The next lesson required more patience and gave more abundant reward.  I found a great raised platform on which stood a castellated rock, more than twenty feet square, that had been built up particle by particle into a perfect solid by deposits from the fiery flood.  In the center was a brilliant orange-colored throat that went down into the bowels of the earth.  That was not the geyser—­it was only the trump through which the archangel was to blow.  I had heard the preliminary tuning of the instrument.

The guide book said the grand play of this “Castle” geyser began from eight to thirty hours after a previous exhibition, and was preceded by jets of water fifteen to twenty feet high, and that these continued five or six hours before the grand eruption.  I hovered near the grand stand till the full thirty hours and the six predictive hours were over, and then, as the thunder above roared threateningly and the rain fell suggestively, I took a rubber coat and camped on the trail of that famous spouter.

Geysers are more than a trifle freaky.  “Old Faithful” is a notable exception.  Every sixty-five minutes, with almost the regularity of star time, he throws his column of hissing water one hundred and fifty feet high.  Others are irregular, sometimes playing every three hours for a few times, and then taking a rest for three or more days.  This Castle geyser is not registered to be quiet more than thirty hours, nor to indulge in preparatory spouts for more than six hours.  When I finally camped to watch it out all these premonitory symptoms had been duly exhibited.  I first carefully noted the frequency and height of the spouts, that any change might foretell the grand finale.  There were ten spouts to the minute, and an average height of twenty feet.  Hours went by with no hint of a change:  ten to the minute, twenty feet in height.  People by the dozen came and asked when it would go off.  I said, “Liable to go any minute; it is long past due now.”  Stage loads of tourists, scheduled to run on time, drove up, waited a few minutes, and drove on, as if the grand object of the trip was to make time—­not to see the grandeur they had come a thousand miles to enjoy.  A photographer set up his camera to catch a shadow of the great display.  He stood, sometimes air-bulb in hand, an hour or two, then folded his camera tent and stole away.  Five hours had passed and night was near.  Everybody was gone.  I lay down on the ground to convince myself that I was perfectly patient.  I attained so nearly to Nirvana that a little ground squirrel came and ran over me, kissing my hand in a most friendly way.