For he was on the edge of a vast hole in the bottom of the sea , up which was rushing and roaring clear steam enough to work all the engines in the world at once ; so clear , indeed , that it was quite light at moments ; and Tom could see almost up to the top of the water above , and down below into the pit for nobody knows how far . But , as soon as he bent his head over the edge , he got such a rap on the nose from pebbles , that he jumped back again ; for the steam , as it rushed up , rasped away the sides of the hole , and hurled it up into the sea in a shower of mud and gravel and ashes ; and then it spread all around , and sank again , and covered in the dead fish so fast , that before Tom had stood there five minutes he was buried in silt up to his ankles , and began to be afraid that he should have been buried alive . And perhaps he would have been , but that while he was thinking , the whole piece of ground on which he stood was torn off and blown upwards , and away flew Tom a mile up through the sea , wondering what was coming next . At last he stopped -- thump ! and found himself tight in the legs of the most wonderful bogy which he had ever seen . It had I do n't know how many wings , as big as the sails of a windmill , and spread out in a ring like them ; and with them it hovered over the steam which rushed up , as a ball hovers over the top of a fountain . And for every wing above it had a leg below , with a claw like a comb at the tip , and a nostril at the root ; and in the middle it had no stomach and one eye ; and as for its mouth , that was all on one side , as the madreporiform tubercle in a star - fish is . Well , it was a very strange beast ; but no stranger than some dozens which you may see . `` What do you want here , '' it cried quite peevishly , `` getting in my way ? '' and it tried to drop Tom : but he held on tight to its claws , thinking himself safer where he was . So Tom told him who he was , and what his errand was . And the thing winked its one eye , and sneered : `` I am too old to be taken in in that way . You are come after gold - - I know you are . '' `` Gold ! What is gold ? '' And really Tom did not know ; but the suspicious old bogy would not believe him . But after a while Tom began to understand a little . For , as the vapours came up out of the hole , the bogy smelt them with his nostrils , and combed them and sorted them with his combs ; and then , when they steamed up through them against his wings , they were changed into showers and streams of metal . From one wing fell gold-dust , and from another silver , and from another copper , and from another tin , and from another lead , and so on , and sank into the soft mud , into veins and cracks , and hardened there . Whereby it comes to pass that the rocks are full of metal .
But , all XXXXX a sudden , somebody shut off the steam below , and the hole was left empty in an instant : and then down rushed the water into the hole , in such a whirlpool that the bogy spun round and round as fast as a teetotum .
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