Vacation Under the Volcano (4 page)
“Hello!” Annie called.
There was no answer. The place seemed empty.
The main hall had a large opening in the ceiling. Below it was a small stone pool filled with water. Jack looked at it carefully.
“Oh, I bet rain comes through the hole,” said Jack. “Then it lands in that pool so they can use it for their water.”
He started to take out his notebook to make a note.
“There's no time, Jack!” said Annie. “We have to look in all the rooms for books!”
“Okay, okay, calm down,” said Jack. He put away his notebook and followed Annie.
“Books? Books?” she said, peering into a room off the hall. She moved to the next room. “Books? Books?” Then she moved on to the next.
Jack trailed behind her. Even though she had already checked the rooms, he took a quick peek in each of them. He wanted to see what a house in Roman times looked like. He'd write notes later.
The first two rooms had wooden beds. The walls had pictures painted on them. The floors were covered with tiny pieces of colored stone.
The third room had a low table with silver dishes on it. Three sloping couches were placed around the table. The couches were covered with pillows.
“This must be the dining room,” said Jack. “People from Roman times lay down on couches while they ate. Did you know that?”
He looked around for Annie. Where was she?
“Jack! Come here!” Annie called.
Jack followed her voice. She was in a garden off the dining room. It had a stone patio, palm trees, and grape vines. In the middle was a pond with a mermaid fountain. Goldfish swam in the water.
“Look, there's another room!” said Annie. She moved to the door of a room off the garden.
She opened the door and peeked inside.
Jack looked with her. Along the walls of the room were long shelves with rolls of paper on them.
“Rats!” said Annie. “No books.” She closed the door. “No books in this
whole
villa. Let's get out of here.”
“Just a minute,” said Jack. “I have an idea.”
He pulled out his book on Roman times. He found a section called
WRITING
. He read:
Romans used pens made of small reeds. Their ink came partly from the black ink of octopuses. They wrote their “books” on scrolls of papyrus (puh-PI-rus) paper.
“Aha!” said Jack. “That's a library of scrolls! I bet our ancient lost story is in there!”
Jack threw open the door to the room of scrolls. He and Annie rushed in and ran over to the shelves.
Jack pulled out the piece of paper with the Latin title on it:
Vir Fortissimus in Mundo
“Okay,” he said. “We have to find the scroll with this title.”
They began frantically unrolling scrolls one by one. They were all handwritten in Latin.
“Here it is!” said Annie.
She held up a scroll. The words at the top matched the ones on their paper.
“Yay,” said Jack. “I wish I could read Latin so we could find out what the story is.”
“Don't think about it now!” said Annie. “Let's go!”
Annie handed the scroll to Jack, then started out of the room.
“Come on,” she said. “Bring it!”
“I just want to check and see what the story's about,” said Jack.
He put the scroll in the leather bag. Then he flipped through the book on Roman times, looking for a picture of the ancient scroll. In the middle of the book, he found a picture of a volcano erupting over a town.
Under the picture was written:
For 800 years, Mount Vesuvius was a peaceful mountain, rising above the town of Pompeii. Then, at noon on August 24,
A.D.
79, it erupted into a deadly volcano.
“Oh,
no
,” whispered Jack. “August 24,
A.D.
79âthat's
today!
Oh, man, what time is it?” He looked around wildly. “Annie!”
She was gone again.
“Annie!”
Jack grabbed the leather bag. Then, clutching the book, he tore out of the scroll room.
“
Annie!
” he cried.
“What?” Annie appeared at the door to the dining room.
“V-v-volcano!” stuttered Jack.
“
What?
” said Annie.
“It'sâit's comingâa volcanoâat noon!” said Jack.
Annie gasped.
“What time is it?” cried Jack.
“So
that's
what the soothsayer meant!” Annie said. “The end
is
near.”
“What time is it?” Jack asked again. He looked around the garden.
He saw something near the mermaid fountain.
“A sundial!” he said. “That's how the Romans told time!”
Jack and Annie raced to the sundial.
“What time does it say?” said Annie.
“I don't know,” said Jack.
His hands shook as he turned the pages of the book. He stopped on a picture of a sundial. It showed examples of different times. Jack looked back and forth from the page to the real sundial in the garden.
“Here!” he said. He had found the one that matched. Jack read the writing under the picture:
The shadow on the sundial can hardly be seen at noon.
“Oh, man,” he whispered. He looked at Annie. “The end isn't near; the end is
here
.”
Just then he heard a terrible blast. It was the loudest sound he had ever heard.
The next thing Jack knew, he was lying on the stone patio. The patio stones were trembling. A rumbling sound came from the ground.
Jack raised his head. Annie was on the ground, too.
“You okay?” said Annie.
Jack nodded.
Everything was shaking and crashing down around themâpots, plants, the mermaid fountain. Water from the goldfish pond sloshed onto the patio and Jack and Annie.
They both jumped up just as roof tiles began falling into the garden.
“We better get inside!” said Jack.
He grabbed his leather bag. Then he and Annie stumbled into the scroll library.
Giant cracks split the stone floor as Jack and Annie ran to a window and looked out.
Glowing rocks were bursting through the sky above Mount Vesuvius. The whole top of the mountain had blown off.
“What's happening?” said Annie.
“I'll checkâ” said Jack. He pulled out the Roman book. He read aloud from the section about the volcano:
When a volcano erupts, hot melted rock called “magma” is pushed to the surface of the earth. Once it gets outside the volcano, it's called “lava.”
“Lava! That's like burning mud!” said Jack.
“It covers everything!” cried Annie.
Jack kept reading:
There was no running lava from Mount Vesuvius. The magma from the volcano cooled so fast that it froze into small grayish white rocks called pumice (PUM-iss). A pumice rock is very light and has holes like a sponge.
“That doesn't sound
too
bad,” said Annie.
“Wait, there's more,” said Jack. He read on:
A great cloud of pumice, ash, and burning rock shot miles into the air. When it rained down on Pompeii, it completely buried the town.
“Oh, man,” said Jack. “This is a major disaster!”
“It's getting dark,” said Annie.
Jack looked out again. A thick black cloud was spreading over the earth like an umbrella. The sun vanished as the sky turned smoky gray.
“That must be the cloud of pumice and ash!” said Jack.
Just then the ground trembled again. Chunks of plaster from the ceiling fell on the scrolls.
“We have to get out of here!” said Annie.
They ran from the scroll library into the garden. Ash and pumice began to fall.
“We have to cover our heads!” said Jack.
They hurried from the garden into the dining room.
“Look! Pillows!” said Annie. “Let's put them on our heads!”
They hurried to the couches beside the table and each grabbed a pillow.
“Tie it around your head with your belt!” said Jack.
They both pulled off the belts from around their tunics. Then they tied on the pillows, like giant hats.
A chunk of ceiling crashed down near them.
“Let's get out of here!” said Jack.
They stepped over pieces of fallen roof tiles and ran into the main hall. They pushed open the front door.
A blast of heat and dust nearly knocked them over. And when they stepped outside, pumice rained down onto their pillow hats.
“Run!” cried Annie.
They ran from the vacation villa into the dark, burning streets.
