04 Volcano Adventure (2 page)

‘I think there is something we can do,’ he said. ‘Somewhere there’s a trail leading to that crater. If we can find the trail we’re all right. Now, I have a plan. We’ll make a human wheel. You, Toguri-san, stay here. We five will go out as far as we can still hear your shout. That won’t be very far because this fog deadens sound - perhaps about five hundred yards. We’ll leave Machida there, then go five hundred yards farther, then leave Kobo, and go on out, posting Roger, and then Hal, and I’ll be at the end. That will make a line nearly a mile and a half long. Then, while Toguri-san stays here at the rock, the rest of the wheel will begin revolving clockwise. If that trail is within a mile and a half of this rock in any direction, we’ll find it.’

‘Isn’t someone likely to get lost?’ asked Hal.

‘Not if each man keeps within call of the next man at all times. Let’s start. Keep shouting, Toguri-san.’

While Toguri settled back against the rock, well satisfied with his part of the plan, the five struck out into the fog.

‘Yoi!’ shouted Toguri, in Japanese fashion. They went on. ‘Yoi… yoi… yoi…’ The shout was becoming faint now as they stopped and left Machida, then went on.

So the men were posted, calling back and forth to each other, until the line ended with the doctor.

‘March!’ he shouted. The command was passed down the line, and the big wheel began to move. It had not made more than a quarter turn when the doctor shouted,

‘Here it is. The trail. Join me here.’

The word was passed down the line and within twenty minutes all stood together on the trail. But which way to the crater?

They listened to the volcano’s roar. Because of the fog, it seemed to come from all around them, and from beneath, and from above.

‘I think it may be this way,’ said the volcano man, and struck off along the trail, the others following.

Kobo brought up the rear. Hal, glancing back, saw that the young student’s face was very sad and his eyes were cast down; He dragged his feet. You would have thought he was going to his own funeral. What was the matter with Kobo?

Hal dropped back beside him and tried to start a conversation. But he knew no Japanese and Kobo was too shy to attempt to use the little English he had learned. He gave Hal a sad smile and they trudged on in silence.

If Kobo seemed unhappy, Dr Dan seemed a little too happy. Hal had come to think of him as Dr Dan. ‘Just call me Dan,’ Dr Adams had told him. ‘After all, I’m only about ten years older than you, and you’re a bigger man than I am.’

It was true that Hal, though only in his late teens, was a mite taller than the doctor, broader of shoulder and more powerful of body. But the doctor was wiry and strong, and very clever, Hal thought. Hal felt he owed the scientist some respect and could not quite bring himself to address him as Dan, but compromised on Dr Dan.

A shower of stones fell but Dr Dan did not seem to notice them. With his head up he marched on so fast that the others had difficulty in keeping up with him. The roar of the volcano grew louder. The sun had risen but was unable to get through the fog. The fog was more dense than ever because evil gases and smoke had joined it. Toguri was choking and coughing.

But in spite of the fumes and the falling stones and the quaking of the ground and the increasing thunder of the monster, Dr Dan strode along boldly, almost too boldly - as if he were afraid to show fear. And again he broke into the wild song of the night. It sounded as weird by daylight as it had in the darkness.

Suddenly he came to an abrupt halt.

‘We have arrived V he cried.

The others came up beside him. A few feet ahead the ground dropped away to nothing. Great billows of smoke rose to mingle with the flying fog.

Their eyes could make out nothing but their ears told them that they were standing at the edge of the crater.

A noise like the roar of ten thousand angry lions came up from the pit.

Beneath that noise there was another like the rumble of freight trains over a bridge. Then there was a higher note, the sound of escaping steam, like the hiss of a great serpent. And there were sudden explosions as if charges of dynamite were being set off.

The din became so terrific that when Dr Dan spoke again no one could hear him.

Hal remembered what he had read in Terry’s Guide: ‘Mt Asama is the largest, angriest, and most treacherous volcano in Japan. The dangers at the summit are manifold and should not be regarded lightly.’

