Edwin was on the sill beside her in a moment. The blanket Audrey was dragging forward was seized and flung around the little trembler, enveloping head, arms, and feet. Mr. Lee caught the lower end, and drawing it down, received his "bonnie birdie" in his fatherly arms. Edwin leaped into the darkness within.
"Quick, Audrey, quick, or the house will fall upon us," he urged.
She was snatching at this and that, and tying up a bundle in haste. Edwin pulled out another blanket from the tumbled bed-clothes, and flung it on the window-sill.
"No, no," said Audrey; "I'll jump."
She tossed her bundle before her, and setting herself low on her feet, she gave one hand to her father and the other to the gruff speaker who had startled Edwin in the darkness. They swung her to the ground between them just as the log-built walls began to roll. Edwin was driven back among the ruins, crouching under the bulrush thatch, which lay in heaps by the debris of beam and chimney, snug like a rabbit in its burrow, whilst beam and prop were falling around him. He heard Cuthbert calling desperately, "Look, look! father, father! the world's on fire!"
Edwin tugged furiously at the mass of dry and dusty rushes in which he had become enveloped, working with hands and feet, groping his way to space and air once more. The grand but terrific sight which met his gaze struck him backwards, and he sank confounded on the heap, from which he had scarcely extricated himself.
The sacred Maori hills, which at sunset had reared their snowy crests in majestic calm, were ablaze with fire. The intensity of the glare from the huge pillar of flame, even at so great a distance, was more than eyes could bear. With both hands extended before his face to veil the too terrific light, Edwin lay entranced. That vision of a thousand feet of ascending flame, losing itself in a dome of cloud blacker and denser than the blackness of midnight, might well prelude the day of doom. Unable to bear the sight or yet to shut it out, he watched in dumb amazement. White meteor globes of star-like brilliancy shot from out the pall of cloud in every direction, and shed a blue unearthly light on all around. They came with the roar as of cannon, and the rocks were riven by their fall. Huge fissures, opening in the mountain sides, emitted streams of rolling fire.
Edwin forgot his own peril and the peril of all around, lost in the immensity of the sight. The cries and groans of the rabbiters recalled him. Some had thrown themselves on their faces in a paroxysm of terror. Old Hal had fallen on his knees, believing the end of the world had come.
Edwin heard his father's voice rising calm and clear above the gasping ejaculations and snatches of half-forgotten prayer.
"Would you court blindness? Shut your eyes to the awful sight. It is an eruption of Mount Tarawera. Remember, Hal, we are in the hands of One whom storm and fire obey."