“It’s a big hill,” said Uncle John, gravely, “and I’ve no right to take foolish chances with three girls on my hands.”

“I’m not frightened, Uncle John.”

“Nor I.”

“Nor I, the least bit.”

“Everyone has left the hotel but ourselves,” said he.

“How sorry they will be, afterward,” remarked Beth.

He looked at them admiringly, and kissed each one.

“You stay in this room and don’t move a peg till I get back,” he enjoined them; “I’m going out to look over the situation.”

CHAPTER VII

A FRIEND IN NEED

Some of Mr. Merrick’s business friends in New York, hearing of his proposed trip, had given him letters of introduction to people in various European cities.  He had accepted them—­quite a bunch, altogether—­but had firmly resolved not to use them.  Neither he nor the nieces cared to make superficial acquaintances during their wanderings.  Yet Uncle John chanced to remember that one of these letters was to a certain Colonel Angeli of the Twelfth Italian Regiment, occupying the barracks on the Pizzofalcone hill at Naples.  This introduction, tendered by a relative of the Colonel’s American wife, was now reposing in Mr. Merrick’s pocket, and he promptly decided to make use of it in order to obtain expert advice as to the wisdom of remaining in the stricken city.

Enquiring his way from the still dazed concierge, he found that the Pizzofalcone barracks were just behind the hotel but several hundred feet above it; so he turned up the Strada St. Lucia and soon came upon the narrow lane that wound upward to the fortifications.  It was a long and tedious climb in the semi-darkness caused by the steady fall of ashes, and at intervals the detonations from Vesuvius shook the huge rock and made its massive bulk seem insecure.  But the little man persevered, and finally with sweating brow arrived at the barracks.

A soldier carried in the letter to his colonel and presently returned to usher Uncle John through the vast building, up a flight of steps, and so to a large covered balcony suspended many hundred feet above the Via Partenope, where the hotel was situated.

Here was seated a group of officers, watching intently the cloud that marked the location of the volcano.  Colonel Angeli, big and bluff, his uniform gorgeous, his dark, heavy moustaches carefully waxed, his handsome face as ingenuous and merry as a schoolboy’s, greeted the American with a gracious courtesy that made Uncle John feel quite at his ease.  When he heard of the nieces the Italian made a grimace and then laughed.

“I am despairing, signore,” said he, in English sufficiently strangulated to be amusing but nevertheless quite comprehensible, “that you and the sweet signorini are to see our lovely Naples under tribulations so very great.  But yesterday, in all the world is no city so enchanting, so brilliant, so gay.  To-day—­look! is it not horrible?  Vesuvio is sick, and Naples mourns until the tyrant is well again.”