04 Volcano Adventure (3 page)

It was a coat. The blue coat of a school uniform. Hal picked it up. He guessed at once what had happened.

‘Was Kobo in trouble?’ he asked Toguri. ‘He seemed very unhappy.’

‘Kobo take English examination,’ said Toguri. ‘He fail

- no good.’

Hal wondered how anybody could pass an English examination with such a teacher as Toguri.

They all went to the edge of the crater and looked down. It was impossible to see anything, the smoke was in the way.

‘We go,’ Toguri said. ‘We go - tell his mother.’

‘Wait,’ said Dr Dan. ‘He may still be alive. I’ll go down and see.’

The Japanese stared in disbelief.

‘Go in crater?’ exclaimed Toguri. ‘No can do.’

‘He may not have fallen all the way down. Perhaps he landed on a ledge.’ Dr Dan uncoiled his line and began to knot the end about him.

Hal looked again into the pit. The sun was well up now and already very hot, but still it did not penetrate that pall of smoke. The thought of going blindly into that crater made Hal sweat. But if Kobo was down

there, it was Hal’s fault - or so he felt. He blamed himself because he had not gone back to Kobo when he saw that something was wrong.

‘Give me that rope,’ he said to Dr Dan. ‘It’s my turn to go down.’

The doctor protested. But when he saw that Hal was determined, he looped the rope about his chest.

Hal wiped the sweat from his face. The heat from the crater with the heat from the sun made him a little sick. The gases from below smothered him.

‘Here we go!’ he said. ‘Hold tight!’

He backed gingerly over the rim. At once he began to slip in the ashes, but the others braced themselves against the pull of the rope and held him up.

He raised his eyes for the last time to the faces of his brother, the doctor, and the two Japanese, all at the rope. Would he ever see them again - these four?

Four? There-seemed to be five. He counted again. The gases made his eyes smart and the smoke made it hard to see. But there were certainly five. Four at the rope, and one standing behind them looking over their shoulders, an expression of great curiosity on his face. The fifth man said in halting English,

‘What you do?’

The four turned to face him. They were so startled that they almost dropped Hal into the crater. Hal scrambled up to safe ground.

‘Kobo!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re all right!’

Kobo looked blank.

‘You had us worried,’ Dr Dan said. ‘We thought you were down there.’

‘Very sorry,’ Kobo struggled in English, and then explained in rapid Japanese to Toguri. Toguri passed on his explanation.

‘He say too hot here so he go back there - sit - think. He pretty sad.’

‘Why does it hit him so hard?’ Hal wanted to know. ‘In our country lots of boys fail and it doesn’t worry them too much. They just try again.’

‘Ah, you no understand,’ said Toguri, and he went on to tell Kobo’s story. Kobo’s father had died in the war. His mother and sister were working very hard to put Kobo through school. The least he could do was to succeed in his studies. When he failed he was very much ashamed. He had let his mother and sister down. All the neighbours would have contempt for him. He couldn’t bear to go home. He didn’t know what to do.

Hal looked into the face of the young student. Something there appealed to him very strongly. This was a fine boy. He loved his mother and sister and felt deeply disgraced because he had not been able to do his part. He looked bright enough - he would probably pick up English very quickly if he were with people who spoke it well.

Hal took the doctor and Roger aside.

‘Listen,’ he said: 1 have an idea. How long are we going to be in Japan?’

‘About a week,’ said Dr Dan.

‘That’s not very long. But still I think it might be enough. He’s eager to learn.’

‘What do you have on your mind?’

‘If we can take Kobo along with us and talk English with him sixteen hours a day every day, I believe we could teach him more in a week than Toguri could in a year. Then if the school could give him another chance at the examination, he ought to be able to pass it.’

Dr Dan thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘You’re a good lad, Hal, and I think your plan might work. It all depends on whether the exam can be repeated. Let’s ask the teacher. Toguri-san, could you step over here for a moment?’

Toguri, when told of the plan, was delighted. Yes, he was sure that the school would allow Kobo another examination. ‘School know I am very bad English teacher,’ he said humbly. 7 know I very bad English teacher. But school no can afford good English teacher. Englishman or American cost too much. We do best we can. One week with you - I think Kobo pass examination.’

‘How about Machida?’ Hal asked.

