The splendid illuminations of the preceding evening were again lighted up with the closing of the day; and after enjoying their beauty for two or three hours with renewed delight, we early sought a repose which the fatigue of the morning had rendered most desirable. The chattering of the islanders around our cabins, and the occasional sound of voices in protracted conversation among our own number, had however, scarcely[80] ceased long enough to admit of sound sleep, when the volcano again began roaring, and laboring with redoubled activity. The confusion of noises was prodigiously great. In addition to all we had before heard, there was an angry muttering from the very bowels of the abyss, accompanied at intervals by what appeared the desperate effort of some gigantic power struggling for deliverance. These sounds were not fixed or confined to one place, but rolled from one end of the crater to the other; sometimes seeming to be immediately under us—when a terrible tremor of the ground on which we lay, took place—and then again rushing to the farthest end with incalculable velocity. The whole air was filled with tumult; and those most soundly asleep were quickly roused by it to thorough wakefulness. Lord Byron springing up in his cot exclaiming, "We shall certainly have an eruption; such power must burst through every thing!" He had barely ceased speaking, when a dense column of heavy black smoke was seen rising from the crater, directly in front of us, the subterranean struggle ceased, and immediately after flames burst from a large cone, near which we had been in the morning, and which then appeared to have been long inactive. Red hot stones, cinders, and ashes, were also propelled to a great height with immense violence; and shortly after the molten lava came boiling up, and flowed down the sides of the cone, and over the surrounding scoria, in two beautiful curved streams, glittering with indescribable brilliance. At the same time a whole lake of fire opened in a more distant part. This could not have been less than two miles in circumference, and its action was more[81] horribly sublime than any thing I ever imagined to exist, even in the ideal visions of unearthly things. Its surface had all the agitation of an ocean; billow after billow tossed its monstrous bosom in the air, and occasionally those from different directions burst with such violence, as in the concussion to dash the fiery spray, seemingly, forty and fifty feet high. It was at once the most splendidly beautiful, and dreadfully fearful of spectacles, and irresistibly turned the thoughts to that lake of fire, from whence we are told, the smoke of torment shall ascend for ever and ever.