He found, as he thought, his sisters sleeping; and sinking down in the nest of leaves which Cuthbert had been building for him, he soon followed their example. But he was mistaken: Audrey only closed her eyes to avoid speaking. She dared not tell him of their father's peril for fear he should rush off with the men, urged on by a desperate desire to share it. "I know now," she thought, "why father charged him to remain with us."
Her distress of mind drowned all consciousness of their strange surroundings. What was the rising of the gale, the trampling of the surf upon the sand, or the dashing of the tumultuous waves, after the fire and smoke of Tarawera?
But Cuthbert started in his dreams, and Edwin woke with a cry. Shaking himself from the clinging leaves, now dry as winter hay, he ran out with the impression some one had called him. It was but the scream of the sea-gull and the moan of the storm. It should have been daylight by this time, but no wintry sun could penetrate the pall-like cloud of blue volcanic dust which loaded the atmosphere even there.
It seemed to him as if the sea, by some mysterious sympathy, responded to the wild convulsions of the quaking earth. The billows were rolling in towards him mountains high. He turned from the angry waves to rebuild his fire.
Did Oscott keep it as a beacon through the night on the ledge of rock which sheltered his hut from the ocean breezes? From its position Edwin was inclined to think he did, although the men in the hurry of their departure had not exactly said so. By the light of this fire he could now distinguish the outline of a tiny bay—so frequent on the western coast of the island—a stretch of sandy shore, and beyond the haven over which the rock on which he stood seemed sentinel, a sheet of boiling foam.
And what was that? A coasting steamer, with its screw half out of the water, tearing round and round, whilst the big seas, leaping after each other, seemed washing over the little craft from stem to stern.
He flung fresh drift-wood on his beacon-fire until it blazed aloft, a pyramid of flame. "Audrey dear, Audrey," he ran back shouting, "get up, get up!"
She appeared at the door, a wan, drooping figure, shrinking from the teeth of the gale. "Is it father?" she asked.
"Father! impossible, Audrey. We left him miles away. It is a ship—a ship, Audrey—going down in the storm," he vociferated.
She clasped her hands together in hopeless despair.