All that day the enraged monster had been spouting mud and
lava down upon the white _tuan_ who had remained in the bungalow,
drinking heavily and bawling out maledictions upon his enemy. At
length, in spite of Wadakimba's efforts to dissuade him, he had set
out to climb to the crater, vowing to show the flame-devil who was
master. He had compelled the terrified Wadakimba to go with him a
part of the way. The white _tuan_--was he really a god, as he
declared himself to be?--had gone alone up the tortuous, fissured
slopes, at times lost to sight in yellowish clouds of gas and steam,
while his screams and threats of vengeance came back to Wadakimba's
ears. Overhead, Lakalatcha continued to rumble and quiver and clear
his throat with great showers of mud and stones.
Farquharson must have indeed parted with his reason to have attempted
that grotesque sally. Listening to Wadakimba's tale, I pictured the
crazed man, scorched to tatters, heedless of bruises and burns,
scrambling up that difficult and perilous ascent, and hurling his
ridiculous blasphemy into the flares of smoke and steam that issued
from that vast caldron lit by subterranean fires. At its simmering
the whole island trembled. A mere whiff of the monster's breath and
he would have been snuffed out, annihilated in an instant.
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