Shell crater

“ Slave and workers – obeying a superior command.
Overhead, more than two hundred miles of solid rock-strata lay like a thick shell – an exuviate – as tho this alien bit of spake were animate, and the moon-matter a shell over its pulsating being. The crater-shaft itself, like a huge gaping aesophagus, was drawing into the Hemisphere a current of rarefied air, and like corpuscles the disc-shadows flickered upon their endless journeys. Yet herein lay the stronghold, the natural habitat, of the Wrongness of Space. ”

“ The trenches in the first firing line were little better than scattered drains—behind was the crater barrier—underfoot were the mud and the water, and above the unceasing whine of the shells. The air was heavy with a damp mist, even by day, and by night all objects were magnified and uncertain till a shell-hole appeared a crater, an advance of fifty yards like one of 500 yards, and an hour grew into years! The battle was fought in "No Man's Land"—a débris of shattered trees, sudden pool-holes, and upraised earth, "where no man comes, nor hath come since the making of the world." ”

“ A hulking “305,” which swooped down and obliterated a spiny pinnacle of the ridge a few hundred yards farther along, also swept much of the zest out of the sharpening panorama, and signalled, “Time to go!” A large-calibre high-explosive shell is a far more fearsome thing when [Pg 211] rending a crater in the rock of the Carso than when tossing the soft mud of France. ”

“ Through this thick darkness flashes of lightning gleamed in a hundred lines, and many natives were instantly struck down to the earth by stones falling from the sky. Then a deluge of hot water and flowing mud rose over the rim of the old crater, and poured down the mountain-sides, sweeping away trees and beasts and human bodies in its seething mass. At the same moment, stones and ashes and sand were projected to an enormous height into the air, and, as they fell, destroyed nearly every thing within a radius of more than twenty miles. ”

“ A smell of sulphur was in the air, the heat was torturing, the ground burnt one’s feet, and the climb in the loose sand was trying. But farther up the sea-breeze cooled the air deliciously, and stone blocks afforded a foothold. Soon I was on top, and the sight I saw seemed one that only the fancy of a morbid, melancholy genius could have invented, an ugly [274] fever dream turned real, and no description could do it justice.
In front of me the ground fell down steeply, and the torn sides of the crater formed a funnel-shaped cavity, a dark, yawning depth. ”

“ The brink was treacherously soft, with its coating of shifty ash on the ledge of lava overhanging the gulf; so, cautiously braced and bending forward less than a yard from the edge, I got a glimpse of the depths. The muffled muttering was the more impressive because impossible to measure or define. This clamor of unseen forces taps one’s nerves. I could mark the discolored sides of the crater dropping in precipitous incline, seamy, cracked, steaming at points with jets as from escape-valves. ”

“ Dense clouds of vapour filled the abyss below, from which at a considerable depth and in various directions issued the most appalling sounds, as though hundreds of steam engines were sobbing at work far beneath us, or like the broken sound of water falling in spray from a great height upon the rocks. Some dead trees standing on the brink of the abyss had a blackened appearance as though they had been charred, which we ascribed to the sulphureous vapours, that must be evolved with most destructive power when the crater is in full activity. ”

“ The cracks, which I crossed twice, were so brittle as to break like the upper ice of a twice frozen pond beneath my feet, and the stench of the exhaling gases was nauseating beyond all the sulphuretted hydrogen I have ever known. The sensation was painfully suffocating from the moment I entered the crater. I broke off as many bits of the bright golden crystals from the crust as my confusion and failing strength would allow, and then remounted, feeling my way up through the smoke to the summit. ”

“ The mass which supported us had doubtless been shaken a thousand times, and was liable every hour to be shaken again; but being in the short curvature of the crater, like the key-stone of an arch, it could not easily be thrown from its position by any agitation that would naturally occur while this great safety-valve is kept open, or the numerous fissures round it, reaching to the very bowels of the mountain, convey harmlessly from unknown depths, gases and volumes of steam, generated where water comes in contact with intense volcanic heat. ”

