"Is it real, or have I been dreaming?" she asked, with a shudder, looking wildly round.
"It is only too real," I said, pointing to the smoking crater.
"First of all, we must go down to the oasis and see whether any of the people are left alive."
"You are right. When we have done what we can for the others it will be time enough to think about ourselves."
"Are there any others?" I thought, for I greatly doubted whether we should find any alive, except, perhaps, Yawl and the three or four men who were helping him. But I kept my misgivings to myself, and after breakfast we set off. Angela and myself were mounted, and I assigned a mule to Kidd. The man might be useful, and, circumstanced as we were, it would have been bad policy to give him the cold shoulder. We also took with us provisions, clothing, and a tent, for I was by no means sure that we should find either food or shelter on the oasis.
As we passed the volcano I looked into the crater. Nearly level with the breach made by the water was a great mass of seething lava, which I regarded as a sure sign that another eruption might take place at any moment. The valley lake had disappeared; banks, trees, soil, dwellings, all were gone, leaving only bare rocks and burning lava. Of San Cristobal there was not a vestige; the oasis had been converted into a damp and steaming gully, void of vegetation and animal life. But, as I had anticipated, the force of the flood was spent before it reached the coast. Much of the water had overflowed into the desert and been absorbed by the sand, and the little that remained was now sinking into the earth and being evaporated by the sun.
For hours Angela and I rode on in silence; our distress was too deep for words.
"Quipai is gone," she murmured at length, shuddering and looking at me with tear-filled eyes.
"Yes, gone and forever. As entirely as if it had never been. It is worse than the carnage of a great battle. These poor people! Nature is more cruel than man."
"But surely! will you not try to restore the oasis and re-create Quipai?"
"To do that, _cara mia_, would require another Abbé Balthazar and sixty years of life. And to what end? Sooner or later our work would be destroyed as his has been, even if we were allowed to begin it. The volcano may be active for ages. We must go."