From this brief description of the most important of these old fissure eruptions, we see that there is another and a grander phase of vulcanism than that now displayed either by Vesuvius or Hecla. This is unquestioned, and the sphere of speculation is removed to the relation between the two classes. It is to Richthofen that we owe the most plausible theory: he considers these massive eruptions as the fundamental development, and ‘modern volcanic cones as merely parasitic excrescences on the subterranean lava reservoirs, very much in the relation of minor cinder cones to their parent volcano.’ Thus the form regarded till recently as the one method of volcanic ejection, appears to be of but secondary importance, being merely a safety-valve to relieve the pressure from the lava-sources below; or may represent but a feebler and waning condition of that volcanic excitement of which they have so long been regarded as the type.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XI.
It is a truism nowadays, in this age of travelling, that you see a great deal more of people in a few weeks on board ship at sea together than you would see in a few years of that vacant calling and dining and attending crushes which we ordinarily speak of as society. Nora Dupuy and the two Hawthorns certainly saw a great deal more of Dr Whitaker during their three weeks on board the Severn than they would ever have seen of him in three years of England or of Trinidad. Nora had had the young man’s acquaintance thrust upon her by circumstances, to be sure; but as the Hawthorns sat and talked a great deal with him, she was compelled to do so likewise, and she had too much good feeling to let him see very markedly her innate prejudice against his colour. Besides, she admitted even to herself that Dr Whitaker, for a brown man, was really a very gentlemanly, well-informed person—quite an exceptional mulatto, in fact, and as such, to be admitted to the position of a gentleman by courtesy, much as Gulliver was excepted by the Houyhnhnms from the same category of utter reprobation as the ordinary Yahoos of their own country.
Most of the voyage was as decently calm as any one can reasonably expect from the North Atlantic. There were the usual episodes of flying-fish and Mother Carey’s chickens, and the usual excitement of a daily sweepstake on the length of the ship’s run; but, on the whole, the only distinct landmarks of time for the entire three weeks between Southampton and St Thomas were breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and bedtime. The North Atlantic, whatever novelists may say, is not a romantic stretch of ocean; and in spite of prepossessions to the contrary, a ship at sea is not at all a convenient place for the free exercise of the noble art of flirting. It lacks the needful opportunities for retirement from the full blaze of public observation to shy corners; it is far too exposed, and on the whole too unstable also. Altogether, the voyage was mostly a monotonous one, which is equivalent to saying that it was safe and comfortable; for the only possible break in the ordinary routine of a sea-passage must necessarily be a fire on board or a collision with a rival steamer. However, about two days out from St Thomas, there came a little relief from the tedium of the daily situation; and the relief assumed the unpleasant form of a genuine wild West Indian hurricane.
Nora had never before seen anything like it; or, at any rate, if she had, she had clean forgotten all about it. Though the captain had declared it was ‘too soon’ for hurricanes, this was, in fact, a very fine tropical tornado of the very fiercest and yeastiest description. About two o’clock in the afternoon, the passengers were all sitting out on deck, when the sea, till then a dead calm, began to be faintly ruffled by little whiffs and spurts of wind, which raised here and there tiny patches of wavelets, scarcely perceptible to the blunt vision of the unaccustomed landsman. But the experienced eye of a sailor could read in it at once a malignant hint of the coming tempest. Presently, the breeze freshened with extraordinary rapidity, and before five o’clock, the cyclone had burst upon them in all its violence. The rush of a mighty gale was heard through the rigging, swaying and bending the masts like sapling willows before the autumn breezes. The waves, lashed into fury by the fierce and fitful gusts of wind, broke ever and anon over the side of the vessel; and the big Severn tossed about helplessly before the frantic tempest like the veriest cockboat in an angry sea upon a northern ocean. Of course, at the first note of serious danger, the passengers were all ordered below to the saloon, where they sat in mute suspense, the women pale and trembling, the men trying to look as if they cared very little about it, while the great ship rolled and tossed and pitched and creaked and rattled in all her groaning timbers beneath the mad frenzy of that terrific commotion.
Just as they were being turned off the decks to be penned up down-stairs like so many helpless sheep in the lower cabin, Nora Dupuy, who had been standing with the Hawthorns and Dr Whitaker, watching the huge and ever-increasing waves bursting madly over the side of the vessel, happened to drop her shawl at starting on to the deck beside the companion-ladder. At that very moment, a bigger sea than any they had yet encountered broke with shivering force against the broadside of the steamer, and swept across the deck in a drowning flood as though it would carry everything bodily before it. ‘Make haste, there!’ the captain called out imperatively.—‘Steward, send ’em all down below, this minute. I shouldn’t be surprised if before night we were to have a capful of nasty weather.’
But even as he spoke, the wave, which had caught Nora’s shawl and driven it over to the leeward side, now in its reflux sucked it back again swiftly to windward, and left it lying all wet and matted against the gunwale in a mass of disorder. Dr Whitaker jumped after it instinctively, and tried to catch it before another wave could carry it overboard altogether. ‘Oh, pray, don’t trouble about it,’ Nora cried, in hasty deprecation. ‘It isn’t worth it. Take care, or you’ll get wet through and through yourself before you know it!’
‘The man’s a fool,’ the unceremonious captain called out bluntly from his perch above. ‘Get wet indeed! If another sea like that strikes the ship, it’ll wash him clean overboard.—Come back, sir; I tell you, come back! No one but a sailor can keep his feet properly against the force of a sea like that one!’
Nora and the few other passengers who had still remained on deck stood trembling under shelter of the glazed-in companion-ladder, wondering whether the rash mulatto would really carry out his foolhardy endeavour to recover the wrapper. The sailor stood by, ready to batten down the hatches as soon as the deck was fairly cleared, and waiting impatiently for the last lingerer. But Dr Whitaker took not the slightest notice of captain or sailor, and merely glanced back at Nora with a quiet smile, as if to reassure her of his perfect safety. He stood by the gunwale, just clutching at the shawl, in the very act of recovering it, when a second sea, still more violent than the last, struck the ship once more full on the side, and swept the mulatto helplessly before it right across the quarter-deck. It dashed him with terrific force against the bulwarks on the opposite side; and for a moment, Nora gave a scream of terror, imagining it would carry him overboard with its sudden flood. The next second, the ship righted itself, and they saw the young doctor rising to his feet once more, bruised and dripping, but still not seriously or visibly injured. The sea had washed the shawl once more out of his grasp, with the force of the shock; and instead of rushing back to the shelter of the ladder, he tried even now to recover it a second time from the windward side, where the recoil had again capriciously carried it. ‘The shawl, the shawl!’ he cried excitedly, gliding once more across the wet and slippery decks as she lurched anew, in the foolish effort to catch the worthless wrapper.