Vacation Under the Volcano Read online

  “I don’t see her,” said Jack.

  “Who was she?” asked Annie.

  “I don’t know. But she looked nuts to me,” said Jack.

  “What’s the book say about her?” said Annie.

  “She won’t be in there,” said Jack.

  “Just look,” said Annie.

  Jack sighed and pulled out the book again. To his surprise he found a picture of the old woman. He read aloud:

  In Roman times, there were people who could see into the future and warn others about what they saw. These people were called soothsayers.

  “See? She wasn’t nuts,” said Annie. “She was giving us a warning. Just like my nightmare.”

  “Don’t pay attention to that stuff,” said Jack. “Soothsayers are from olden times. People from our time don’t believe in them.”

  “Well, I do,” said Annie. “I’m sure something bad is about to happen.”

  Jack sighed. “Come on, we have to keep going. We have to find the lost library. Then we’ll leave at once.”

  “We’d better,” said Annie.

  They left the fruit stand and kept walking through the forum. Soon they came to a large building. Crowds were streaming in and out of it.

  “Is that a library?” said Annie.

  “Let’s look,” said Jack. He looked in the Roman book. He found a picture of the building and read aloud:

  Most people in Pompeii did not have a bathtub at home, so they went daily to the Public Baths. Not only did people wash at the baths, but they also swam, played sports, and visited with their friends.

  “That sounds like going to the pool,” said Annie. “But it’s not a library. Let’s keep walking.”

  They kept walking, until soon they came to a fancy building with large columns.

  “Is that a library?” said Annie. Jack found a picture of the building and read aloud:

  The people of Pompeii believed that many gods and goddesses ruled the world. This is the Temple of Jupiter, their chief god. In this temple, they prayed to Jupiter and offered him gifts. Today, we call the stories about Jupiter and other gods and goddesses “myths.”

  “My teacher read myths to us,” said Jack. “I remember stories about Hercules and Apollo.”

  “Yeah, my teacher read them, too,” said Annie. “I like stories about Venus and Medusa.”

  “Hey, maybe the story we’re looking for is a myth,” said Jack.

  “Right,” said Annie. “Come on, hurry. Let’s keep looking.”

  They left the forum and turned onto a wide street. Jack gasped. In front of them was an incredible sight.

  Tall warriors with huge muscles were walking in a line. They wore fancy helmets and carried heavy shields.

  Soldiers, thought Jack.

  Then he saw that the warriors’ feet were chained together, and guards walked with them.

  “Gladiators!” he whispered.

  Jack pulled out his book and found a picture of the strong men. He read aloud:

  Gladiators were slaves or criminals who fought in the amphitheater (AM-fuh- thee-uh-ter). They were forced to fight each other or wild animals like lions or bears. The people of Pompeii thought a gladiator fight was great fun.

  “That’s not fun!” said Annie. “No wonder I think it’s weird here.”

  “No kidding,” said Jack. “That’s not like our time at all.”

  Jack and Annie watched as the guards led the gladiators away. They went toward a building that looked like an outdoor stadium.

  “That must be the amphitheater,” said Jack. “Let’s check it out.”

  “Oh, all right, but it’s not a library,” said Annie.

  He and Annie started up the street toward the amphitheater. A large crowd had gathered near the entrance. Men and women cheered as the gladiators marched inside.

  Jack and Annie started to follow them, but a guard held up his spear.

  “No children allowed,” he said stiffly. “Run along now.”

  “Yes, run along! Run for your lives!” came a raspy, hissing voice.

  Jack and Annie whirled around. It was the soothsayer. She was waving her bony finger at them.

  “Oh, no! Her again!” said Jack. “Let’s get away from here.” He started to take off.

  “Wait!” said Annie. “I want to talk to her!”

  “Are you crazy?” said Jack.

  But before he could stop her, Annie ran up to the soothsayer.

  Jack watched from a distance as the woman talked to Annie.

  “Jack, come here! Quick!” called Annie.

  “Oh, brother,” said Jack. He sighed and went over to Annie and the soothsayer.

  “Tell him,” said Annie.

  The woman fixed her gaze on Jack.

  “All the streams of Pompeii have dried up,” she said.

  “Remember the stream near the olive grove?” said Annie.

  “So what?” said Jack. “Maybe they just need rain.”

  “No,” said Annie. “There’re more scary things. Tell him.”

  “All the birds have flown away,” the soothsayer said.

  Jack just stared at her.

  “She said that all the rats left, too,” said Annie. “And the cows are making strange noises!”

  “But why?” said Jack.

  “The sea is boiling hot,” the old woman said. “And the ground shakes and speaks.”

  “See, I told you!” Annie said to Jack.

  “But why are these things happening?” Jack asked the soothsayer.

  “Because the end is near,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “We have to leave now!” said Annie.

  “But what about the library?” said Jack.

  “What library?” the soothsayer asked.

  “Show her the story title, Jack,” said Annie.

  Jack took the piece of paper from his bag. He showed the Latin writing to the soothsayer. “A book with this title is in a library in this town,” he said.

  “So?” the old woman said.

  “So we have to save it!” said Annie. She pulled out her secret library card.

  The soothsayer stared for a moment at the card and the shimmering letters on it. Then she smiled warmly at Jack and Annie.

  “Yes, I understand now,” she said. “The only library I know is in the house of Brutus.” She pointed to a large villa at the end of the street. “Look there. Quickly.”

  “Will Brutus mind?” said Jack.

  “Brutus and his household are all in Rome,” the soothsayer said. “That is merely their vacation villa.”

  “But we can’t just go in and take something of theirs,” said Jack.

  The old woman shook her head sadly. “After today, there will be nothing left in Pompeii,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

  Jack felt a chill go down his spine.

