As if to endorse these words there was once more a deafening explosion,
the blood-red glow toward which they were being driven suddenly flashed
out into a burst of light so dazzling that all present covered their
blinded eyes; a spurt of fiery blocks of incandescent stone curved over
and fell into the boiling sea, and as the occupants of the deck were
driven prostrate by the shock which followed, silence and darkness once
more reigned.
"Much hurt, sir?"
Oliver Lane heard those words quite plainly, and lay wondering who it
was that was hurt, and why he did not answer so kindly an inquiry.
Then, as a hand was laid upon his shoulder, he grasped the fact that it
was the mate who was speaking, and that he was the object of the
sailor's solicitude.
"I--I don't know," he said, making an effort to sit up, and succeeding.
"Whatever is the matter? My head aches a good deal."
"No wonder, my lad, seeing how you were pitched against the mast. But
you won't hurt now. I doctored it as well as I could. It bled pretty
freely, and that will keep the wound wholesome."
"Bled?" said the young fellow wonderingly, as he raised his hand, and
found that a thick bandage was round his forehead.
"Yes; we were all thrown down when she struck, but you got the worst of
it."
"She struck?--the ship? Then we have all been wrecked?"
"Well, yes," said the mate, giving his head a vicious kind of rub; "I
suppose we must call it a wreck. Anyhow, we're ashore."
"And it isn't so dark?" said Oliver, rising to his feet and feeling so
giddy that he caught at the nearest rope to save himself from falling.
"No, it isn't so dark, for the clouds are passing away. We shall have
daylight directly."
"Morning?"
"No; it's quite late to-morrow afternoon," said the mate grimly.
"But I don't hear that thundering now?"
"No; it's all over seemingly, thank goodness," said the mate, as his
injured companion looked wonderingly up at the thick, blackened clouds
still hanging overhead, and listened quite expectant for the next
terrible detonation. "I began to think we were going to be carried
along full speed into some awful fiery hole on the top of that wave, and
that when we struck the water was going on to put out the fire, and I
suppose it did."
"What?" cried Lane, looking round him, and then at the mate, to see if
he were in his right senses.
"Yes, you may look, Mr Lane," he said. "I'm all right, only a bit
scared; I know what I'm saying, and as soon as it get's light enough
you'll see."
"But I don't understand."
"No, nor anybody else, sir, but Nature, who's been having a regular turn
up. I s'pose you know that we were in for a great eruption?"
"Yes, of course."
"And somehow mixed up with the storm, there was an earthquake?"
"No, I did not grasp that, only that we were being carried toward a
burning mountain; but I don't see any glow from the volcano now."
"No; it's all out, and I ought to have said a sea-quake. It seems to me
it was like this: a great place opened somewhere, out of which the flame
and smoke and thunderings came, till it had half spent its strength, and
then the sea mastered it, and ran into the great hole and put out the
fire, but it took all the sea to do it."
"I say, Mr Rimmer," exclaimed Oliver Lane, staring hard at the mate,
"did you get a heavy blow on the head when we came ashore?"
"No; I had all my trouble before the shock came that sent you down, I
mean when we struck I'm as clear as a bell now, sir, and know what I'm
saying."
"But the sea--I don't hear any waves now. There are no breakers, the
deck is not flooded, and yet you say we are ashore?"
"You can't see any breakers, and they can't," said the mate, pointing to
a group dimly seen through the gloom clustered together and looking over
the vessel's side, "because it's as I tell you, the earth opened with
that eruption, and the seas all ran down the hole."
"Mr Rimmer!"
"That's right, sir. We're ashore, but it's on the bottom of the sea."
"Nonsense!" cried Oliver Lane.
"Oh, very well, look over the side, then. Where's the water? I've been
looking and listening, and there isn't a drop to be heard; it's too dark
to see anything yet. Now, listen again."
"I can hear nothing," said Oliver.
"No, not a splash, and the great volcano is put out. That isn't smoke
which makes it so dark, but steam rising from the big hole in the
earth."
"Oh, impossible!" cried Lane.
"All right, sir, then make it possible by explaining it some other way.
But, as far as I can make out, our voyage is over, and we've got to walk
all the way home, and carry our traps."
"Wait till it gets light," said Lane confidently, "and you'll see that
you are wrong. Who's that, Drew?"
"Yes. Are you better?"
