Free 04 Volcano Adventure by Willard Price Page A

There was no foresail. Instead, between the two masts, billowed two great staysails. A big jibsail bulged over her bow. She was built for speed and had won several cup races.
    They overhauled the Kaiyo Maru just before dark. The steam-driven vessel was plodding along at about ten knots. The Lively Lady skimmed past her like a bird. The boys were very proud of their swift ship.
    True, if the wind failed she would stand still, while the steamer would keep plodding along. But with the right wind the sailing ship was hard to beat.
    Passing close to the other ship, the boys lined the rail and waved. At the rail of the steamer stood the nine scientists and some of the crew. Compared with the Lively Lady, the steamer seemed so slow that Roger couldn’t help calling, ‘Get a horse!’
    If he had known that every man on that ship would be drowned before another day passed he would not have felt like joking. The Japanese at the steamer’s rail grinned back and
    shouted admiring comments on the appearance of the Lively Lady and its speed. Then their ship was left behind and the growing darkness slowly blotted it out.
    ‘We’ll be the first to get there!’ exulted Roger.
    There was little sleeping done that night. Every hour or so the boys came on deck to look ahead to the pillar of cloud and fire.
    As they drew nearer it seemed to grow larger and taller. It threw out arms and the top was shaped like a head, so that you could imagine it was a great giant breathing fire and fumes and getting ready to pounce upon the little sailing ship. The Lively Lady seemed very much alone now in this great black sea with the evil giant as high as the sky looming over it.
    Roger was no longer sure that he wanted to get there first. He wished now that the Lively Lady had slowed down so that they might have had the other ship for company.
    Blinding flashes of lightning ripped through the cloud and shot down into the sea. Suppose one of them should strike the Lively Lady! Thunder came in sudden smacks and whacks as if a dozen giants were clapping their hands. Along with this come-and-go thunder, caused by electrical discharges in the cloud, there was the steady thunder of the submarine volcano itself as it sent millions of tons of boiling lava and white-hot rocks spurting up into the sky.
    ‘How deep is that volcano under the sea?’ Roger asked Dr Dan.
    ‘We don’t know yet. From the way it’s behaving, I’d guess it to be perhaps three hundred feet down.’
    ‘So all that hot stuff has to shoot up through water three hundred feet deep?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Why doesn’t the water put out the fire?’ Roger grinned to himself. Now he thought he had asked one the doctor couldn’t answer.
    ‘That’s a good question,’ Dr Dan said. ‘Ordinarily water does put out fire. And it doesn’t take three hundred feet of water either. Just a spray of water may put out the fire in a burning house. But that’s because the fire isn’t very hot. It’s hot enough to burn wood, yes, but not hot enough to turn metal into liquid. The heat in the earth is at least ten times as great. It turns solid rock into liquid. When that blazing liquid shoots up through the water it changes every drop of water it touches into steam. So you see, instead of the water cooling the fire, the fire boils the water. Most of that great cloud is steam.’
    A zigzag dagger of lightning split the sky and struck the water within a few hundred yards of the Lively Lady.
    ‘I think we’re close enough,’ suggested Captain Ike. ‘How about heaving to until daylight?’ Dr Dan agreed.
    The Lively Lady came up into the wind. The staysails and jib were lowered and the mainsail flapped idly.
    It was a terrible two hours until daylight, the roaring and gigantic bubbling of the submarine volcano and the crash of thunder in the towering cloud made sleep impossible. The flashes of lightning in the cloud were like sudden fireworks. For an instant they lit up the sea for
    miles.