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Coruscations of bluish light seemed to play about the masts, and balls of electric fire tipped the yards, throwing for a short time a ghastly sheen over the ship and crew, for the profound darkness had again settled down, owing, no doubt, to another choking of the Krakatoa vent.
I have just been to the brow of a ridge not far off whence I have seen the glow in the sky of the Krakatoa fires. They do not, however, appear to be very fierce at the present moment." As he spoke there was felt by the travellers a blow, as if of an explosion under the house in which they sat. It was a strong vertical bump which nearly tossed them all off their chairs.
Just then there burst upon their ears the yell of a steam-whistle, and a few moments later a steamer bore straight down on them, astern. "Steamer ahoy!" shouted Van der Kemp. "Will ye throw us a rope?" "Ay! ay! ease 'er! stop 'er! where are 'ee bound for?" demanded an unmistakably English voice. "Krakatoa!" replied the hermit. "Where are you?" "Anjer, on the Java coast.
I remember. You're the man we met, I suppose, wi' the hermit on Krakatoa that day o' the excursion from Batavia." "Yes, das me. But we'll meet on Krakatoa no more, for dat place am blown to bits." "I'm pretty well convinced o' that by this time, my man. Not hurt much, I hope?"
But now, although the travellers were some miles distant from Krakatoa, the gloom was so impervious that Nigel, from his place in the centre of the canoe, could not see the form of poor Spinkie which sat clinging to the mast only two feet in front of him save when a blaze from Perboewatan or one of the other craters lighted up island and ocean with a vivid glare.
To our hermit and his friend, who were, so to speak, in the very midst of it, the sound rather resembled the continuous musketry of a battle-field, while the louder explosions might be compared to the booming of artillery, though they necessarily lose by the comparison, for no invention of man ever produced sounds equal to those which thundered at that time from the womb of Krakatoa.
The effect of the sounds of the explosions on the Straits Settlements generally was not only striking, but to some extent amusing. At Carimon, in Java 355 miles distant from Krakatoa it was supposed that a vessel in distress was firing guns, and several native boats were sent off to render assistance, but no distressed vessel was to be found!
The hermit made the nearest approach to a laugh which Nigel had yet seen, as he left the cave to undertake some of the preparations above referred to. See The Eruption of Krakatoa and Subsequent Phenomena page 11.
What the thoughts of the hermit were he could not tell, for that strange man seldom spoke about himself; but Moses was not so reticent, for he afterwards remarked that he had often been caught by gales while in the canoe, and had been attached for hours to their floating anchor, but that "dat was out ob sight de wust bust ob wedder dey'd had since dey come to lib at Krakatoa, an' he had bery nigh giben up in despair!"
On that day, as we read in the Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society, about 1 p.m. the detonations caused by the explosive action attained such violence as to be heard at Batavia, about 100 English miles away.
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