We were drawing steadily nearer to Muloa.  The mountain was breathing slowly and heavily—­a vast flare that lifted fanlike in the skies and died away.  Lightning played fitfully through the dense mass of smoke and choking gases that hung like a pall over the great cone.  It was like the night sky that overhangs a city of gigantic blast-furnaces, only infinitely multiplied.  The sails of the Sylph caught the ruddy tinge like a phantom craft gliding through the black night, its canvas still dyed with the sunset glow.  The faces of the crew, turned to watch the spectacle, curiously fixed and inhuman, were picked out of the gloom by the same fantastic light.  It was as if the schooner, with masts and riggings etched black against the lurid sky, sailed on into the Day of Judgment.

* * * * *

It was after midnight.  The Sylph came about, with sails trembling, and lost headway.  Suddenly she vibrated from stem to stern, and with a soft grating sound that was unmistakable came to rest.  We were aground in what should have been clear water, with the forest-clad shore of Muloa lying close off to port.

The helmsman turned to me with a look of silly fright on his face, as the wheel revolved useless in his hands.  We had shelved with scarcely a jar sufficient to disturb those sleeping below, but in a twinkling Jackson, the mate, appeared on deck in his pajamas, and after a swift glance toward the familiar shore turned to me with the same dumfounded look that had frozen upon the face of the steersman.

“What do you make of this?” he exclaimed, as I called for the lead.

“Be quiet about it,” I said to the hands that had started into movement.  “Look sharp now, and make no noise.”  Then I turned to the mate, who was perplexedly rubbing one bare foot against the other and measuring with his eye our distance from the shore.  The Sylph should have turned the point of the island without mishap, as she had done scores of times.

“It’s the volcano we have to thank for this,” was my conjecture.  “Its recent activity has caused some displacement of the sea bottom.”

Jackson’s head went back in sudden comprehension.  “It’s a miracle you didn’t plow into it under full sail.”

We had indeed come about in the very nick of time to avoid disaster.  As matters stood I was hopeful.  “With any sort of luck we ought to float clear with the tide.”

The mate cocked a doubtful eye at Lakalatcha, uncomfortably close above our heads, flaming at intervals and bathing the deck with an angry glare of light.  “If she should begin spitting up a little livelier ...” he speculated with a shrug, and presently took himself off to his bunk after an inspection below had shown that none of the schooner’s seams had started.  There was nothing to do but to wait for the tide to make and lift the vessel clear.  It would be a matter of three or four hours.  I dismissed the helmsman; and the watch forward, taking advantage of the respite from duty, were soon recumbent in attitudes of heavy sleep.