“They’re away up the mountain, with Joe and Otto,” answered little Buxley; “I saw ’em start soon after daybreak—to explore, they said.”
“What do you think should be done?” asked Pina, turning naturally to the mate, as being the most intelligent of those around her.
“If it’s goin’ to be bad,” said Malines, “I would advise you all to git on board the ship as fast as ye can, for the land isn’t so safe as the water when it takes to quakin’.”
“You seem to have had some experience of it. Is it going to be bad, think you?”
“Earthquakes are deceptive—no man can tell.”
“Well, then, we must do our best at once,” said the queen, with an air of calm decision worthy of her rank. “Go, Mr Malines, with your sailors, and get all the boats ready. And you, my people, carry down what you esteem most valuable and get on board the ship without loss of time—for the rest, we are in the hands of a loving and merciful God.”
While these events were enacting on the shore, Dominick, Otto, the doctor, and Joe Binney were seated near the summit of the highest peak, enjoying a cold breakfast. It was their first visit to that particular peak, which had a slight hollow or basin of perhaps fifty feet diameter in the centre.
Just before the first tremulous shock the doctor had been explaining to the prime minister the nature of volcanoes, and stating his opinion that the cup-like hollow before them was an extinct crater. The slight shock stopped him in his discourse, and caused the party to look at each other with serious faces.
“It’s not extinct yet,” exclaimed Otto excitedly, pointing to the hollow, the earth of which had suddenly cracked in several places and was emitting puffs of sulphurous smoke and steam.
They all started up.