously. Remember, I do not stand responsible for it. However, if you wish to call Honolulu…’

  He put down the phone. His eyes were wide open with astonishment as he turned to face Dr Dan and the boys. ‘The major thinks it’s worth a try,’ he said. ‘He’s going to radio the Chief of Staff in Honolulu. We’re to wait here for further word.’

  In half an hour the major called back to say that a plane with three officers of the bombing squadron on board was on the way to inspect the lava flow area. The volcanologists were requested to go back to the bend to mark by their presence the exact spot where the bombing should take place.

  They returned at once to the right-angle kink in the tunnel of fire. The flight from Honolulu would take about an hour. While waiting, they carefully inspected the terrain. Dr Janno became more optimistic.

  The plane came in over Hilo and followed the lava stream up the mountain to the point where the men stood. There it circled round and round while the bombing officers studied the situation, made measurements,
and took photographs. Then the plane flew off in the direction of Honolulu. The volcano men returned to the observatory and

  anxiously waited for a report. Hal could hardly bear the suspense. When he closed his eyes in an effort to keep calm, he could only see the fiery claws of the orange-and-black monster that, given two days more, would wipe out the homes of thirty thousand people.

  The answer came at last, but not over the phone. Major Gilchrist arrived in person. He was fairly bursting with news.

  ‘They are going to do it,’ he said. ‘The Army Transport Royal T. Frank is already on the way with twenty six-hundred-pound TNT bombs and twenty three-hundred-pound pointer bombs. The ship will get here early tomorrow morning. The bombing planes will be scheduled to arrive at the same time, ten of them. The Ordnance department will supply several civilian employees to supervise unloading the bombs from the ship, fusing them, and loading them into the planes. Then we’ll take a crack at your river.’

  Dr Janno warned him, ‘That may be all you can do -crack it.’

  ‘We’ll do better than that. You’d be surprised to see what a mess a six-hundred-pounder can make. The bomb men tell me it will dig a hole twelve feet deep in solid rock. It ought to smash up the crust on top of that flow.’

  ‘I’m rather surprised,’ said Dr Janno, ‘that the Army is so much interested.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t we be interested? Hilo is the second largest city in the Hawaiian Islands. Naturally we want to save it if we can. And it isn’t only the city. Hilo Harbour is second only to Pearl Harbour and very important from the standpoint of defence. If this flow continues it will not only destroy the city but fill the harbour. So you see we have good military reasons, as well as humanitarian reasons, for doing what we can to stop it.’

  Chapter 18