The girls could not speak Italian, or any other language apparently than English, and therefore could not very well make out what the bearers were trying to say, but by their gestures they might have known that they were warning them against going any further.

One might have supposed that no warning would have been needed, and that one look upward would have been enough.

The top of the cone rose for upward of a hundred feet above them, its soil composed of lava blocks and ashes intermingled with sulphur.

In this soil there were a million cracks and crevices, from which sulphurous smoke was issuing; and the smoke, which was but faint and thin near where they stood, grew denser farther up, till it intermingled with the larger volumes that rolled up from the crater.
"Now, as I stood there, I suddenly heard a wild proposal from the child-angel.
"'Oh, Ethel,' she said, 'I've a great mind to go up--'" Here Hawbury interrupted his friend: "What's that?
Was that her friend's name ?" he asked, with some animation.

"Ethel ?--odd, too.