"It's a waterfall, and we did not hear it before on account of the wind." But if it was a waterfall, and that it sounded to be, it ceased flowing as rapidly and suddenly as it had begun, for once more all was still in that direction, and they sat resting and gazing with mingled feelings of awe and delight at the glorious landscape of black and brown rock and wondrous ferny growth rising before them from beyond a little valley at their feet right up to the summit of the mountain, about whose top the little cloud of smoke or vapour still hung.
It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene of beauty that no one cared to leave, but the captain soon gave the word, for he was desirous of finding some sign of the strange creature that had caused so much alarm.
They had climbed far above the spot whence the sounds seemed to come, but all felt that probably the beast would come down from the mountain and make that his home; and in this belief the party once more started, directing their course so as to go down and round the rocky eminence in face of where they stood, and then begin to climb the mountain where it steadily rose in one long slope to the summit.
The major was leading as they went down, and he had no sooner reached a spot whence he could see beyond the long mass of rock than he waved his hand for the party to come on.
Mark was the first to reach him, and as he did so it was to see a tall column of water as big as a man's body rush down a hole, which seemed to have been formed in the centre of a pale stony-looking basin.
"Look, my lad, look!" cried the major.
There was no occasion for him to speak, for Mark was already gazing with a feeling of shrinking awe at another of these stony basins, in which a quantity of clear hot water was boiling up and steaming.

It rose from a hole in the middle, quite four feet in diameter, and simmered and bubbled and danced, and then suddenly disappeared down the hole with a hideous gurgling, rushing sound, followed by horrible rumblings and gurgitations in what seemed to be an enormous pipe of stone.
Once more it rushed to the surface, and then disappeared again, leaving the opening clear of water, so that the major went to the stony bottom of the basin, or saucer, to try whether it was slippery; and finding it firm, he walked on to where he could gaze down the well-like hole.
He did not stop many moments, but stepped back.
"Horrid!" he said.

"Right down into blackness.

Come and look." Mark hesitated for a moment, and then took the hand his father extended, and they walked down the slope of the basin to where the opening gaped.
As they reached it there was a puff of hot vapour sent up, followed by hollow roaring sounds, mingled with the gurgling of water.

Then there was such a furious hissing rush that they started back, and had just stepped clear of the basin when a fount of boiling water rushed up with terrific violence, maintaining the shape of the tube through which it had risen to the height of a hundred feet in the air, and keeping to that height for a minute or two, looking like a solid pillar of water.
Then the force which had ejected it seemed to be spent, and the huge fountain descended slowly lower and lower, with several other elevations, and finally descended below the surface with a hideous rushing turmoil, and was gone.
They were about to advance and look down again, but there was a roar, and the water rushed to the surface just high enough to fill the basin, and for a portion to run gurgling over where the rim, which seemed to be formed of a curious deposit, was broken away, and trickle down toward the valley.
"I say, aren't it hot ?" said Billy Widgeon, who had thrust in his hands before the water ran back.