Vacation Under the Volcano - Mary Pope Osborne [6]
Jack pulled out the piece of paper with the Latin title on it:
Vir Fortissimus in Mundo
“Okay,” he said. “We have to find the scroll with this title.”
They began frantically unrolling scrolls one by one. They were all handwritten in Latin.
“Here it is!” said Annie.
She held up a scroll. The words at the top matched the ones on their paper.
“Yay,” said Jack. “I wish I could read Latin so we could find out what the story is.”
“Don’t think about it now!” said Annie. “Let’s go!”
Annie handed the scroll to Jack, then started out of the room.
“Come on,” she said. “Bring it!”
“I just want to check and see what the story’s about,” said Jack.
He put the scroll in the leather bag. Then he flipped through the book on Roman times, looking for a picture of the ancient scroll. In the middle of the book, he found a picture of a volcano erupting over a town.
Under the picture was written:
For 800 years, Mount Vesuvius was a peaceful mountain, rising above the town of Pompeii. Then, at noon on August 24, A.D. 79, it erupted into a deadly volcano.
“Oh, no,” whispered Jack. “August 24, A.D. 79—that’s today! Oh, man, what time is it?” He looked around wildly. “Annie!”
She was gone again.
“Annie!”
Jack grabbed the leather bag. Then, clutching the book, he tore out of the scroll room.
“Annie!” he cried.
“What?” Annie appeared at the door to the dining room.
“V-v-volcano!” stuttered Jack.
“What?” said Annie.
“It’s—it’s coming—a volcano—at noon!” said Jack.
Annie gasped.
“What time is it?” cried Jack.
“So that’s what the soothsayer meant!” Annie said. “The end is near.”
“What time is it?” Jack asked again. He looked around the garden.
He saw something near the mermaid fountain.
“A sundial!” he said. “That’s how the Romans told time!”
Jack and Annie raced to the sundial.
“What time does it say?” said Annie.
“I don’t know,” said Jack.
His hands shook as he turned the pages of the book. He stopped on a picture of a sundial. It showed examples of different times. Jack looked back and forth from the page to the real sundial in the garden.
“Here!” he said. He had found the one that matched. Jack read the writing under the picture:
The shadow on the sundial can hardly be seen at noon.
“Oh, man,” he whispered. He looked at Annie. “The end isn’t near; the end is here.”
Just then he heard a terrible blast. It was the loudest sound he had ever heard.
The next thing Jack knew, he was lying on the stone patio. The patio stones were trembling. A rumbling sound came from the ground.
Jack raised his head. Annie was on the ground, too.
“You okay?” said Annie.
Jack nodded.
Everything was shaking and crashing down around them—pots, plants, the mermaid fountain. Water from the goldfish pond sloshed onto the patio and Jack and Annie.
They both jumped up just as roof tiles began falling into the garden.
“We better get inside!” said Jack.
He grabbed his leather bag. Then he and Annie stumbled into the scroll library.
Giant cracks split the stone floor as Jack and Annie ran to a window and looked out.
Glowing rocks were bursting through the sky above Mount Vesuvius. The whole top of the mountain had blown off.
“What’s happening?” said Annie.
“I’ll check—” said Jack. He pulled out the Roman book. He read aloud from the section about the volcano:
When a volcano erupts, hot melted rock called “magma” is pushed to the surface of the earth. Once it gets outside the volcano, it’s called “lava.”
“Lava! That’s like burning mud!” said Jack.
“It covers everything!” cried Annie.
Jack kept reading:
There was no running lava from Mount Vesuvius. The magma from the volcano cooled so fast that it froze into small grayish white rocks called pumice (PUM-iss). A pumice rock is very light and has holes like a sponge.
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” said Annie.
“Wait, there’s more,” said Jack. He read on:
A great cloud of pumice, ash, and burning rock shot miles into the air. When it rained down on Pompeii, it completely buried the town.
“Oh, man,” said Jack. “This