“Look! look at your mirrors!” exclaimed Nigel suddenly, as his wandering gaze happened to turn to the hermit’s sun-guides.
And he might well exclaim, for not only was the glass of these ingenious machines shivered and melted, but their iron frameworks were twisted up into fantastic shapes.
“Lightning has been at work here,” said Van der Kemp.
It did not at the moment occur to either of them that the position on which they stood was peculiarly liable to attack by the subtle and dangerous fluid which was darting and zigzagging everywhere among the rolling clouds of smoke and steam.
A louder report than usual here drew their attention again to the tremendous scene that was going on in front of them. The extreme summit of Perboewatan had been blown into a thousand fragments, which were hurtling upwards and crackling loudly as the smaller masses were impelled against each other in their skyward progress. This crackling has been described by those who heard it from neighbouring shores as a “strange rustling sound.” To our hermit and his friend, who were, so to speak, in the very midst of it, the sound rather resembled the continuous musketry of a battle-field, while the louder explosions might be compared to the booming of artillery, though they necessarily lose by the comparison, for no invention of man ever produced sounds equal to those which thundered at that time from the womb of Krakatoa.
Immediately after this, a fountain of molten lava at white heat welled up in the great throat that had been so violently widened, and, overflowing the edges of the crater, rolled down its sides in fiery rivers. All the other craters in the island became active at the same moment and a number of new ones burst forth. Indeed it seemed to those who watched them that if these had not opened up to give vent to the suppressed forces the whole island must have been blown away. As it was, the sudden generation of so much excessive heat set fire to what remained of trees and everything combustible, so that the island appeared to be one vast seething conflagration, and darkness was for a time banished by a red glare that seemed to Nigel far more intense than that of noonday.
It is indeed the partiality, (if we may say so), of conflagration-light which gives to it the character of impressive power with which we are all so familiar—the intense lights being here cut sharply off by equally intense shadows, and then grading into dull reds and duller greys. The sun, on the other hand, bathes everything in its genial glow so completely that all nature is permeated with it, and there are no intense contrasts, no absolutely black and striking shadows, except in caverns and holes, to form startling contrasts.
“These safety-valves,” said the hermit, referring to the new craters, “have, under God, been the means of saving us from destruction.”
“It would seem so,” said Nigel, who was too overwhelmed by the sight to say much.
Even as he spoke the scene changed as if by magic, for from the cone of Perboewatan there issued a spout of liquid fire, followed by a roar so tremendous that the awe-struck men shrank within themselves, feeling as though that time had really come when the earth is to melt with fervent heat! The entire lake of glowing lava was shot into the air, and lost in the clouds above, while mingled smoke and steam went bellowing after it, and dust fell so thickly that it seemed as if sufficient to extinguish the raging fires. Whether it did so or not is uncertain. It may have been that the new pall of black vapour only obscured them. At all events, after the outburst the darkness of night fell suddenly on all around.