“But they won’t wrap us round.”

“But we shall be stifled.”

“We shall not be stifled at all. The gallery is widening, and if it becomes necessary, we shall abandon the raft, and creep into a crevice.”

“But the water⁠—the rising water?”

“There is no more water, Axel; only a lava paste, which is bearing us up on its surface to the top of the crater.”

The liquid column had indeed disappeared, to give place to dense and still boiling eruptive matter of all kinds. The temperature was becoming unbearable. A thermometer exposed to this atmosphere would have marked 150°. The perspiration streamed from my body. But for the rapidity of our ascent we should have been suffocated.