Part 12 (1/2)

”No more nor de man ob de moon, Ma.s.sa Nadgel,” said Moses, with an air at once so truthful and so solemn that the young man gave it up with a laugh of resignation.

On arriving at Perboewatan, and ascending its sides, they at last became aware of the approach of the excursion steamer.

”Strange,” muttered the hermit, ”vessels don't often touch here.”

”Perhaps they have run short of water,” suggested Nigel.

”Even if they had it would not be worth their while to stop here for that,” returned the hermit, resuming the ascent of the cone after an intervening clump of trees had shut out the steamer from view.

It was with feelings of profound interest and considerable excitement that our hero stood for the first time on the top of a volcanic cone and gazed down into its glowing vent.

The crater might be described as a huge basin of 3000 feet in diameter.

From the rim of this basin on which the visitors stood the sides sloped so gradually inward that the flat floor at the bottom was not more than half that diameter. This floor--which was about 150 feet below the upper edge--was covered with a black crust, and in the centre of it was the tremendous cavity--between one and two hundred feet in diameter--from which issued the great steam-cloud. The cloud was mixed with quant.i.ties of pumice and fragments of what appeared to be black gla.s.s. The roar of this huge vent was deafening and stupendous. If the reader will reflect on the wonderful hubbub that can be created even by a kitchen kettle when superheated, and on the exasperating shrieks of a steamboat's safety-valve in action, or the bellowing of a fog-horn, he may form some idea of the extent of his incapacity to conceive the thunderous roar of Krakatoa when it began to boil over.

When to this awful sound there were added the intermittent explosions, the horrid crackling of millions of rock-ma.s.ses meeting in the air, and the bubbling up of molten lava--verily it did not require the imagination of a Dante to see in all this the very vomiting of Gehenna!

So amazed and well-nigh stunned was Nigel at the sights and sounds that he neither heard nor saw the arrival of the excursionists, until the equally awe-stricken Moses touched him on the elbow and drew his attention to several men who suddenly appeared on the crater-brim not fifty yards off, but who, like themselves, were too much absorbed with the volcano itself to observe the other visitors. Probably they took them for some of their own party who had reached the summit before them.

Nigel was yet looking at these visitors in some surprise, when an elderly nautical man suddenly stood not twenty yards off gazing in open-mouthed amazement, past our hero's very nose, at the volcanic fires.

”Hallo, Father!” shouted the one.

”Zounds! Nigel!” exclaimed the other.

Both men glared and were speechless for several seconds. Then Nigel rushed at the captain, and the captain met him half-way, and they shook hands with such hearty goodwill as to arrest in his operations for a few moments a photographer who was hastily setting up his camera!

Yes, science has done much to reveal the marvellous and arouse exalted thoughts in the human mind, but it has also done something to crush enthusiasts and shock the romantic. Veracity constrains us to state that there he was, with his tripod, and his eager haste, and his hideous black cloth, preparing to ”take” Perboewatan on a ”dry plate”! And he ”took” it too! And you may see it, if you will, as a marvellous frontispiece to the volume by the ”Krakatoa Committee”--a work which is apparently as exhaustive of the subject of Krakatoa as was the great explosion itself of those internal fires which will probably keep that volcano quiet for the next two hundred years.

But this was not the Great Eruption of Krakatoa--only a rehearsal, as it were.

”What brought you here, my son?” asked the captain, on recovering speech.

”My legs, father.”

”Don't be insolent, boy.”

”It's not insolence, father. It's only poetical licence, meant to a.s.sure you that I did not come by 'bus or rail though you did by steamer! But let me introduce you to my friend, Mr.----”

He stopped short on looking round, for Van der Kemp was not there.

”He goed away wheneber he saw de peepil comin' up de hill,” said Moses, who had watched the meeting of father and son with huge delight. ”But you kin interdooce _me_ instead,” he added, with a crater-like smile.

”True, true,” exclaimed Nigel, laughing. ”This is Moses, father, my host's servant, and my very good friend, and a remarkably free-and-easy friend, as you see. He will guide us back to the cave, since Van der Kemp seems to have left us.”

”Who's Van der Kemp?” asked the captain.

”The hermit of Rakata, father--that's his name. His father was a Dutchman and his mother an English or Irish woman--I forget which. He's a splendid fellow; quite different from what one would expect; no more like a hermit than a hermit-crab, except that he lives in a cave under the Peak of Rakata, at the other end of the island. But you must come with us and pay him a visit. He will be delighted to see you.”

”What! steer through a green sea of leaves like that?” said the captain, stretching his arm towards the vast forest that lay stretched out below them, ”and on my legs, too, that have been used all their lives to a s.h.i.+p's deck? No, my son. I will content myself with this lucky meetin'.