They were particularly struck by what seemed to them almost the mysterious calmness with which the eruption was effected.

There was none of the wild disorder and deafening tumult that usually accompany the discharge of volcanic matter, but the heated lava, rising with a uniform gentleness, quietly overran the limits of the crater, like the flow of water from the bosom of a peaceful lake.

Instead of a boiler exposed to the action of an angry fire, the crater rather resembled a brimming basin, of which the contents were noiselessly escaping.

Nor were there any igneous stones or red-hot cinders mingled with the smoke that crowned the summit; a circumstance that quite accorded with the absence of the pumice-stones, obsidians, and other minerals of volcanic origin with which the base of a burning mountain is generally strewn.
Captain Servadac was of opinion that this peculiarity augured favorably for the continuance of the eruption.

Extreme violence in physical, as well as in moral nature, is never of long duration.