“Well done, cobbler,” was our answer, and we put up patiently with the slowness of our progress when we considered how much better off we were than we had ever been aboard of the Golden Fleece.
The first day and night and all the next day passed away without our seeing anything save porpoises, which gambolled around, looking, as they always do to my mind, the happiest of created beings, flying-fish, and silver-winged gulls. But about the middle of the second night Bill, who had the watch, called out, “Rouse up, mates; whatever is that?”
Tom and I were awake in a second, and looking ahead as he told us, we saw a sight which all the fireworks ever made by the ingenuity of man could not have equalled. High up in the heavens, blotting out the stars, was a dense, black cloud, which seemed to be supported on a pillar or fountain of fire, and from the cloud were raining down masses of matter white-hot, red-hot. While we were looking, indeed before we had properly cleared our eyes of sleep, we heard a tremendous noise, louder than a thousand claps of thunder, and the breeze which had been carrying us steadily along suddenly ceased.
“Whatever can that be?” I cried. “A ship blown up?”
“A ship!” answered Tom. “No ship that ever floated could give a sight like that, nor a clap neither. That’s a burning mountain. I’ve heard as there be some in these parts.”
Clap succeeded clap, but though all wonderful, none of them equalled in intensity of the sound the first one, while the fountain of fire leaped up and down in the most marvellous manner.
“Look out, boys; be smart and shorten sail,” said Tom. “I’ve heard as how there be great waves after one of these blows-up, and we must keep our craft bows on if so be as we are not to be swamped.”
Sail was shortened as quickly as we could, and our well covered over with the canvas to prevent us being swamped; and then Tom told us to lash ourselves to the deck, and get our paddles out, while he got the oar over the stern, so as to be ready to twist the boat in any direction.
Scarcely were we ready when we heard a low, moaning sound, and soon saw a wall of water of appalling height sweeping rapidly towards us. We worked frantically at oar and paddles, and fortunately it met us bows on; but so steep was the wave that we could not rise properly to it, and for what seemed an appalling time we were buried in the water. Would our boat free herself and rise again, or would she sink under the weight, and drag us down with her to the depths of the ocean?
Such were the thoughts which passed through my mind, and, I doubt not, through the minds of my companions; but they were answered by our emerging from the wave with our gunwale broken, but otherwise uninjured. Our decks proved stanch, and though the weight of water had beaten the sails down into the well, which was full, the boat still floated.