Before I could reply there was a loud rumbling beneath us, and being not a great way from the crater, we set off at a run, going down towards the Red Rock, there being no lava on this side. We had run barely twenty yards when a great puff of steam or smoke was shot up into the air for near two hundred feet, I should guess, and a shower of pumice stones fell around us. This frightened us so much that, forgetting all about the canoes, we did not stop running until we came to the edge of the cliff opposite the Red Rock, and then, there being no more signs of activity in the volcano, we were thinking of climbing up again to our watching-place when, to our great joy, we caught sight of the canoes making round the north side, and indeed bearing away northwards away from us.
"Three cheers for old smoker," cried Billy. "He's scared 'em away, sure as nuts, and they won't eat us after all."
We stood watching the canoes as they made their way very toilsomely against wind and current, and did not go down to our hut until they had quite vanished from sight. It was long past our usual dinner-time, I am sure, and as we had had no breakfast we were mighty hungry, and ate with very good appetites, having lost our fear; and taking up our mugs of cocoa-nut juice, and knocking them together in the way of folks drinking a toast, I cried out, "Here's to old smoker!" and Billy shouted, "God bless him!"
This happened, as I say, three days after our first alarm, and we did not cease from our efforts to put ourselves in a good posture of defence if we should ever again have reason to fear an attack. We had already made our hut fairly fire-proof, and cut loop-holes in the walls, these at varying heights, so that we might shoot down from a height upon the enemy at a distance, or on a level with them if they came to close quarters. Since a man behind walls is equal to at least three outside, I should think, we considered that we two, though hardly come to man's estate, could make a very good fight of it; our only trouble was the matter of water, for while we had no fears in the matter of food, we did not see how by any means we could store sufficient water in the hut, even if we filled all our pots and pans.
Sinking a Well
I was lying with Billy one evening outside our hut overlooking the lake, when the solution to this puzzle came all at once into my head. The ground behind the hut sloped pretty steeply down to the lake, the length of the slope being about twenty feet, and the vertical height about six feet—that is, between the floor of our hut and the usual surface of the water. For I must observe here, lest I forget it, that the depth of water in the lake varied very much at different seasons, being far greater after a period of rainy weather than in drought, the variation being at least equal to the height of a man. And in regard to this variation a circumstance caused us much wonderment, for though when the rains were heavy the lake rose very rapidly to a certain point, we observed that it never came higher than that point, no matter how long the rains continued. When I pointed this out to Billy he saw nothing to wonder at in it, saying that the lake must be just like the sea; for though it had rained hundreds and thousands of times since the beginning of the world, the sea had never drowned the world since the Flood, and it surely would have done so unless there was some hole at the bottom that opened when the sea was getting too full.
"That can't be," said I.
"Well, then, how is it?" says he. "You pour water into a cup, and it'll slop over presently. The lake's a cup, though a big one; why don't it slop over after all these rains if there ain't a hole in the bottom, as I say?"
"But it can't be in the bottom, Billy, or the lake would sometimes be drained quite dry," I said.
"Well, it is, pretty nearly," he replied, but I would not admit that, for though the water subsided slowly after the rains had ceased, it had never sunk so low as to let us see the bottom. At low water we hunted all round the lake to see if we could find an outlet through which the water ran away, but we saw none, and remained in our puzzlement for a good while longer.