“Quick! you two unlash yourselves, and bail for your lives, for there’ll be some more of these waves, and if she meets them half water-logged as she is, down to Davy Jones’s locker we go,” cried Tom.
Bill and I did not need any second bidding to obey Tom’s order, while he straightened the boat in the direction the wave had struck, and we bailed away for dear life.
Before we were half clear we heard the same sort of sound as had heralded the first wave, and again we were struck and half buried by the water; but the wave was not so high as the first, and we came through at the cost only of having to bail out more water.
Each successive wave, for there were a dozen, was smaller and smaller, and at last the sea became smooth again, and the trade winds blew once more; while from the burning mountain, instead of a fountain of fire and sparks, we could only see the rosy reflection of flames on rolling masses of white smoke.
We soon repaired our damage, and made sail with, as far as we could see, no real harm done save that the coop with our fowls in it had been washed away, and the wood we had for our fire was so damp that it would not light, and we had to make our breakfast of raw pork and uncooked Indian corn.
When the sun rose, we hung up our clothes to dry, and found that we could still see the column of smoke, though not the reflection of the flames.
Tom steered steadily for this smoke, and when we asked if we were not running into danger by steering for the volcano, he comforted us by saying that after such a blow-up as we’d seen there could be no other for some time; and, as he understood, these burning mountains were always in the centre of a group of islands, and we should be sure to find inhabitants, and maybe a schooner or ship trading for sandalwood, bêche de mer, and copra, in which we could get a passage to China, Australia, or New Zealand.
Though the trade winds blew fresh and the sun was shining, the whole air seemed to be full of a sort of brown haze; and we found that our decks, sails, clothes, hair, in fact everything, were covered with a fine, brown dust, which settled down on us, and in such quantities that we had to keep on shovelling it overboard or we should have sunk under its weight.
All day we sailed on in the direction of the smoke, and at night we again saw it lighted up by the reflection of the fire beneath. We were tired and weary, and though we took it in turns to steer and look out, the helmsman often found his head bobbing down on his chest. But in the middle of the night we were all frightened out of our sleepiness by the boat striking some hard substance.
“What’s up?” cried Tom, as he came out of the well, where he and I had been sleeping. “What have you run into, Bill?”