  “Go and get what you came here for,” said the soothsayer. “Then leave at once.”

  “Thanks!” said Jack. He grabbed Annie’s hand. “Come on!”

  “Thanks!” Annie called to the old woman. “You should leave, too!” she added.

  Then Annie and Jack started running to the vacation villa. They ran as fast as they could.

  Jack and Annie ran up to the front entrance of the villa. Jack pushed the door open.

  “Go in. Hurry,” said Annie.

  They slipped into the main hall.

  “Hello!” Annie called.

  There was no answer. The place seemed empty.

  The main hall had a large opening in the ceiling. Below it was a small stone pool filled with water. Jack looked at it carefully.

  “Oh, I bet rain comes through the hole,” said Jack. “Then it lands in that pool so they can use it for their water.”

  He started to take out his notebook to make a note.

  “There’s no time, Jack!” said Annie. “We have to look in all the rooms for books!”

  “Okay, okay, calm down,” said Jack. He put away his notebook and followed Annie.

  “Books
? Books?” she said, peering into a room off the hall. She moved to the next room. “Books? Books?” Then she moved on to the next.

  Jack trailed behind her. Even though she had already checked the rooms, he took a quick peek in each of them. He wanted to see what a house in Roman times looked like. He’d write notes later.

  The first two rooms had wooden beds. The walls had pictures painted on them. The floors were covered with tiny pieces of colored stone.

  The third room had a low table with silver dishes on it. Three sloping couches were placed around the table. The couches were covered with pillows.

  “This must be the dining room,” said Jack. “People from Roman times lay down on couches while they ate. Did you know that?”

  He looked around for Annie. Where was she?

  “Jack! Come here!” Annie called.

  Jack followed her voice. She was in a garden off the dining room. It had a stone patio, palm trees, and grape vines. In the middle was a pond with a mermaid fountain. Goldfish swam in the water.

  “Look, there’s another room!” said Annie. She moved to the door of a room off the garden.

  She opened the door and peeked inside.

  Jack looked with her. Along the walls of the room were long shelves with rolls of paper on them.

  “Rats!” said Annie. “No books.” She closed the door. “No books in this whole villa. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Just a minute,” said Jack. “I have an idea.”

  He pulled out his book on Roman times. He found a section called WRITING. He read:

  Romans used pens made of small reeds. Their ink came partly from the black ink of octopuses. They wrote their “books” on scrolls of papyrus (puh-PI-rus) paper.

  “Aha!” said Jack. “That’s a library of scrolls! I bet our ancient lost story is in there!”

  Jack threw open the door to the room of scrolls. He and Annie rushed in and ran over to the shelves.

  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 is a major disaster!”

  “It’s getting dark,” said Annie.

  Jack looked out again. A thick black cloud was spreading over the earth like an umbrella. The sun vanished as the sky turned smoky gray.

  “That must be the cloud of pumice and ash!” said Jack.

  Just then the ground trembled again. Chunks of plaster from the ceiling fell on the scrolls.

  “We have to get out of here!” said Annie.

  They ran from the scroll library into the garden. Ash and pumice began to fall.

  “We have to cover our heads!” said Jack.

  They hurried from the garden into the dining room.

  “Look! Pillows!” said Annie. “Let’s put them on our heads!”

  They hurried to the couches beside the table and each grabbed a pillow.

  “Tie it around your head with your belt!” said Jack.

  They both pulled off the belts from around their tunics. Then they tied on the pillows, like giant hats.

  A chunk of ceiling crashed down near them.

  “Let’s get out of here!” said Jack.

  They stepped over pieces of fallen roof tiles and ran into the main hall. They pushed open the front door.

  A blast of heat and dust nearly knocked them over. And when they stepped outside, pumice rained down onto their pillow hats.

  “Run!” cried An
nie.

  They ran from the vacation villa into the dark, burning streets.

  In the distance, fire burst from Mount Vesuvius. Burning rocks and fiery ash fell from the sky.

  The hot, dusty air smelled like rotten eggs as Jack and Annie rushed down the street. In the forum, everyone—shoppers, soldiers, gladiators, fruit sellers—was running in every direction.

  Stalls had collapsed. Carts were sliding.

  Jack froze. He didn’t know where to go.

  “That way!” shouted Annie.

  Jack followed her as they ran past the Temple of Jupiter. Its mighty columns had fallen, and its walls were crumbling.

  They ran past the Public Baths just as its roof caved in.

  “Which way now?” shouted Annie.

  “The tree house is in the olive grove!” Jack said as they kept running.

  “The olive grove and the bridge are near the street with all those open shops!” said Annie. “Remember the bridge?”

  Jack looked up at the erupting mountain. A red-hot cloud billowed over it. Fires burned on its slopes.

  “Head in the direction of Mount Vesuvius!” he said. “It was behind us as we came into Pompeii.”

  “Right!” cried Annie.

  So while others ran away from Mount Vesuvius, Jack and Annie ran toward it.

  On the street with the open shops, baskets and broken jars rolled over the cracked stones.

  Jack and Annie ran past the bakery and the shoe shop. They ran past the butcher shop and barbershop. All the shops were empty. Their owners had fled.

  The closer they got to the volcano, the more the ground trembled. The darker and dustier it got.

  “This is just like my nightmare!” cried Annie.

  Jack choked on the rotten fumes. His eyes watered.

  “Look! The olive grove!” shouted Annie. “The tree house is just over there! Come on!”

  Jack could hardly see, but he followed Annie. They left the street and ran to the dried-up stream near the olive grove.

  “Where’s the bridge?” cried Annie.

  They looked around wildly. The bridge had vanished.