‘Oh, Machida science student. He no study English.’

They went back to Kobo and Toguri told him of Hal’s plan. Kobo could not believe it. Why should strangers and foreigners do this for him? He stood looking at Hal and his thanks were in his eyes but he could not think of the right words. Two large tears ran down his cheeks. He smiled through his tears and managed to say:

‘I very thank.’

‘He go home with me,’ said Toguri, ‘tell his mother -then come meet you in Tokyo. Yes?’

It was so agreed.

‘Now that that’s settled,’ said Dr Dan, ‘let’s get out of here. I don’t trust this volcano. It’s been too quiet for the last half-hour. I think it’s getting ready to give us a bath of hot lava!’

They started down the mountain, but by a different route, because Dr Dan wanted to visit the place where lava had buried forty-eight villages.

As they went, the volcano god began to roar again as if angry that these six juicy morsels of food were escaping him. The doctor stopped every once in a while to plunge the spike of his thermometer into a bed of hot ashes. The top layer was only uncomfortably warm, but three inches below the surface the bed was twice boiling hot.

‘We could fry eggs here,’ said the doctor, ‘if we had any to fry.’

Which reminded them that they were hungry again and they stopped to consume the rest of the chocolate bars, rice, and fish. While having their lunch they did not sit down, nor even stand, but kept dancing about so that their feet would not be burned.

Then the doctor hurried them on. The growls of Asama were growing louder.

Although down hill, it was hard going. The heat beat down from the sun and up from the ground. It was necessary to climb over large blocks of lava. Most of them were solid and probably weighed many tons, but Roger was astonished when he bumped against one as big as a horse and it moved. It seemed to be riddled with small holes like a honeycomb.

A mischievous idea came into Roger’s head. He liked to play tricks upon his older brother who was so much stronger and wiser than he.

They stopped to rest for a moment. Roger said,

‘Hal, are you all right?’

Hal stared. ‘What do you mean - all right?’

‘Aren’t you sick or something?’

‘Of course not. Why?’

‘Well, you just look so pale and weak. I’m afraid this trip has been too much for your delicate constitution. You look tired out.’

‘Me tired? You’re crazy. If anybody gets tired it will be you, you little shrimp. We’ll probably have to carry you home on a stretcher.’

‘Well,’ said Roger, ‘we can easily find out who’s tired.

How big a rock can you pick up and throw down the hill?’

Hal looked about him. He selected a lava block as big as his head. He got his hands under it, hoisted it with some difficulty, and threw it down the slope.

There,’ he said. ‘If you can lift anything half as big as that I’ll crown you king of the May.’

‘I think I’ll try this one,’ Roger said, and put his arms around the block as big as a horse.

Hal was much amused. ‘Don’t make me laugh, kid. You couldn’t even budge that, let alone lift it.’

Roger braced his back, tensed his sturdy young muscles and straightened up with the great block in his arms. Then he threw it down the mountainside.

Hal was speechless. He stared at Roger, then at Dr Dan who was laughing.

‘Impossible,’ muttered Hal. ‘Impossible.’

‘A very good demonstration, Roger,’ Dr Dan said, still laughing. ‘Let’s go down and take a look at that boulder.’

When they reached it, Dr Dan put his hand on it and rocked it back and forth as easily as if he had been rocking a cradle. It was as light as if it had been made of paper instead of stone.

‘Pumice,’ Dr Dan said. ‘The rock that floats. Yes, it will actually float on the water. The lightest rock in the world.’

‘Does it come from the volcano?’

‘Yes. It’s really just lava - lava turned into foam. You know how light water is when it is turned into foam. That is because it is full of bubbles each containing air. Well, this is rock foam. It also is made up of bubbles,

each containing air or other gases, some of them lighter than air. Some of the bubbles have burst and that’s what makes all those holes.’

‘But does it really float on the water, like a raft?’ Roger wanted to know.

‘It does. When the volcano Krakatoa erupted, so much pumice was thrown out on the sea that it made a great floating island three miles across. Some people thought it was a solid island and built their houses on it. One morning they woke to find that a storm during the night had carried their island away over the sea far out of sight of any land. After eighteen days they were rescued by a passing ship.’

‘I’d like to take a ride on a pumice raft.’

