Blown to Bits or The Lonely Man of Rakata Part 37

"Ma.s.sa," said the faithful negro. "Isn't you a goin' to take nuffin' wid you? None ob de books or t'ings?"

"No--nothing except the old Bible. All the rest I leave behind. The canoe could not carry much. Besides, we may have little time. Get ready; quick! and follow me."

Moses required no spur. The three men left the cave together. It was so intensely dark that the road could not be distinguished, but the hermit and his man were so familiar with it that they could have followed it blindfold.

On reaching the cave at the harbour, some light was obtained from the fitful outbursts of the volcano, which enabled them to launch the canoe and push off in safety. Then, without saying a word to each other, they coasted along the sh.o.r.e of the island, and, finally, leaving its dangers behind, them, made for the island of Java--poor Spinkie sitting in his accustomed place and looking uncommonly subdued!

Scarcely had they pushed off into Sunda Straits when the volcano burst out afresh. They had happily seized on the only quiet hour that the day offered, and had succeeded, by the aid of the sails, in getting several miles from the island without receiving serious injury, although showers of stones and ma.s.ses of rock of all sizes were falling into the sea around them.

Van der Kemp was so far right in his prophecy that there would be no daylight that day. By that time there should have been light, as it was nearly seven o'clock on the memorable morning of the 27th of August. But now, although the travellers were some miles distant from Krakatoa, the gloom was so impervious that Nigel, from his place in the centre of the canoe, could not see the form of poor Spinkie--which sat clinging to the mast only two feet in front of him--save when a blaze from Perboewatan or one of the other craters lighted up island and ocean with a vivid glare.

At this time the sea began to run very high and the wind increased to a gale, so that the sails of the canoe, small though they were, had to be reduced.

"Lower the foresail, Nigel," shouted the hermit. "I will close-reef it.

Do you the same to the mainsail."

"Ay, ay, sir," was the prompt reply.

Moses and Nigel kept the little craft straight to the wind while the foresail was being reefed, Van der Kemp and the former performing the same duty while Nigel reefed the mainsail.

Suddenly there came a brief but total cessation of the gale, though not of the tumultuous heaving of the waters. During that short interval there burst upon the world a crash and a roar so tremendous that for a few moments the voyagers were almost stunned!

It is no figure of speech to say that the _world_ heard the crash.

Hundreds, ay, thousands of miles did the sound of that mighty upheaval pa.s.s over land and sea to startle, more or less, the nations of the earth.

The effect of a stupendous shock on the nervous system is curiously various in different individuals. The three men who were so near to the volcano at that moment involuntarily looked round and saw by the lurid blaze that an enormous ma.s.s of Krakatoa, rent from top to bottom, was falling headlong into the sea; while the entire heavens were alive with flame, lightning, steam, smoke, and the upward-shooting fragments of the hideous wreck!

The hermit calmly rested his paddle on the deck and gazed around in silent wonder. Nigel, not less smitten with awe, held his paddle with an iron grasp, every muscle quivering with tension in readiness for instant action when the need for action should appear. Moses, on the other hand, turning round from the sight with glaring eyes, resumed paddling with unreasoning ferocity, and gave vent at once to his feelings and his opinion in the sharp exclamation--"Blown to bits!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLOWN TO BITS--PAGE 342.]

CHAPTER XXV.

ADVENTURES OF THE "SUNs.h.i.+NE" AND AN UNEXPECTED REUNION.

We must request the reader to turn back now for a brief period to a very different scene.

A considerable time before the tremendous catastrophe described in the last chapter--which we claim to have recorded without the slightest exaggeration, inasmuch as exaggeration were impossible--Captain David Roy, of the good brig _Suns.h.i.+ne_, received the letter which his son wrote to him while in the jungles of Sumatra.

The captain was seated in the back office of a Batavian merchant at the time, smoking a long clay pipe--on the principle, no doubt, that moderate poisoning is conducive to moderate health!

