[Illustration:  “I SAW HER TURN AND WAVE HER HAND IN TRIUMPH.”]

“Well, you know, I stood there waiting for the denouement.  Now it happened that, as the child-angel went up, a brisk breeze had started, which blew away all the smoke, so that she went along for some distance without any apparent inconvenience.  I saw her reach the top; I saw her turn and wave her hand in triumph.  Then I saw her rush forward quickly and nimbly straight toward the crater.  She seemed to go down into it.  And then the wind changed or died away, or both, for there came a vast cloud of rolling smoke, black, cruel, suffocating; and the mountain crest and the child-angel were snatched from my sight.

“I was roused by a shriek from Ethel.  I saw her rush up the slope, and struggle in a vain endeavor to save her friend.  But before she had taken a dozen steps down came the rolling smoke, black, wrathful, and sulphurous; and I saw her crouch down and stagger back, and finally emerge pale as death, and gasping for breath.  She saw me as I stood there; in fact, I had moved a little nearer.

“‘Oh, Sir,’ she cried, ‘save her!  Oh, my God, she’s lost!’

“This was very informal, you know, and all that sort of thing; but she had broken the ice, and had accosted me; so I waived all ceremony, and considered the introduction sufficient.  I took off my hat, and told her to calm herself.

“But she only wrung her hands, and implored me to save her friend.

“And now, my boy, lucky was it for me that my experience at Cotopaxi and Popocatepetl had been so thorough and so peculiar.  My knowledge came into play at this time.  I took my felt hat and put it over my mouth, and then tied it around my neck so that the felt rim came over my cheeks and throat.  Thus I secured a plentiful supply of air, and the felt acted as a kind of ventilator to prevent the access to my lungs of too much of the sulphurous vapor.  Of course such a contrivance would not be good for more than five minutes; but then, you know, five minutes were all that I wanted.

“So up I rushed, and, as the slope was only about a hundred feet, I soon reached the top.  Here I could see nothing whatever.  The tremendous smoke-clouds rolled all about on every side, enveloping me in their dense folds, and shutting every thing from view.  I heard the cry of the asses of guides, who were howling where I left them below, and were crying to me to come back—­the infernal idiots!  The smoke was impenetrable; so I got down on my hands and knees and groped about.  I was on her track, and knew she could not be far away.  I could not spend more than five minutes there, for my felt hat would not assist me any longer.  About two minutes had already passed.  Another minute was taken up in creeping about on my hands and knees.  A half minute more followed.  I was in despair.  The child-angel I saw must have run in much further than I had supposed, and perhaps I could not find her at all.  A sickening fear came to me that she had grown dizzy, or had slid down over the loose sand into the terrific abyss of the crater itself.  So another half minute passed; and now only one minute was left.”