"We're going right for it—I'm sure of that," said Jack, cheerfully. And scarcely had he spoken when the four suddenly clung to each other, rocking on their feet! Washington White shrieked aloud, fell upon his knees, and it took but little to drag the boys and Andy Sudds with him.
"The whole world is done rockin' ergain!" wailed the darkey. "Dis is de end ob de finish!"
The vibrations of the ground grew in strength. The air about them seemed to shake. The darkness was so intense that Jack, holding a shaking hand before his face, could not distinguish its outline. And all the time the volcanic ash drifted down through the writhing tree-tops, while the boys and their companions were unable to stand erect.
CHAPTER XI
THE WONDERFUL LEAP
Unlike the former trembling of the earth, this experience gave no immediate promise of cessation. The world rocked on in awful throes—as though it really was, as the black man feared, the end of all material things. Jack and Mark rolled upon the ground in the grove of huge trees, clinging to each other's hands, but unable to rise, or to find their two comrades.
A rising thunder of sound accompanied this manifestation, too. And, after some stricken minutes, the boys realized that it was thunder.
With the earthquake and the storm of volcanic ashes, came an electric disturbance of the atmosphere, the like of which neither of the boys had ever dreamed. They had felt the "itch" of the electric current just before the 'quake. Now the hair on their heads rose stiffly like that on the back of an angry cat, and when Jack and Mark chanced to separate for a moment, and each put out their hands to seize the other, the darkness under the trees was vividly shot through for an instant with the sparks which flew from their fingers.
Washington White began to bawl terrifically at this display of "fireworks," as he called it.
His lamentations were well nigh drowned by the rolling thunder. This latter did not sound in ordinary explosions, or "claps," but traveled in rapidly repeated echoes across the skies. The thick cloud of ashes which obscured the sun and the whole sky was cut through occasionally by a sword of lightning; but mostly the electricity showed itself in a recurrent, throbbing glow upon the northern horizon, not unlike some manifestations of the Aurora Borealis.