It was the Captain who called this time.

His companions rushed to his window and all looked out together in the same direction.
What a sight met their eyes! What pen can describe it?
What pencil can reproduce the magnificence of its coloring?
It was a Vesuvius at his best and wildest, at the moment just after the old cone has fallen in.
Millions of luminous fragments streaked the sky with their blazing fires.

All sizes and shapes of light, all colors and shades of colors, were inextricably mingled together.

Irradiations in gold, scintillations in crimson, splendors in emerald, lucidities in ultramarine--a dazzling girandola of every tint and of every hue.

Of the enormous fireball, an instant ago such an object of dread, nothing now remained but these glittering pieces, shooting about in all directions, each one an asteroid in its turn.