Fire Island Part 5

"This may be the western end of that island," said Panton. "But where's the volcano that has caused all this mischief?"

"Yonder," said Oliver, pointing, "behind the cloud."

The others looked at a dense curtain of mist which rose from the earth, apparently to the skies, and hid everything in that quarter, the desolation extending apparently for a couple of miles in the direction of the curtain, beyond that the ground rose in a glorious slope of uninjured verdure, and then came the great cloud of mist or smoke shutting off the mountain, or whatever was beyond.

"But where is the sea?" said Oliver.

"All run down through a big hole into the earth, I say," said a deep voice. "Well, gentlemen, how are you?"

"Ah, Mr Rimmer, good morning," cried Oliver, shaking hands. "How are your hurts?"

"Oh, better my lad, and yours?"

"Only a bit stiff and achy. But who's to think of injuries in such a glorious place?"

"Glorious!" said the mate, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his face. "Look about you.

Everything's destroyed."

"Oh, yes," said Drew; "but in a month it will be all green again and as beautiful as ever!"

"Except my poor brig," said the mate. "Why, she's regularly planted here in the mud and sand, and, unless she strikes root and grows young vessels, she's done for."

"But where is the sea?" cried Oliver.

The mate looked round him and then pointed south-west.

"Yonder, if there is any," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Trees all standing in the other direction, and yes, there are others out that way," he said, pointing. "It's plain enough, the wave swept right across this low level. You can see how the trunks lie and how the rocks and the sh.e.l.ls have been borne along. Far as I can make out the wave has cleared a track about a dozen miles wide. May be twenty. Why, you gentlemen seemed to be quite pleased."

"Why not?" cried Oliver. "It's grand. Look at the work cut out for us.

We want all the British Museum staff to help."

"Better have my crew, then, for there's nothing for us to do. The brig's fast settled down on an even keel. I say, Mr Panton, kick me or pinch me, please."

"What for?"

"Because I must be asleep and all this a dream. No, it's real enough,"

he said, sadly; "wait till I get a gla.s.s."

He went back to the cabin and returned directly with a telescope.

"I'll go up to the main-top," he said, "and have a look round."

The three naturalists were too much taken up by the endless objects of interest spread around them to pay much heed to his words, so that he had mounted to the main-top and then to the topgallant masthead before his words took their attention again, just too, as plainly enough they could make a huge animal of the crocodile kind slowly crawling along the edge of a pool about a quarter of a mile away.

"Here you are, gentlemen," the mate shouted.

"Yes, what is it?" cried Oliver, in answer to his hail.

"You can trace it all from here with the gla.s.s. There is some sea left."

"So I suppose," said Panton drily.

"Lies about four miles away to the east-'ard, and the land's swept right up to us, and then away north-west for a dozen miles, I should say, to the sea on that side."

"Can you make out the mountain?"

"No; there's nothing but cloud to the norrard. I expect it's there, and not very far away."

"And how far-off is the nearest sea?" asked Oliver.

"'Bout four miles."

"And what do you make this out to be--an island?"

"Can't say, sir. Island or peninsula. Can't be mainland. But I shall be able to settle that before long."

He reached the deck just as the men were coming up from the forecastle, and they were soon at work swabbing the planks, squaring yards, shaking out the sails to dry, and getting the vessel in order just as if she were at sea, while the cook and steward attended to their work as coolly as if nothing had happened.

At mid-day the mate had taken his observations and marked down their position on the chart just where the map showed a broad blank in the Arafura Sea.

"But are you right?" said Oliver, as he followed the mate's pointing finger.

"As right as my knowledge of navigation will let me be, sir," said the mate quietly. "That's where we are."

"But where is that?"

"Just nowhere, sir."

"But--"

"We're very cunning, sir, and think we know the whole world and everything there is; but now and then we find out that we are not so clever as we thought, and that there is just a little more to learn. I said that we were nowhere just now, which isn't quite correct, because we are here; but it strikes me that we're in a spot where no civilised vessel ever was before."

"What, right on sh.o.r.e?" said Oliver, smiling.

"No, sir, I didn't mean that. I meant no vessel ever touched here before, or it would have been marked down in the chart. Savages have been, perhaps. Maybe they're here still, but they have been frightened into their holes by the eruption."

Oliver looked out of the open cabin window as if expecting to see a party of the people coming, but he only made out something living in one of the pools left by the flood wave.

"I'm very sorry, gentlemen, the captain and I undertook to cruise with you along the New Guinea coast; but man proposes and--you know the rest.

Here we shall have to stay till some vessel comes in sight to take us off, and to that end I propose that to-morrow morning we begin to make expeditions to the coast, and set up a spar here and there with a bit of bunting showing for a signal of distress."

"No, don't--that is--not yet," said Oliver, excitedly. "No place that you could have found would have equalled this."

"If we have no more eruptions," said Drew.