It had been a sultry day, and the breeze that was wont to cool the Island when the sun went down was this day asleep; no breath lifted the heavy air.
The heart of the Prince was mournful too; only the hidden help which never fails upheld him in the vague depression which stole over him.
Then he heard suddenly a strange rumbling sound in the mountain under him; the earth shook, and as he sprang to his feet he saw a horrible sight—the sea drawn back from the reef, sucked from the great Lagoon, and then rushing in upon the Island and surging up over the reef, over the fringe of Palms, over all the peaceful homes below. Twice this was repeated as he staggered down from the highest point of the mountain; and when the violence of the shock was over, the crater lay at his feet a salt lagoon, and over all the fruitful plain the sea lay deep and still.
He alone was left of all that land’s inhabitants.
To a nature like his there was nothing terrible in solitude, nor did the whole of this awful event seem to him so sad as it would have been to hear one evil word from the lips of a child.
He lived for some years after this a life of meditation and peace, finding just enough food to supply his need among the fruits of the higher mountain forests; and one day, in his extreme old age, a ship’s boat seeking water entered the Lagoon. He was taken on board, and he brought with him a manuscript which he had written on slips of the bark of trees, relating the history of the Island. From his own lips yet more of the story was gathered and written down by a Jesuit father who was returning in the ship from a mission to the newly-settled Antarctic Continent.
There is no more to be told. The old Prince died on the voyage, glad to depart as soon as he had told his tale.
He had come to see many things clearly in his lonely years on the mountain height. What these things were, beyond what has been written here, he told to the Jesuit father—under the seal of confession.
