“Soon the sun went down, a blood-red ball in the west, and darkness quickly followed. It was just then that we observed a fitful gleam arise from the one and only mountain the island possessed. Over this a ball of cloud had hung all day long, but we had taken little notice of it.
“‘I’ve never seen the like of that before, mate,’ said the skipper to me, pointing at the slowly descending pall of cumulus.
“‘Nor I either, captain,’ I replied.
“I couldn’t keep my eyes off it, do what I would, for dark though the night was that strange cloud was darker. It seemed now to be sending downwards from its centre a whirling tail, or pillar, which the gleams that began to rise higher and higher from the developing volcano lit up, and tongues of fire appeared to touch.
“‘It’s going to be a storm of some kind, Halcott,’ said my skipper. ‘Oh, for a puff of wind, for, Heaven help us, lad! we are far too near the shore.’
“‘I have it,’ he cried next minute. ‘Lower the boats and heave up the anchor.’
“I never saw men work more willingly in my life before. Even the blacks we had on board lent a hand, and no sooner was the anchor apeak than away went the boats, and the ship moved slowly out to sea.
“We had got about three knots off-shore, when, happening to look back, I saw a sight which I shall remember to my dying day.
“The black and awful whirling cloud had burst. If one ton of water came down like an avalanche, a million must have fallen, with a deafening roar like a thousand thunders.
“It seemed as if heaven and earth had gone to war and the first terrific shot had been fired.