"Oh, yes, only a little giddy. Where's Panton?"
"Over yonder. I say, what do you think of this? Isn't it awful! You
know we are ashore."
"Mr Rimmer says we're on the bottom of the sea, with all the water run
out."
"Well, it does seem like it, but that's impossible, of course. We're
not in a lake."
"I don't know where we are gentlemen," said the mate, "only that I feel
like a fish out of water, and I'm quite in the dark."
"Wherever we are," said Drew, "we have been in the midst of an awful
natural convulsion, and if we can escape with life, I shall feel glad to
have been a witness of such a scene."
"I'm thinking about our poor ship, sir," said the mate. "She's of more
consequence to me than Nature in convulsions. Oh, if these clouds would
only rise and the light come so that we could see!"
"It is coming," cried Lane. "It is certainly clearer over yonder. How
still everything is!"
_Scree-auh_!
A long-drawn, piercing, and harsh cry from a distance.
"What's that?" cried Drew.
"Fish," said the mate, drily. "Found there's no more water, and it's
going to die."
"Mr Rimmer," cried Lane, "what nonsense!"
"Nonsense? Why, I've many a time heard fish sing out when they've been
dragged on board."
"That was a bird," said Lane, as he shaded his eyes to try and pierce
the gloom around them. "There it goes again."
For the cry was repeated, and then answered from behind them, and
followed directly after by a piping whistle and a chirp.
"We're ashore with birds all about us," said Oliver Lane decisively. We
were carried right in by that earthquake wave, and the water has retired
and left us stranded.
"Have it your own way, gentlemen," said the mate. "It's all the same to
me whether my ship's left stranded at the bottom of a dry sea or right
away on land. She's no use now--that's plain enough."
Just then the darkness closed in again, and save for the murmur of
voices in the obscurity, the stillness was terrible. So utterly dark
did it become that anything a yard away was quite invisible, and once
more, suffering one and all from a sensation of dread against which it
was impossible to fight, the occupants of the deck stood waiting to
encounter whatever was next to come.
Oliver Lane was at the age when a youth begins to feel that he is about
to step into a fresh arena--that of manhood, but with a good deal that
is boyish to hold him back. And in those moments, oppressed and
overcome as he was by the long-continued darkness, he felt a strong
disposition to search out a hand so as to cling to whoever was nearest,
but he mastered the desire, and then uttered a sigh of satisfaction, for
Drew, his companion, suddenly thrust a hand beneath his arm and pressed
towards him.
"Company's good," he whispered, "even if you're going to be hanged, they
say; let's keep together, Lane, for I'm not ashamed to say I'm in a
regular stew."
"So's everybody," said the mate frankly. "I've been through a good deal
at sea, gentlemen, but this is about the most awful thing I ever did
encounter. I wouldn't care if we were only able to see what was to
happen next."
A cheer broke out from the crew at that moment, for right overhead the
blackness opened, and a clear, bright ray of light shot down upon the
deck, quivered, faded, shot out again, and then rapidly grew broader and
broader.
"Blue sky!" yelled one of the sailors frantically as a patch appeared;
and in his intense excitement he dashed off into the rapid steps of a
hornpipe.
"Bravo, my lads!" cried the mate, who was as excited as the men. "Cheer
again. Three cheers for the bit of blue!"
The men shouted till they were hoarse, paused, and then cheered again,
while Panton turned now to where his friends were standing with the
mate, and with the tears welling in his eyes, began to shake hands with
first one and then another, all reciprocating and beginning in their
hysterical delight to repeat the performance double-handed now, as the
light grew broader and clearer. A soft, warm mellow glow, which grew
and grew till the huge dense steam clouds were seen to be rolling slowly
away in three directions, in the fourth--the north evidently, from the
direction of the golden rays of light--there was one vast bank of
vapour, at first black, then purple, and by degrees growing brighter,
till the men burst forth cheering wildly again at the mass of splendour
before them. For far as eye could reach all was purple, orange, gold
and crimson of the most dazzling sheen, then darkness once more; for the
sun, of which they had a momentary glimpse, was blotted out by the
rolling masses of cloud which were floating away.
But it was the darkness of an evening in the tropics. The light had
been, and sent hope and rest into their breasts, giving them the
knowledge of their position as they lay stranded upon an open plain with
the terrible convulsion of nature apparently at an end.