The effect of a stupendous shock on the nervous system is curiously various in different individuals. The three men who were so near to the volcano at that moment involuntarily looked round and saw by the lurid blaze that an enormous mass of Krakatoa, rent from top to bottom, was falling headlong into the sea; while the entire heavens were alive with flame, lightning, steam, smoke, and the upward-shooting fragments of the hideous wreck!
The hermit calmly rested his paddle on the deck and gazed around in silent wonder. Nigel, not less smitten with awe, held his paddle with an iron grasp, every muscle quivering with tension in readiness for instant action when the need for action should appear. Moses, on the other hand, turning round from the sight with glaring eyes, resumed paddling with unreasoning ferocity, and gave vent at once to his feelings and his opinion in the sharp exclamation—"Blown to bits!"
BLOWN TO BITS
CHAPTER XXV.
ADVENTURES OF THE "SUNSHINE" AND AN UNEXPECTED REUNION.
We must request the reader to turn back now for a brief period to a very different scene.
A considerable time before the tremendous catastrophe described in the last chapter—which we claim to have recorded without the slightest exaggeration, inasmuch as exaggeration were impossible—Captain David Roy, of the good brig Sunshine, received the letter which his son wrote to him while in the jungles of Sumatra.