"Thirty-four years," said the Forecaster thoughtfully; "that would be in 1883, wouldn't it? Why, of course, Mike," he continued; "that was during the period of the famous Krakatoa sunsets."
"An' what's a Kraker-something sunset?" the printer asked.
"Krakatoa," the Weather Man explained, "was a volcano, near Java. In August, 1883, one of the most violent eruptions in the history of the world occurred. Half the island was blown up in the air, and, where a mountain had stood, the ocean rolled a thousand feet deep.
"The vibrations in the air were so terrific as to break windows and overturn frame houses over a hundred miles away, and the pressure wave, like some huge blast of wind, traveled round the world three times before it died down. The huge sea-waves caused by the eruption and the engulfing of the island, swept across the oceans, destroying the coasts for hundreds of leagues around. Over thirty thousand people were drowned.
"Pumice and ashes fell over the sea so thickly that within three miles of the island you could walk on them, and even five hundred miles away, the ashes formed a scum on the surface of the sea. The finer dust and the icy particles from the condensed vapor reached extreme heights in the air. These dust particles spread all round the world, completing the circuit in fifteen days.
"The sunsets were extraordinarily red, because, in the very thin air of great heights, there was an unusual amount of dust which had been forced there by the great volcanic outburst. It took three years for this dust gradually to settle into the lower air, and this made the sunsets that Pat speaks of. The great eruption of Mont Pelé in 1902 created unusually beautiful sunsets in America for a couple of months afterward, but, of course, this was not to be compared to the Krakatoa eruption.
