The titanic disorder placated his own. He became unconscious of passing time. From the contour of the slope, remembered from a past visit, he was aware of nearing the _Lac des Palmists_, which marked the summit-level. Yet changes, violent changes, were everywhere evidenced. The shoulder of the mountain was smeared with a crust of ash and seamed with fresh scars. The crust was made by the dry, whirling winds playing upon the paste formed of stone-dust and condensed steam. The clicking whir, like a clap of wings, heard at intervals, accounted for the scars. Bombs of rock were being hurled from the great tubes. Here he shouted to Jacques to stay behind; that he would be back in a few moments. There was a nod of assent from the evil head. That he was in the range of a raking volcano-fire impressed with a sort of laughing awe this ant clinging to the beard of a giant. Up, knees and hands, now, he crawled--up over the throbbing chin, to the black, pounded lip of the Monster. Out of the old lake coiled the furious tower of steam and rock-dust which mushroomed in high heaven, like a primal nebula from which worlds are made. It was this which fell upon the city. Pockets of gas exploded in the heights, rending the periphery, as the veil of the temple was rent. Only this horrible torrent spreading over Saint Pierre to witness, but sounds not meant for the ear of man, sounds which seemed to saw his skull in twain--the thundering engines of a planet. The rocky rim of the lake was hot to his hands and knees, but a moment more he lingered. A thought in his brain held him there with thrilling bands. It was only a plaything of mind--a vagary of altitude and immensity. "Did ever the body of a man clog the crater of a live volcano?" was his irreverent query. "Did ever suicidal genius conceive of corrupting such majesty of force with his pygmy purpose?" There he lay, sprawled at the edge of the universal mystery, at the secret-entrance to the chamber of earth's dynamos. The edge of the pit shook with the frightful work going on below, yet he was not slain. The torrent burst past and upward with a southward inclination, clean as a missing bullet. The bombs of rock canted out from sheer weight and fell behind. That which he comprehended--although his eyes saw only the gray, thundering cataclysm--was never before imagined in the mind of man.