“ The difference is not that craters are formed less often, but that the great geological activity of Earth—erosion, volcanism, mountain building, continental drift, etc.—erases craters as fast as they are formed. On the average, a 10-kilometer-wide crater is formed on Earth about once every million years, but all those older than a few million years have been eroded away, filled in, or crushed beyond recognition by crustal motion. ”

“ There is no comfort at the top when reached. It is frigidly cold. None of the expected heat comes up from the interior. An elemental war rages around, and it is no place for human beings. There is a kind of fearful exaltation. A slope of black sand descends some fifty feet to an inner edge, broken by rocks of porphyry and flint, which the imagination tortures into fantastic shapes. Hence a sheer precipice drops two thousand feet, a vast ellipse in plan. There was snow in the bottom of the crater. ”

“ How slowly we moved! My mouth was parched and dry, and I was in a fever of excitement. The smoke from the crater was close above me in great wreaths. At last we reached the top. I leapt out, and without waiting for a guide, made my way past, and rushed up the active cone, slipping in the shifting, loose, gritty soil. When I reached the top a gale was blowing, and the scenery below, with the Bay and Naples and Sorrento, lay before me, the most magnificent panorama in the world. ”

“ The travelers frequently broke through as far as their breasts, with an alarmingly rapid diminution of their strength. Reaching the summit of the ridge, they found the precipitous walls of a gigantic crater yawning beneath them, with the loftiest elevations in the shape of three pinnacles rising above the ice on its southern brim. ”

“ But there is still a further ascent to make on foot to reach the actual mouth of the crater and look down into the yawning hell that night and day, for ever and ever, is belching forth flame and smoke, and hurling large stones and masses of rock into the air with a report that can only be compared to the discharge of artillery.
As we alight from the funicular, we find ourselves in an awful atmosphere. We are nearly choked with the noxious fumes of the volcano, and our eyes are stung and blinded with the sulphurous smoke that envelops us. ”

“ Rocky pinnacles and needles shoot up into the sunlight out of the black depths. Down sinks the line of light, mile after mile, and continually new precipices and cliffs are brought into view, until at last the vast floor is attained and begins to be illuminated. In the meanwhile the sun’s rays, darting across the gulf, have touched the summits of the central peaks, twenty or thirty miles from the crater’s inmost edge, and they immediately kindle and blaze like huge stars amid the darkness. ”

“ Pierre was in this zone; second, a zone of singeing, blistering flame, which also was fatal to all life, killing all men and animals, burning the leaves on the trees, and scorching, but not utterly destroying, the trees themselves; third, a large outer, nondestructive zone of ashes, wherein some vegetation was injured.
“The focus of annihilation was the new crater midway between the sea and the peak of Mount Pelee where now exists a new area of active volcanism, with hundreds of fumaroles or miniature volcanoes. The new crater is now vomiting black, hot mud, which is falling into the sea. ”

“ At last daylight came, and I saw that although in the midst of a wide sandy plain, there were no dunes; scattered bushes grew here and there, and dotted about in the distance were a number of bare granite rocks. The crater I had climbed from went sheer down at my feet so abruptly indeed, and with so little to denote its presence, that within a few yards of its brink nothing whatever could be seen of it. ”

“ Below the perpendicular walls is a rapid slope, composed of fine ashes or sand, descending to the floor of the crater, which is, for the most part, nearly flat. It is much rent by fissures, which during the night are seen to glow with a ruddy glare, emanating from the hot materials beneath, and giving to the floor the appearance of being overspread with a fiery tissue, like a spider's web. From the bottom there usually rise one or two small craters of eruption, whence continually issue sulphurous fumes, and which, at pretty regular intervals, discharge showers of stones heated to whiteness. ”

