out that they had, and to his cost.  When he got near the opposite shore some of the sailors met him and entreated him to turn back.  Cinders and pumice-stones were falling down from the sky, and flames breaking out of the mountain above.  But Pliny would go on:  he said that if people were in danger, it was his duty to help them; and that he must see this strange cloud, and note down the different shapes into which it changed.  But the hot ashes fell faster and faster; the sea ebbed out suddenly, and left them nearly dry, and Pliny turned away to a place called Stabiae, to the house of his friend Pomponianus, who was just going to escape in a boat.  Brave Pliny told him not to be afraid, ordered his bath like a true Roman gentleman, and then went into dinner with a cheerful face.  Flames came down from the mountain, nearer and nearer as the night drew on; but Pliny persuaded his friend that they were only fires in some villages from which the peasants had fled, and then went to bed and slept soundly.  However, in the middle of the night they found the courtyard being fast filled with cinders, and, if they had not woke up the Admiral in time, he would never have been able to get out of the house.  The earthquake shocks grew stronger and fiercer, till the house was ready to fall; and Pliny and his friend, and the sailors and the slaves, all fled into the open fields, amid a shower of stones and cinders, tying pillows over their heads to prevent their being beaten down.  The day had come by this time, but not the dawn—­for it was still pitch dark as night.  They went down to their boats upon the shore; but the sea raged so horribly that there was no getting on board of them.  Then Pliny grew tired, and made his men spread a sail for him, and lay down on it; but there came down upon them a rush of flames, and a horrible smell of sulphur, and all ran for their lives.  Some of the slaves tried to help the Admiral upon his legs; but he sank down again overpowered with the brimstone fumes, and so was left behind.  When they came back again, there he lay dead, but with his clothes in order and his face as quiet as if he had been only sleeping.  And that was the end of a brave and learned man—­a martyr to duty and to the love of science.

But what was going on in the meantime?  Under clouds of ashes, cinders, mud, lava, three of those happy cities were buried at once—­Herculaneum, Pompeii, Stabiae.  They were buried just as the people had fled from them, leaving the furniture and the earthenware, often even jewels and gold, behind, and here and there among them a human being who had not had time to escape from the dreadful deluge of dust.  The ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii have been dug into since; and the paintings, especially in Pompeii, are found upon the walls still fresh, preserved from the air by the ashes which have covered them in.  When you are older you perhaps will go to Naples, and see in its famous museum the curiosities which