We simply lay in the bottom of the boat, which we
were now physically incapable of directing, feeling like hot
embers, and I fancy undergoing very much the same sensations
that the poor fish do when they are dying on land -- namely,
that of slow suffocation. Our skins began to crack, and the
blood to throb in our heads like the beating of a steam-engine.
This had been going on for some time, when suddenly the river
turned a little, and I heard Sir Henry call out from the bows
in a hoarse, startled voice, and, looking up, saw a most wonderful
and awful thing. About half a mile ahead of us, and a little
to the left of the centre of the stream -- which we could now
see was about ninety feet broad -- a huge pillar-like jet of
almost white flame rose from the surface of the water and sprang
fifty feet into the air, when it struck the roof and spread out
some forty feet in diameter, falling back in curved sheets of
fire shaped like the petals of a full-blown rose. Indeed this
awful gas jet resembled nothing so much as a great flaming flower
rising out of the black water. Below was the straight stalk,
a foot or more thick, and above the dreadful bloom. And as for
the fearfulness of it and its fierce and awesome beauty, who
can describe it? Certainly I cannot.
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