CHAPTER XXIX.
TELLS CHIEFLY OF THE WONDERFUL EFFECTS OF THIS ERUPTION ON THE WOULD AT LARGE.
The great explosions of that morning had done more damage and had achieved results more astounding than lies in the power of language adequately to describe, or of history to parallel.
Let us take a glance at this subject in passing.
An inhabitant of Anjer—owner of a hotel, a ship-chandler's store, two houses, and a dozen boats—went down to the beach about six on the morning of that fateful 27th of August. He had naturally been impressed by the night of the 26th, though, accustomed as he was to volcanic eruptions, he felt no apprehensions as to the safety of the town. He went to look to the moorings of his boats, leaving his family of seven behind him. While engaged in this work he observed a wave of immense size approaching. He leaped into one of his boats, which was caught up by the wave and swept inland, carrying its owner there in safety. But this was the wave that sealed the doom of the town and most of its inhabitants, including the hotel-keeper's family and all that he possessed.
This is one only out of thousands of cases of bereavement and destruction.
A lighthouse-keeper was seated in his solitary watch-tower, speculating, doubtless, on the probable continuance of such a violent outbreak, while his family and mates—accustomed to sleep in the midst of elemental war—were resting peacefully in the rooms below, when one of the mighty waves suddenly appeared, thundered past, and swept the lighthouse with all its inhabitants away.
This shows but one of the many disasters to lighthouses in Sunda Straits.
A Dutch man-of-war—the Berouw—was lying at anchor in Lampong Bay, fifty miles from Krakatoa. The great wave came, tore it from its anchorage, and carried it—like the vessel of our friend David Roy—nearly two miles inland!