“Look, look at the volcano!” cried Sam suddenly.
Jack looked up at the towering, gaunt crest miles away, rearing to an infinite height above them. An immense cloud of yellow, sulphurous smoke, muddying the blue of the sky, was pouring from it.
The earth shook again sickeningly. White-faced, the boys hastened back to camp. They found Captain McDonald and the other men trying to quiet the fears of the crew, who fully believed that before night the volcano would be in eruption, burying them, maybe, in lava. They succeeded fairly well, but the men kept their eyes turned to the smoking crest almost ceaselessly.
Miss Jarrold sat apart in front of her tent with her uncle, whose bonds had been taken off.
The day wore on and the tremors were repeated from time to time. But nothing serious occurred. In fact, the marooned party began to grow used to the shocks. It was arranged that early in the morning, Mr. Metcalf, with one of the boats and a picked crew, was to set out for the mainland and summon help.
During the afternoon, to fend off his melancholy thoughts, Jack decided to write down all that had happened since the eventful voyage of the lost liner started. He begged some paper from the purser, who gave him a stack of duplicate manifests. He sat himself down, pencil in hand, and was beginning to scribble, when he suddenly stopped short and sat staring at a sheet of paper that had fallen to the ground beside him.
His eyes were centered on an entry at the top of the page. There didn’t appear to be much about the entry to cause Jack’s pulses to throb with a wild hope and his heart to beat quicker, but they did. Here is what he read:
“To Don Jose de Ramon, Electric Supplies, Santa Marta. 10 storage batteries from Day, Martin & Co., New York.”
Storage batteries!
Jack threw aside his writing and made for the purser.