"and why did you enlist?"said i.
the moon-faced one's face began to work.i thought he would have a fit,but he told me a story instead--such a nice tale of a naughty little girl who wrote pretty love letters to two men at once.she was a simple village wife,but a wicked "family novelette"countess couldn't have accomplished her ends better.
she drove one man nearly wild with the pretty little treachery,and the other man abandoned her and came west to forget the trickery.
moon-face was that man.
we rounded and limped over a low spur of hill,and came out upon a field of aching,snowy lime rolled in sheets,twisted into knots,riven with rents,and diamonds,and stars,stretching for more than half a mile in every direction.
on this place of despair lay most of the big,bad geysers who know when there is trouble in krakatoa,who tell the pines when there is a cyclone on the atlantic seaboard,and who are exhibited to visitors under pretty and fanciful names.
the first mound that i encountered belonged to a goblin who was splashing in his tub.
i heard him kick,pull a er-bath on his shoulders,gasp,crack his joints,and rub himself down with a towel;then he let the water out of the bath,as a thoughtful man should,and it all sunk down out of sight till another goblin arrived.
so we looked and we wondered at the beehive,whose mouth is built up exactly like a hive,at the turban (which is not in the least like a turban),and at many,many other geysers,hot holes,and springs.some of them rumbled,some hissed,some went off spasmodically,and others lay dead still in sheets of sapphire and beryl.