The man who had just appeared was waving his arms.
“You cannot go higher!” he declared, and drawing near to Tonio, he let the moon discover him through the olive branches. His face was gaunt, his eyes bulging as if with some wasting sickness. “Go back down. Can’t you see you’re in danger?” he cried out.
“Go on,” said Tonio to the guide.
But the guide had stopped.
And then the man pointed to a great mound that stood before him.
“Last night that was a grove of trees as flat as this,” he said. “I saw it rise and buckle within a matter of hours. I tell you, you are courting death to go higher.”
He ducked as the rain of stones came flying again, and this time Tonio felt the trickle of blood on the side of his face though he didn’t hear or feel the weight of the stone that had struck him.
“Go on,” he said to the guide.
The guide dug in his staff. He pulled Tonio a few yards farther up the slope. Then he stopped. He was gesturing, but over the noise of the mountain Tonio couldn’t hear what he was saying. Again he shouted go on. But he could see now the man was finished and nothing would make him continue. In Neapolitan, he begged Tonio to stop. He released him from the leather thong, and when Tonio started up the slope hand over hand, his fingers digging into the dirt, the man cried out in Italian that Tonio could understand:
“Signore, it spills lava tonight. Look, above. You cannot go farther!”
Tonio lay on the ground, his right arm up to shield his eyes, his left cupped loosely over his mouth, and dimly through the particles of ash that hung in the air, he could see the faint glimmer of a stream defining the slope to his right as the lava poured down and away, disappearing into the amorphous shapes of the overgrowth. Tonio stared at it without moving. More ash belched from above, and there came the stones again falling on his back and his head. He covered his head with both hands.
“Signore!” screamed the guide.
“Get away from me!” Tonio cried out. And without looking back to see if he was obeyed, he rose on all fours and ran up the incline, gaining speed as he grabbed for roots and scorched tree limbs, digging the toes of his boots into the soft crush beneath him.
Again came the shower of rocks; it was in a rhythm that these bursts were occurring, but he could not time it, nor did he care, dropping down again and again to protect his face and rising as soon as he could, the fire above lighting up the sky even through the haze of the ash which had become a veritable cloud over him.
A fit of coughing stopped him. He ran on. But now he had his handkerchief over his mouth and he was going slower. His hands were bruised, so were his knees, and when the rocks showered down on him this time, they cut his forehead and his right shoulder.
The mountain gave another roar, the rumble collecting into a greater and greater sound until it was once more that appalling bellow. The night was again fully illuminated.
And he saw beyond the half dead trees that lay ahead that he had reached the foot of the giant cone itself. He was almost to the summit of Vesuvius.
He reached out for the earth above, taking it in tight handfuls as it fell away, pebbles and rocks rolling back into his mouth, and suddenly he felt the ground itself moving! It was heaved upward. The raging bellow deafened him. And the smoke and ash swirled about the great blinding flash that showed the high barren cone slanting heavenward. Again he went forward. He groped for the tree that he could see only a few yards ahead, a last gnarled and tortured sentinel. But falling down, he felt himself thrown up again as with a tremendous crack, the tree itself split open.
Half the trunk swung to the right, seemed to catch itself. And then it crashed in a thunderous crackling. A seething steam rose from the cracks opening everywhere. And he found himself scrambling desperately backwards.
He slid against the earth. He felt the dirt in his mouth, the dead leaves caked against his eyelids. And even blinded as he was, he still saw the red flash as if from an explosion. But