“ The volcano is on its south-west side, in so fortunate a situation for the inhabitants, that they have little to fear from eruptions; for the crater is about one fifth of the height of the island below its summit, and is surrounded on every side but that nearest the sea, by large cliffs, which seem to overhang it on purpose to check the eruption when it takes any other direction; for the stones and ashes which it casts forth, rebounding from the rocks above, are either again swallowed up, or thrown down the south-west side into the ocean. ”

“ The black slaggy bottom of the huge crater, which generally reposed in tranquil peace like a calm sea, just broken here and there by fiery fissures, was now transformed into one bubbling mass of flame and vapour, all alive with a horrible livid glare, that lit up its seething and blazing billows with an awful distinctness. Loud, snorting puffs of steam burst thick and fast from the gaping fissures, and from many of the chinks great jets of molten material were willing out in huge floods, and rising gradually towards the Floor of Pélé, the third and last ledge immediately below me. ”

“ These flow into the central lake, which discharges into the surrounding ocean by a rift or chasm in the mountain side. Moreover, there are frequent showers, and heavy dews by night, to refresh the surface of the ground. Thunderstorms occur on the tops of the mountain and in the open sea; but very seldom within the enchanted girdle of the crater. The air is remarkably pure, sweet, and exhilarating, owing doubtless to the high percentage of oxygen it contains, and the absence of foreign matter, such as microbes, dust, and obnoxious fumes. ”

“ Without stopping to alight on the outer slopes of the great ring-shaped range of peaks which composed Aristarchus, we sailed over their rim and looked down into the interior. Here the splendor of the crystals was greater than on the outer slopes, and the broad floor of the crater, thousands of feet beneath us, shone and sparkled with overwhelming radiance, as if it were an immense bin of diamonds, while a peak in the centre flamed like a stupendous tiara incrusted with selected gems. ”

“ In this manner we may suppose that ashes, scoriæ, and blocks of rock torn from the sides of the crater-throat, and hurled into the air, are piled around the vent, and accumulate into hills or mountains of conical form. After the explosion has exhausted itself, the molten lava quietly wells up and fills the crater, as in the cases of those of Auvergne and Syria, and other places. We may, therefore, adopt the general principle that in volcanic eruptions where water in large quantities is present, we shall have crater-cones built up of ashes, scoriæ, and pumice ”

“ Bodies, and bits of bodies, and clots of blood, and green metallic-looking slime, made by explosive gases, were floating on the surface of that water below the crater banks when I first passed that way, and so it was always. Our men lived there and died there within a few yards of the enemy, crouched below the sand-bags and burrowed in the sides of the crater. Lice crawled over them in legions. Human flesh, rotting and stinking, mere pulp, was pasted into the mud-banks. If they dug to get deeper cover their shovels went into the softness of dead bodies who had been their comrades. ”

“ At every few steps there was a general cry for a halt, and we lay down in the warm ashes, quite breathless and discouraged.
In something more than an hour from the hermitage we reached the edge of the old crater. The scene here was very curious. A hollow, perhaps a mile round, composed entirely of scoria (like the cinders under a blacksmith’s window) contained in its centre the sharp new cone of the last eruption. Around in various directions, sat some thirty groups of travellers, with each their six or seven Italian guides, refreshing themselves with a lunch after the fatigue of the ascent. ”

“ Often columns of cinders were blown about them and threatened to choke them, or torrents of lava barred their path. On some such places these streams were hard on top, but the molten stream flowed beneath. Each one had to test it first to escape sinking into the glowing mass. From time to time the crater vomited forth huge red-hot rocks amid burning gases; some of these bodies burst in the air like shells, and the fragments were hurled far off in all directions. The innumerable dangers of this ascent may be readily perceived, as well as the foolhardiness of the attempt. ”

“ There was no need of the oppressive odour, the dull roaring and thundering and hissing, to call up a degree of reverent admiration, even fear, and it required an effort of will to stay and grow used to the tremendous sight. The first sensation on seeing the crater is certainly terror, then curiosity awakens, and one looks and wonders; yet the sight never becomes familiar, and never loses its threatening aspect. Still, the inner crater may be a disappointment. ”