It was terrifying - and yet pleasant, because the heat rising from the fires beneath felt very good after a night in the chill fog. Each one of the visitors revolved like a chicken on a spit in order to warm himself all over.

From the bag that Hal carried, Dr Dan produced various instruments, a thermometer, a pyroscope, a small spectroscope. He began to take readings and jot down the results in his notebook. He captured some of the rising gas in a test tube and put it away for later study.

He spoke again, but although the boys could see his lips move they could not hear a word. Dr Dan signalled to the boys to follow him and set off along the edge of the crater.

Hal, looking back, saw a strange sight. The three Japanese had lined up in a row and were bowing deeply to the smoking crater.

Hal had read about this - the way the Japanese worship their volcanoes. Their religion, Shinto, makes every volcano a shrine or holy place. The god of the volcano must be treated with deep respect or he will become angry and destroy the villages in the country below.

The god is a terrible god and nothing pleases him so much as human sacrifice. In the old days human victims were thrown into his hungry mouth. Anyone selected to be given to the god was supposed to regard it as an

honour.

Nowadays no one is thrown to the god, but many persons still give themselves to him of their own free will. In this way they think they are performing a holy act, and at the same time they are escaping their own troubles. The man who has lost his job may jump into a volcano. The woman whose children misbehave may end her life in the crater. The young lovers whose parents will not let them marry may leap together into the flames. The student who has failed in his examination may choose to

die here.

In Europe and America such an escape from duty would be considered cowardly. The Japanese do not think of it in that way and every year hundreds of disappointed people go to the arms of the fire god in any of the fifty-eight active volcanoes of Japan.

Hal looked back again. Toguri and Machida were wandering off along the edge of the pit. But Kobo still stood where he had been, gazing into the crater. Then he sat down on a rock and buried his head in his hand.

Hal wanted to go back to him. But what could he do? Perhaps there was nothing wrong. If there was, Kobo’s Japanese friends could look after him. Dr Dan was already fifty feet ahead and signalling impatiently for Hal to come along. Hal hurried to catch up.

It was an exciting walk along the crater’s edge. One side of your body was chilled by the fog, the other side baked by the fire-breathing monster. The ground was very hot underfoot. Hal found himself walking on the edges of his shoes to avoid the heat.

Here and there steam spurted up between the rocks. If you didn’t watch where you were stepping and one of these steam jets shot up inside your trousers it was like being boiled alive.

The falling stones had been cold far down the mountainside. Here they were hot, and if one fell on your shoulder and stayed there for a moment it burned the cloth. Every boy likes to throw stones down a precipice. When Roger picked up a pebble to throw into the volcano he dropped it with a howl and sucked a burned hand.

The doctor was making a topographical survey of the crater’s edge. Every hump and hollow, every fissure and steam jet, was carefully examined. Figures and facts went down in the notebook.

The noise was ear-splitting. Compared with that uproar, a steel mill would be as quiet as a cemetery. The fire god was gritting and grinding his teeth, then spitting them out in sky-rockets that flamed up through the gloom to great height, changed as they fell from white-hot to red-hot, and slapped down on the rocks. There they lay, pasty plops of liquid rock slowly congealing into a sort of dough, still glaring red, and sending out a terrific heat.

The doctor rushed over to one and took a reading with his electric pyrometer. He showed the reading to the boys, 1,100 degrees Centigrade.

Dr Dan shook his head gravely and pointed up. They understood his warning. These falling puddings were dangerous. They must keep watch above and not get struck by one of them. It was easy to imagine what would happen. One touch of this blazing lava, eleven times as hot as boiling, would set your clothes afire and you would go up in flame like a Roman candle.

But it was hard to watch both the sky and the ground at the same time. Roger got cross-eyed trying to do it. He wished he were a bird which can look in one direction with one eye and in the opposite direction with the other.

Suddenly the fog blew away and the sun lit up the dreary waste of grey ash and black lava and made a rainbow in the rising steam. The last ribbons of fog went up like writhing ghosts.

