Within
this area, thus hemmed in by fire and rock, appeared no living thing save
the birds which sang upon the bushes beside the small stream's banks and
the butterflies which hung above the flowers and all the insect world
which joined in the soft, humming chorus of the morning. It was something
that Ab looked upon with delighted wonder, but without understanding. What
he saw was not a marvel. It was but the result of one of many upheavals at
a time when the earth's cooled shell was somewhat thinner than now and
when earthquakes, though there were no cities to overthrow, at least made
havoc sometimes by changing the face of nature. There had come a great
semi-circular crack in the earth, near and extending to the line of the
sheer rock range. The natural gas, the product of the vegetation of
thousands of centuries before, had found a chance to escape and had poured
forth into the outer world. Something, perhaps a lightning stroke and a
flaming tree, perhaps some cave man making fire and consumed on the
instant when he succeeded, had ignited the sheet of rising gas, and the
result was the wall of flame. It was all natural and commonplace, for the
time. There were other upleaping flame sheets in the surrounding region
forever burning--as there are in northern Asia to-day--but Ab knew of
these fires only from Old Mok's tales.
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