As he perused the letter, the captain's eyes slowly opened; so did his mouth, and the clay pipe, falling to the floor, was reduced to little pieces. But the captain evidently cared nothing for that. He gave forth a prolonged whistle, got up, smote upon his thigh, and exclaimed with deep-toned emphasis--

"The _rascal_!"

Then he sat down again and re-perused the letter, with a variety of expression on his face that might have recalled the typical April day, minus the tears.

"The rascal!" he repeated, as he finished the second reading of the letter and thrust it into his pocket. "I knew there was somethin' i' the wind wi' that little girl! The memory o' my own young days when I boarded and captured the poetess is strong upon me yet. I saw it in the rascal's eye the very first time they met--an' he thinks I'm as blind as a bat, I'll be bound, with his poetical reef-point-pattering sharpness.

But it's a strange discovery he has made and must be looked into. The young dog! He gives me orders as if he were the owner."

Jumping up, Captain Roy hurried out into the street. In pa.s.sing the outer office he left a message with one of the clerks for his friend the merchant.

"Tell him," he said, "that I'll attend to that little business about the bill when I come back. I'm going to sail for the Keeling Islands this afternoon."

"The Keeling Islands?" exclaimed the clerk in surprise.

"Yes--I've got business to do there. I'll be back, all bein' well, in a week--more or less."

The clerk's eyebrows remained in a raised position for a few moments, until he remembered that Captain Roy, being owner of his s.h.i.+p and cargo, was ent.i.tled to do what he pleased with his own and himself. Then they descended, and he went on with his work, amusing himself with the thought that the most curious beings in the world were seafaring men.

"Mr. Moor," said the captain somewhat excitedly, as he reached the deck of his vessel, "are all the men aboard?"

"All except Jim Sloper, sir."

"Then send and hunt up Jim Sloper at once, for we sail this afternoon for the Keeling Islands."

"Very well, sir."

Mr. Moor was a phlegmatic man; a self-contained and a reticent man. If Captain Roy had told him to get ready to sail to the moon that afternoon, he would probably have said "Very well, sir," in the same tone and with the same expression.

"May I ask, sir, what sort of cargo you expect there?" said Mr. Moor; for to his practical mind some re-arrangement of the cargo already on board might be necessary for the reception of that to be picked up at Keeling.

"The cargo we'll take on board will be a girl," said the captain.

"A what, sir?".

"A girl."

"Very well, sir."

This ended the business part of the conversation. Thereafter they went into details so highly nautical that we shrink from recording them. An amateur detective, in the form of a s.h.i.+pmate, having captured Jim Sloper, the _Suns.h.i.+ne_ finally cleared out of the port of Batavia that evening, shortly before its namesake took his departure from that part of the southern hemisphere.

Favouring gales carried the brig swiftly through Sunda Straits and out into the Indian Ocean. Two days and a half brought her to the desired haven. On the way, Captain Roy took note of the condition of Krakatoa, which at that time was quietly working up its subterranean forces with a view to the final catastrophe; opening a safety-valve now and then to prevent, as it were, premature explosion.

"My son's friend, the hermit of Rakata," said the captain to his second mate, "will find his cave too hot to hold him, I think, when he returns."

"Looks like it, sir," said Mr. Moor, glancing up at the vast clouds which were at that time spreading like a black pall over the re-awakened volcano. "Do you expect 'em back soon, sir?"

"Yes--time's about up now. I shouldn't wonder if they reach Batavia before us."

Arrived at the Keeling Islands, Captain Roy was received, as usual, with acclamations of joy, but he found that he was by no means as well fitted to act the part of a diplomatist as he was to sail a s.h.i.+p. It was, in truth, a somewhat delicate mission on which his son had sent him, for he could not a.s.sert definitely that the hermit actually was Kathleen Holbein's father, and her self-const.i.tuted parents did not relish the idea of letting slip, on a mere chance, one whom they loved as a daughter.

"Why not bring this man who claims to be her father _here_?" asked the perplexed Holbein.