All that night the lugger rocked with the terrible concussions, succeeding each other without half a minute’s interval, and when the sun rose the glasses showed a great smoke rising from a desolate-looking shore, at one end of which the mountain, about half its former height, was pouring forth clouds of ashes and covering the sea thickly as far as eye could reach.
The glorious groves and bright scenery were gone, destroyed in a few hours, and the strange convulsions which kept on occurring, rendered it necessary to run as rapidly as could be for safer waters and brighter skies.
As the day went on an island was reached, and an addition made to their provisions and water. A few days later they were at the British port in New Guinea, where they once more provisioned for their run south to get within the shelter of the Great Barrier Reef.
Brisbane was made, and then Sydney, from which port a passage was taken for home, where all arrived in safety with the grandest set of Natural History specimens ever collected in one voyage.
“I do wonder what became of those blacks,” said Panton, one evening when they were dining with Captain Rimmer, to celebrate his appointment to a fine vessel in the China trade, in which he was to start the following week, and in which he had laughingly offered them a cabin for three.
“Nothing would please me better,” he had said, “and you will find your old friends Smith and Wriggs with me as boatswain and his mate.”
But appointments at scientific institutions kept the three friends at home, and it was in the course of conversation that Panton alluded to the blacks.
“Ah, and I wonder what became of all those wondrous butterflies and birds?”
“And the wealth of vegetation?” said Drew.
“Swept away, sir,” said the captain, “swept away. Strange things take place where there are burning mountains.”