‘You may have a chance when we get to studying the Submarine volcanoes. Just now I think we’d better walk rather than talk. I don’t like the sounds coming from that volcano.’

They scrambled on down the mountainside. But the boys were too much interested in the stories the volcano man could tell them to allow him to walk in silence.

‘What makes a volcano, anyhow?’ Roger asked.

Dr Dan smiled. ‘Well, that’s a pretty big question. Have you ever gone down in a mine?’

‘Yes, we went down in a coal mine in Pennsylvania.’

‘Was it warm or cold?’

‘It was hot. The deeper we went the hotter it got. We nearly melted.’

‘Exactly. Now if you had been able to go on down, say twenty miles, you certainly would have melted, and you would find everything around you melted too. The rocks would all be turned into hot soup with a temperature of several thousand degrees. The same thing happens in a steel mill where iron ore is heated until it melts and flows like water. Now then, if you step on an orange what will happen?’ ‘It will crack and the juice will squirt out.’ ‘Just so. Think of the millions of tons of earth pressing down upon that rock soup. Naturally, if it can find a crack it will squirt out. And that’s just what a crater is. A crater is a crack in the earth’s surface. The rock soup sees its chance to escape and up it comes. That rock soup is what we call molten lava. Lava is just rock in a liquid state. It may be any kind of rock, or many kinds together - no matter, it is still called lava.

‘Of course, when the lava spurts up through the crack it tears away dirt and rocks and stones and sends them flying up into the air along with the lava. If rain water seeps down through the crack it is turned into steam by the terrific heat. And you know how strong steam is - in a locomotive, for instance. The steam in the volcano may cause terrific explosions that kill thousands of people. The explosions may split the crater so that the molten lava flows out in a great river and covers dozens of towns and villages. And that’s just what happened here. You are walking right now on the surface of a river of lava a hundred feet deep. Under it are thousands of Japanese houses. And in them are men, women and children, ten thousand people buried for ever.’

‘Why for ever?’ asked Hal. ‘Vesuvius buried Pompeii, but now they have excavated the city.’

‘That’s true. But Pompeii was buried under ashes, not lava. It was easy to shovel away the ashes. But these forty-eight Japanese villages lie under a hundred feet of solid rock.’

‘Is it likely to happen again?’

‘I’m afraid it is. Japanese volcanologists believe that Asama is preparing for another great eruption. After my observations today I am inclined to agree with them. The lava lake in the crater is rising at the rate of fifteen feet a year. No one can say with certainty, but it is quite probable that within the next ten years Asama will put on another big show. But before that it will put on plenty of little shows and a little show would be enough to kiD the lot of us, so let’s hurry along.’

Asama was now roaring like a wild bull and sending up a tongue of yellow flame thousands of feet into the blue sky. Clots of half-solid lava spattered down on the rocks. Each man kept watch above, and dodged when he saw something coming for him.

And even so, a sticky chunk of red-hot paste struck the sleeve of Machida’s coat and stuck there in spite of all his efforts to shake it off. The coat burst into flame. Machida whipped it off and beat it against the rocks to put out the fire. He finally succeeded, but there was nothing left of the coat but a black, charred mass. He threw it away.

The six pressed on more anxiously than ever.

‘There’s an inn at the foot of the old lava flow,’ Dr Dan said. ‘If we get to it, we’ll be all right.’

Great quantities of ashes were now rising from the volcano. They formed a black cloud in the sky. The sun was blotted out. It grew as dark as if it had been late evening instead of noon. Sudden flashes of light stabbed through the darkness. ‘Is that lightning?’ asked Hal.

‘Yes. Lightning and thunder are very common over volcanoes, because the rising heat disturbs the electrical balance of the atmosphere. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have rain too.’

Presently it came: a deluge of rain, but not clean and pure as rain should be. It was a mud rain. The ashes in the sky mixed with water came down as mud.

‘That volcano god finds plenty of things to do!’ complained Roger. ‘But I never thought he’d begin throwing mud pies at us.’

Within ten minutes they were plastered with mud from head to foot. They looked more like clay statues than men. They had trouble keeping the stuff out of eyes and mouths. It covered their ears so they could hardly hear each other. It piled up on their feet and made them heavy. It covered the ground like glue and made walking difficult.