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They had finished the second hand, when the Giant looked at his furnace.

“There, that’s what I get for loafin’,” he said, “my furnace is ‘most out.”

After he had thrown about a thousand shovelfuls or so on the fire, which must have taken him all of five minutes, the Giant turned to Marmaduke.

“I haven’t shown you my trick,” he said, “how would you like to see me make a volcano blow up?”

Marmaduke was a little frightened, but it was too good a chance to miss.

“Yes, thank you,” he replied, “that would be rather nice.”

“Well, sir, watch then.”

And the Giant raised his hands to his mouth and shouted at the little gnomes:–

“Hurry, more coal now–make it snappy!”

And the gnomes ran back and forth from the coal-piles to the tunnels, trundling their wheelbarrows, until their legs twinkled under them as fast as the little lights in their foreheads.

Soon the coal-pile was as high as a black mountain, and the Giant began to shovel, shovel away, throwing the coal into the mouth of the furnace which was as high as the Woolworth Tower. Then he closed the door and watched.

The flames began to leap, and the steam began to hiss, and soon the great furnace began to shake all over with the steam imprisoned inside, just like a man with chills and fever. Then all-of-a-sudden, from somewhere above them on the outside of the Earth, they heard a great roar.

“There goes old Vesuvius,” said the Giant.

There was another great roar.

“And there’s Aetna and Cotopaxi,” he added, “now for Old Chimborazo!”

Marmaduke remembered enough of his geography to know that the Giant was calling off the names of the great volcanoes of the world. It was indeed very thrilling! But he really had hardly time to think, for he had to hold on so tight to the rope hair of the Giant’s beard; and if the three little Chinamen hadn’t kept tight hold, too, of their flatirons, they would have been blown to the ceiling of the pit, the furnace and the whole place shook so. As it was they were tossed head over heels, their feet flying in the air, but their hands held on to the flatirons like ships to their anchors, and they were saved.

The Giant turned to Marmaduke.

“Have you the time?” he asked, “I’ve broken the watch my grandfather gave me.”

Marmaduke took out his little Ingersoll with one hand, meanwhile holding on with the other to the beard.

“It’s just twelve,” he informed the Giant.

“Noon again–my, how Time does fly!” the Giant exclaimed. “It seems as if yesterday were the first noon, and yet that was a couple of million years ago. But we’ve had only six volcanoes. We must have six more for a noon whistle, so the little gnomes will know it’s time for lunch.”

There were six more gigantic explosions up on the outside of the earth, then the little gnomes all stopped work, turned up their wheelbarrows, sat down on them in tailor-fashion, took out their lunch-pails, and began to eat. Then the three little Chinamen perched on their irons and took out some bowls and chopsticks. It made the Giant laugh to see their funny antics.

“Ho! ho!” exclaimed he, but he turned away his head in another direction before he laughed.

“I’m laughing in that direction,” he explained, “because there’s a city full of wicked people up there, on the Earth outside. When I laugh, it’s an Earthquake, you see, and I don’t want to shake up the good people. Now”–he pointed in another direction–“the town of Five Corners is up about there. You wouldn’t want me to try an Earthquake on it, would you?”

Marmaduke thought this was very kind and considerate of the Giant, to try to spare the people in the town where he went to buy candy and to see circuses and things. Then he had an idea.

“Couldn’t you shake up the ground a mile or two west of that–see,” he pointed his finger at the roof of the pit, “about there. That’s where Fatty lives, over near Wally’s Creek, and it would do him good to be shaken up by a earthquake–just a little one.”