CHAPTER TWO.

A BIT OF BLUE.

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 ash.o.r.e."

"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 pa.s.sing 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 ash.o.r.e?"

"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 ash.o.r.e?"

"You can't see any breakers, and they can't," said the mate, pointing to a group dimly seen through the gloom cl.u.s.tered 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 ash.o.r.e."

"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!"