But he now lit his pipe. Like most sailors, he was capable of calmer and more concentrated thought when smoking.
“Tandy,” he said slowly, after a few whiffs of the too seductive weed—“Tandy, we have luck on our side. Those blackamoors have fled helter-skelter at the first signs of the eruption. Nothing in the world strikes greater terror to the mind of the ordinary savage—and precious ordinary most of them are—than a sudden convulsion of nature.”
Another whiff or two.
“What think you, men,” he said, looking round him, “came up with the fire and the smoke from the throat of that volcanic hill?”
“Stones and ashes,” ventured Chips.
“Stones and ashes? Yes, no doubt, but demons as well—so the dusky rascals who inhabited this island would believe—demons with fire-fierce eyes, tusks for teeth, and blood-red lolling tongues; only the kind of demons that at home nurses try to frighten children with, but more dreadful to those natives than either falling stones or boiling rain.
“That is it, Tandy; they have fled. Heaven grant they may not come back. But if they do, we must try to give them a warm reception, unless they are extra civil. Meanwhile, I think that old Vulcan, at his forge in yonder hill, has not let out his fires. They are merely banked, and he is ready to get up steam at a moment’s notice.
“Why, Tandy, what see you?”
The mate of the Sea Flower was lying flat on the green hill-top, with his telescope resting on Bob’s back.
“I see—I—see,” he said, without taking his eye from the glass, “a little island far away, a level island it is.”