The place gleamed with the glaring, crimson light. A dreadful roaring sound filled their ears. The sands beneath them appeared to heave up and down in sickening waves like those of the unquiet sea.
Then came a vast uproar, and the two terror-stricken boys clawed their way out on the slanting deck. They looked toward the island. The sky above it was blood red. The rugged sky-line of its peaks stood out blackly against the scarlet glare. The air was full of a gas that burned the throat and choked the lungs.
“It’s the volcano!” cried Jack. “The volcano! Look!”
But Sam was clutching the other’s arm and pointing frantically seaward. Rolling toward them, its foaming head crimsoned by the lambent glare of the volcano, was a giant wave.
“Into the wireless room. Quick! For your life!” screamed Jack.
They scrambled up the sloping deck and threw themselves flat on their faces in the coop, clinging to stanchions with a death-like grip. The next instant there was a roar like a thousand Niagaras. They felt the solid fabric of the Tropic Queen lifted dizzily skyward, while tons of water roared down on her. Then there came a sickening crash that shook the boys loose from their grips and sent them rolling about the cabin. The door was burst open and they staggered out on the deck. The Tropic Queen was almost upright now, with her bottom smashed in till she stood flat upon her bare ribs in the soft sand.
Jack could see, by the glare of the burning mountain, the bleak figures of men far up among the rocks. The tidal wave, then, had been seen in time for some of them, at least, to save themselves. He had just time to observe this when before his eyes the sea sucked outward—outward—outward. The ocean floor rose into view, all crimsoned from the flaming volcano. He could see gaunt rocks uncovered for the first time since the creation, perhaps, sticking up blackly in the slimy depths.
And then the sea came back! Out in the far distance across the exposed flats a mighty wave shouldered itself. Its body and huge hollow incurve was black, but its crest was glowing with reflected flame. Jack gave one glance ashore. He could see black figures scuttling high up the rocks.
They had just time to rush into the wireless room, with its steel walls and stout foundations bolted to the iron superstructure, when, with a roar, the mighty wave swept landward. Jack and Sam felt the Tropic Queen lifted and rushed toward the shore, then lifted again and again and again till it seemed impossible that anything man-made could resist the awful force.
But at last the ship grounded with a shuddering, sidewise motion that seemed like a last expiring gasp. The boys ventured forth. The ship was lying on the beach almost at the foot of the cliffs. Her funnels and masts had vanished, snapped off like pipe stems. She lay a sheer, miserable hulk in the flaring light of the volcano.