For hours he slept.
Then came a tremendous roar, a fearful explosion that sounded like the crack of doom!
Bomba sprang from his bed and rushed to the window.
The heavens were a glare of red, and the glare was fiercest over in the direction where Tamura lay.
CHAPTER XXV
THE ISLAND SINKS
From the crater of the volcano a great mass of flame and smoke belched toward the sky. At the peak rivers were forming, rivers of molten lava, which, even as Bomba looked, began to flow down the sides of the mountain in every direction.
The fearful explosions still continued, and with every one, that dreadful column of flame mounted higher and the rivers of redhot lava increased in volume. The earth was rocking in the throes of an earthquake.
While Bomba was still trying to gather his wits together and determine what he should do, the house of Japazy split apart. Half of it went down in a deafening crash, and the other half, in which Bomba’s room was located, swayed crazily, threatening at every instant to fall to the ground.
Bomba slung his bow over his shoulder and rushed to the picture hanging on the wall. He took it down—even in that moment of frenzied haste he handled it reverently—and slipped the cord by which it had been suspended about his neck, covering the picture under the puma skin that stretched across his breast.
If he were doomed to die in this terrible cataclysm, he would die with that picture next his heart!