“No, nor anybody else, sir, but Nature, who’s been having a regular turn up. I s’pose you know that we were in for a great eruption?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And somehow mixed up with the storm, there was an earthquake?”
“No, I did not grasp that, only that we were being carried toward a burning mountain; but I don’t see any glow from the volcano now.”
“No; it’s all out, and I ought to have said a sea-quake. It seems to me it was like this: a great place opened somewhere, out of which the flame and smoke and thunderings came, till it had half spent its strength, and then the sea mastered it, and ran into the great hole and put out the fire, but it took all the sea to do it.”
“I say, Mr Rimmer,” exclaimed Oliver Lane, staring hard at the mate, “did you get a heavy blow on the head when we came ashore?”
“No; I had all my trouble before the shock came that sent you down, I mean when we struck I’m as clear as a bell now, sir, and know what I’m saying.”
“But the sea—I don’t hear any waves now. There are no breakers, the deck is not flooded, and yet you say we are ashore?”
“You can’t see any breakers, and they can’t,” said the mate, pointing to a group dimly seen through the gloom clustered together and looking over the vessel’s side, “because it’s as I tell you, the earth opened with that eruption, and the seas all ran down the hole.”
“Mr Rimmer!”