"Oh, as to that," returned the youth, slightly hurt by the implied doubt as to his courage, "if you are willing to risk going off the earth like a skyrocket, I am quite ready to take my chance of following you!"
"An' Moses am de man," said the negro, smiting his broad chest with his fist, "what's ready to serve as a rocket-stick to bof, an' go up along wid you!"
The hermit made the nearest approach to a laugh which Nigel had yet seen, as he left the cave to undertake some of the preparations above referred to.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] See The Eruption of Krakatoa and Subsequent Phenomena, p. 11. (Trübner and Co., London.)
CHAPTER IX.
DESCRIBES, AMONG OTHER THINGS, A SINGULAR MEETING UNDER PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES.
There is unquestionably a class of men—especially Englishmen—who are deeply imbued with the idea that the Universe in general, and our world in particular, has been created with a view to afford them what they call fun.
"It would be great fun," said an English commercial man to a friend who sat beside him, "to go and have a look at this eruption. They say it is Krakatoa which has broken out after a sleep of two centuries, and as it has been bursting away now for nearly a week, it is likely to hold on for some time longer. What would you say to charter a steamer and have a grand excursion to the volcano?"