“We’re not going to stop!” groaned the Jackies. “Good-bye, Honolulu, much obliged to have met you.”
Both Ned and Herc felt their full share of the general disappointment, but their gloom was brightened when the news ran through the ship that the squadron was headed for Hilo on the island of Hawaii, the largest of the group and in some respects the most interesting.
Early the next morning, after they had steamed among the islands all night, the lofty crest of Kilauea, the famous active volcano, was sighted. It was smoking away in a manner that delighted the Jackies.
“Old Dame Nature’s chimney is on fire,” said Herc. “I wish we could see a regular blow-up.”
“I guess if we did you’d change your mind,” said an old sailor. “I was at Apia when they had that big earthquake and tidal wave, and I don’t want to go through another volcanic eruption. Our ship was landed two miles inland in a cocoanut grove, and for all I know she’s there yet.”
“Here we go into Hilo Bay,” came a cry not long after, and the long line of ships swung frowningly around a point and into a beautiful natural harbor, faced by a city of white and gray houses and hemmed in by a horseshoe of hills. But the Jackies had no eyes but for the volcano, whose mighty peak, ceaselessly smoking, towered four thousand feet above the city.
“Isn’t it wonderful!” exclaimed Ned, in a tone that was almost awe. “They say that at night you can sometimes see a red glow from it on the sky.”
“Like Coney Island,” said Herc irreverently.
“It’s one of the grandest sights I ever saw,” retorted Ned seriously.
“Give me the Catskills any day,” snorted Herc, referring to the place from which both the lads came. “As for that smoke, we saw almost as much when granpop was curing hams.”