“Wal, I guess that fixes us,” the Yankee snapped; “unless there happens to be a miracle knockin’ around, this yer outfit’s on its last legs.” His words sent a shiver through his comrades. Knowing Haverly as they did, knowing the indomitable spirit of the man, the words sounded as their death-warrant. Bad indeed was the case when Silas gave up hope. “Say, Mervyn,” he continued, after a pause of a few moments, “you call this location the North Pole? I reckon if I had the naming of it, it ’uld be the ‘Gate of Hell,’ spelt large. Of all the God-forsaken parts I ever struck, this romps in an easy first. The Yellowstone Badlands are a paradise to this yer settlement!” Hereafter a gloomy silence settled upon the party, broken at length by the appearance of Wilson. “The thing’s beyond me!” he exclaimed; “not a rod is out of place, not a screw is missing, yet never a stroke can I get out of them for all my trying.” In a few terse sentences Garth explained to the engineer the cause of the breaking down of the machinery. “Great Scott!” cried Wilson, “you don’t mean----?” He broke off short, as a rumbling explosion burst from the crater. The eruption had recommenced! Moving to the window, Wilson peered out through the steam-covered glass. As he did so a great shaft of flame shot upward from the water alongside, scorching the paint on the vessel’s hull. With a startled exclamation the engineer shrank back from the window. “Can nothing be done?” he asked, turning to Garth. “Nothing,” returned the inventor, “for, see, even could we get the engines to work, the passage to the sea is blocked.” “But you cannot mean that there is no hope?” Wilson persisted. “Surely there is some way out of this accursed lake?” “Then I guess it’s got to be found,” the Yankee broke in sharply. “This is how the thing pans out: if we stop here it means suffocatin’; if we bust the glass and clear outside, the sulphur’ll do the trick for us in a little less than no time.” “It resolves itself into a choice of deaths,” remarked Seymour, “one slow and terrible, the other terrible enough, but mercifully swift.” “Precisely,” agreed the millionaire; “but I reckon there’s no manner of sense in rushin’ on your fate. I’m stayin’ right here.” Even as the words left his lips, a series of deafening explosions rang out, each one louder than the preceding: the whole culminating in one stupendous crash, which shook the island to its very foundations. While yet the last echoes of this fearful cannonade reverberated amid the cliffs, a giant wave roared furiously up from the bed of the lake, and tearing the _Seal_ from her sandy bed, bore her fifty feet into the air. For one brief instant it swayed there, then its crest curled over, and with a thunderous roar, it plunged downward.