THE ISLANDS VANISH.
Nat sat upright with a strange singing sound in his ears. It was
insufferably hot. He fairly panted as he opened his eyes. The sweat ran
off him in rivulets. For an instant recollection paused, and then
rushed back in an overwhelming flood.
“We were in that channel between those two queer islands,” mused Nat;
“and we—gracious, where are the islands?”
He had staggered dizzily to his feet and was looking about him. He knew
he could not have lain senseless very long, for his garments were still
wet, despite the intense heat. But the islands were nowhere to be seen.
It was still partially dark, a murky twilight replacing the former
deeper blackness. But an indefinable change had taken place, somehow,
in the atmosphere. Nat drew in his breath with difficulty. It seemed to
scorch his lungs.
He glanced over the side of the craft and then drew back with an
alarmed cry. The water all about them was bubbling and eddying
furiously. A shower of spray from one of the miniature waterspouts
struck Nat in the face. It was this that caused his exclamation and
made him step back hastily, just as if, in fact, he had been struck a
blow in the face.
The water was boiling hot!
Where it had spattered on the lad’s skin it had instantly raised
blisters.
“Well, we certainly have landed in a surprising sort of fix this time,”
muttered Nat to himself.
He bent over Joe. The lad had not yet regained his senses. But he was
breathing heavily, and this stilled a dreaded fear, which, for a moment
had almost caused Nat’s heart to stop beating.
“This air is suffocating,” gasped Nat presently. “It smells like it
does when they are fumigating a room.”
He ran his tongue around his dry mouth in an effort to moisten it, for
it felt parched and cracked. The reek of sulphur in the air, too,
caused his throat to contract and his nose and eyes to tingle
unmercifully.
But this stench also told Nat something. It furnished him with a
partial explanation of the extraordinary occurrences that, as it
seemed, were not yet over.
“This whole disturbance is volcanic,” reasoned the boy. “That is the
cause of this awful sulphur smell. But that doesn’t account altogether
for the sudden disappearance of those islands. I wonder——” But here he
broke off his meditations.
Joe was plainly in need of immediate attention, and Nat devoted his
efforts to trying to raise the recumbent lad. He wanted to get him
below to the cabin, where there was a well-stocked medicine chest and a
supply of reasonably cool water.
But, weakened as he was, Nat couldn’t accomplish the task.
“What’s the matter with me, anyhow?” he asked himself half angrily.
“This sulphur stuff must have knocked all my senses out of my head.
Where’s Ding-dong, I wonder?”
He rang the engine-room call sharply. But there was no response. No
Ding-dong appeared.
“Maybe the signal is out of whack,” muttered Nat, who had noticed some
time before that the engine had stopped running. “Guess I’ll go below
and see what’s the matter.”
It was the work of an instant to reach the hatchway leading below, and
dive into the engine room. What met Nat’s eyes there made him jump
almost as violently as he had when the boiling water struck him.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, as his gaze fell on the unconscious
engineer, “if this isn’t worse and more of it. Poor Ding-dong is
knocked out, too; cut on the head. It doesn’t seem to be a bad gash,
but it has deprived him of his senses. Well, if this isn’t a fine
kettle of fish! In the midst of a boiling sea with two unconscious
chaps on my hands!”
Ding-dong stirred and moved uneasily as Nat examined his wound.
“Let me be!” he muttered peevishly; “lemme be.”
“That’s just what I’m not going to do,” rejoined Nat cheerfully.
On the wall of the engine room was a tap leading from the drinking
water tanks of the craft. Nat saturated his handkerchief under this
faucet and bathed Ding-dong’s wound. Then he applied the water
plentifully to the lad’s face, and, opening his shirt, doused him with
it.
Under this treatment, the unconscious lad sat up and opened his eyes.
“Hullo, Nat!” he exclaimed, like one awakening from a long sleep.
“What’s up? What on earth has happened? Where are we? What makes it so
hot?”
As usual, under strong excitement, Ding-dong forgot to stutter, as Joe
termed it.
“I can only answer two of your questions,” replied Nat. “‘What’s up’ is
that poor Joe is lying senseless on the bridge. He was washed overboard
in that chasm. You’ve got to try to help me get him to the cabin. ‘What
on earth has happened,’ is this: We have, apparently, passed through
the chasm, and the islands have vanished in some mysterious fashion,
although we can’t be far from where they were. The sea all about us is
boiling hot, and I guess we are in the very core of some strange
volcanic disturbance or other.”
“Cc-c-c-crickets!” sputtered Ding-dong, rising dizzily but pluckily to
his feet, “we do seem to run into some mighty queer adventures, don’t
we? Come on. I’ll give you a hand with poor old Joe. But, by the way,
what have you been doing all this time?”
“Oh, I-I-guess I went to sleep for a while, too,” responded Nat, rather
confusedly, and without mentioning his heroic rescue of Joe from the
waters of the rift.
He was spared answering further questions, for it required their united
strength to carry Joe to the cabin. Ordinarily, this would not have
been so, but the heat was so terrific that it had sapped the strength
of both boys till they had but half of their accustomed energy and vim.
Joe was laid on a locker and restoratives applied. Presently he was
able to sit up, and then out came the story of Nat’s rescue. The lad
colored brilliantly as Joe and Ding-dong both poured out their praise
unstintedly.
“But, say,” exclaimed Joe, rubbing his head and looking suddenly
bewildered, “I’ve got an awful bump here. I guess I must have hit my
head before your brave——”
“I hit it for you to keep you quiet,” burst out Nat; “and if you don’t
shut up now, I’ll bust it again.”
Going on deck, the three lads found that it had grown lighter. But the
water still boiled about them furiously. Clouds of sulphurous steam
arose from it, making them cough and choke.
In the brighter light they had quite an extensive view of their
surroundings. But, of the islands, not a trace appeared. They had
vanished as if they had been the fabric of a dream.
“By George! I have it!” cried Joe suddenly. “Those islands were of
volcanic origin. Didn’t you notice how bare and bleak they were? I’ll
bet that in this disturbance, whatever it is, they have subsided as
suddenly as they arose.”
“Such cases are not uncommon,” rejoined Nat. “Only last year, Captain
Rose, of the missionary schooner _Galilee_, of San Francisco, reported
seeing an island of some extent arise and then vanish again before his
very eyes.”
“W-w-w-well,” sputtered Ding-dong, with a grin and a return to his old
manner, “w-w-w-we can r-r-r-report the same thing; but as t-t-this
isn’t a go-go-gospel schooner maybe nobody w-w-w-will believe us.”
“My suggestion is, that we get the engines going and get out of this
without delay,” said Nat.
“Here, too,” agreed Joe Hartley. “There’s nothing to hang about here
for.”
An examination of the engines showed that, in falling, Ding-dong had
shut off the gasolene supply valve, and had thus stopped the motors.
This was soon remedied and the motors set going again. As the _Nomad_
cut her way through the boiling sea where lately the twin islands had
stood, they all felt like raising a fervent prayer of thanks to
Providence for their wonderful deliverance.
“I’ve often heard of such things on the Pacific, but I never expected
to live through one,” was Nat’s comment.
“Nor I,” was Joe’s rejoinder; “and I don’t know that I should care to
repeat the experience. But hullo!” he broke off suddenly, “what’s that?
No, not over there; off this way!”
He pointed excitedly to a small black object, which, in the now clear
atmosphere, was visible at the distance of about a mile to the
southeast of them.
“It’s a boat,” announced Nat, after a brief scrutiny of the strange
object.