We stood on a steep rugged hillside, some twenty yards or so from the summit. Below us was a vast multitude of people, congregated in the form of a horseshoe round the mountain; around us was a cordon of soldiers, whilst at the very top of the mountain we saw the _Sirius_, how or when conveyed thither we knew not. Escape seemed utterly hopeless, and for the first time we realized that we were really about to die.
The wild grandeur of that sunset scene can never fade from our memory. All round us were mountains whose rugged peaks were illuminated by the rays of the sinking sun, the snow gleaming on some of them like sheets of polished silver. A volcano, with a thin wreath of blue smoke curling gently skywards crowned the sides of the distant valley, and the ground all round us, and as far as we could see below us, was strewn with fantastic shaped boulders and masses of rock, but not a trace of vegetation could be seen amongst them. Everything was desolate in that vale of bitterness and death; hideous the doom that condemned this strange place to barrenness and ruin. The face of the mountain was scarred and furrowed as with a vast despair, and the grey ghostly plain below seemed full of a horrid phantasm. No streams of water trickled down the hillsides; not a living thing was nourished by the barren, fruitless soil! Beyond the summit, at a much higher elevation, hung a vast bank of gloomy vapour, like a bitter teardrop on the face of the desert wilderness, its surface gleaming in gold and frowning in grey as the lights and shadows played upon its constantly changing surface.
[Illustration: ... THE SIRIUS ... BOLDLY OUTLINED AGAINST THE SKY.]
As soon as we had all got out of the tent we were conducted up the mountain-side towards the _Sirius_, which stood boldly outlined against the sky at the summit. When we got to the top the scene was even more awful, enough to curdle the blood of the stoutest-hearted with horror. We stood upon the crag Remagaloth, a jutting rock which arched and overhung in awful grandeur a vast lake of seething molten fire! Five thousand feet below, in one clear terrible plunge, the cruel cliffs dipped down to this lake of flame; and on the brink of that rugged crag, jutting out like an index finger above the gulf, was the _Sirius_, looking as if the slightest touch would overbalance her, and hurl her downwards into the fiery depths.