“Of course, and from the north as from the south. There, I’ve got blue lights ready, and the men’s arms are lying to hand. If they don’t come soon, and the blacks make their appearance instead, I’m afraid they will find me vicious.”
“Let’s try to be patient,” said Oliver.
“Patience, sir! I’ve none of that left. Now then, I think it’s time you gentlemen went below.”
“Not yet,” said Oliver. “It is so much cooler here, and if we went below we should be fidgety, and fretting horribly. There goes the sun.”
For as he spoke the great glowing disk of orange light dipped below the horizon, great broad rays shot up nearly to the firmament, which for a few minutes was of a transparent amber; then all rapidly turned grey, dark grey, pale purple, purple, and almost directly black, covered with brilliant stars.
“No moon for three hours,” said the mate, as he looked round at the black darkness, when the silence was suddenly broken by a chorus of croaking, roaring and chirruping from reptile and insect. Then came the strange trumpetings of birds; the splashings of crocodiles, accompanied by roaring barks and the flogging of the water with their tails. Once there was the unmistakable wailing cry of one of the great panther cats answered at a distance, while from the north there came every now and then a flickering flash of lightning evidently from the clouds hanging heavily over the huge crater. Then for a few moments silence, and a soft moist coolness floated by the watchers, followed by a heated puff, suggestive of a breath from the volcano, and they were conscious of a dull quivering of the deck.
“Wasn’t thunder,” said the mate. “That was a grumble down below.”
Almost as he finished speaking there was a dull muttering, soon followed, not preceded, by flash after flash.
“Like a storm upside down,” said Panton. “Not likely to have rain, are we, with the sky clear?”
“Likely to have anything,” said the mate, “round the foot of a great volcano.”