The volcano men stopped to look at the view. Thousands of feet below lay Japanese villages under thatched roofs, rice paddies like squares on a checkerboard, Shinto temples and pagodas on small hilltops, sparkling streams. Beyond the valleys rose ranges of mountains, blue in the distance. Far to the south was the perfect cone of Fuji. Away to the west gleamed the Japan Sea.

Splat! A blazing pudding of lava fell within ten feet of them. This was no time to be looking at the view and they went on warily, watching the sky and the ragged ground underfoot.

The gases made the eyes run with tears and irritated the nose and throat. Sometimes the fumes were suffocating and you just had to stop breathing for a moment and wait for the changeable wind to bring a gust of fresh air.

Then the breeze carried the gases away and pushed the column of smoke and fire to one side so that they could see down into the crater for the first time. The sight was terrible - and Hal, happening to glance at Dr Dan, saw that his face had changed.

He was no longer the cool scientist. His jaw was tight, his eyes were staring, as he looked into that awful pit. A terrible fear seemed to be stamped on his face, but still it was not quite like fear. It was a blank expression, a frozen look.

Hal wondered if the man had lost his senses. He was afraid he might step off into space, and put a hand on his arm. He found the body as rigid as a marble statue.

The doctor did not look at him, did not seem to know that he existed. He did not move a muscle.

Hal tried to shake him, but he seemed to have turned into stone. The cheekbones stood out, the neck muscles were tight, the hands were clenched.

So he stood for two long minutes.

Then a little colour crept back into the pale cheeks, the arm that Hal was holding relaxed, and the doctor’s eyes moved. He glanced at the hand that gripped his arm and then at Hal and smiled doubtfully, as if wondering why Hal was holding on to him. Hal released his. hold. The doctor pointed to a lava fountain at the bottom of the pit and once more he was the calm and interested man of science. He evidently had no memory whatever of those two terrible minutes.

Asama means Without Bottom, and for centuries the Japanese believed that the volcano had no bottom. But during recent years the bottom has been steadily rising and could now be plainly seen about six hundred feet down.

There, fountains of white-hot lava shot up into the air. Some rose as high as the crater’s edge, then fell back. Others kept on climbing thousands of feet into the sky and fell on the mountaintop, with great danger to the volcanologists.

Below the fountains was a boiling white lake of liquid stone. It churned and rolled like the rapids of a great river. Pockets of gas exploded and burst into flame. Huge rocks were hurled up against the sides of the crater and fell back only to be hurled up again. Small stones by the thousand leaped up half a mile into the sky as if shot from a gun. Everywhere steam spurted out of cracks like smoke from the nostrils of a dragon. The din was terrific. The boys put their hands over their ears.

But the doctor did not seem to mind. He focused his pyrometer on the crater floor. Its temperature was 2,500 degrees Centigrade. He made notes. Then he pointed to a patch of yellow and orange on the inside slope of the crater about fifty feet down. The noise slackened for a moment and he was able to say,

‘I’m going down to take a look at that.’

He unslung the coil of line that he carried on his shoulder. Although small, light rope, it was nylon and very strong. He looped one end of the rope around him under his arms and gave the rest of the coil to the boys.

‘Just let me down easily,’ he said.

He stepped over the edge and down the steep slope, the hot ashes sliding under his feet. The boys paid out the line. When he slipped they braced themselves and checked his fall.

He reached the colourful deposit of minerals and studied it with his spectroscope. The boys held the line taut. Hal couldn’t help thinking, what would happen if a blob of sizzling lava should fall on the line and burn it in two?

The doctor looked up and signalled that he was ready to come back. He scrambled up through the sliding ashes while the boys hauled in on the line.

When he stood beside them again they were breathless from exertion and excitement, but he seemed quite unaffected by his descent into a blazing volcano.

It was about a mile around the crater’s edge and finally they came near the spot from which they had started. They looked for the three Japanese but the smoke from the volcano now drifting around them cut down visibility.

Suddenly, through the smoke two figures came running after them. They recognized Toguri and Machida. Both were greatly excited.

‘You come,’ Toguri called. ‘You come - quick - see.’ They turned and ran back into the smoke, Dr Dan and the boys following them. They stopped beside something blue that lay in a heap on the ground.