The wind had died out and a heavy torpor lay upon the water.  It was as if the stars alone held to their slow courses above a world rigid and inanimate.  The Sylph lay with a slight list, her spars looking inexpressibly helpless against the sky, and, as the minutes dragged, a fine volcanic ash, like some mortal pestilence exhaled by the monster cone, settled down upon the deck, where, forward in the shadow, the watch lay curled like dead men.

Alone, I paced back and forth—­countless soft-footed miles, it seemed, through interminable hours, until at length some obscure impulse prompted me to pause before the open sky-light over the cabin and thrust my head down.  A lamp above the dining-table, left to burn through the night, feebly illuminated the room.  A faint snore issued at regular intervals from the half-open door of the mate’s stateroom.  The door of Joyce’s stateroom opposite was also upon the hook for the sake of air.

Suddenly a soft thump against the side of the schooner, followed by a scrambling noise, made me turn round.  The dripping, bedraggled figure of a man in a sleeping-suit mounted the rope ladder that hung over the side, and paused, grasping the rail.  I had withdrawn my gaze so suddenly from the glow of the light in the cabin that for several moments the intruder from out of the sea was only a blurred form with one leg hung over the rail, where he hung as if spent by his exertions.

Just then the sooty vapours above the edged maw of the volcano were rent by a flare of crimson, and in the fleeting instant of unnatural daylight I beheld Farquharson, bare-footed, and dripping with sea-water, confronting me with a sardonic, triumphant smile.  The light faded in a twinkling, but in the darkness he swung his other leg over the rail and sat perched there, as if challenging the testimony of my senses.

“Farquharson!” I breathed aloud, utterly dumfounded.

“Did you think I was a ghost?” I could hear him softly laughing to himself in the interval that followed.  “You should have witnessed Wadakimba’s fright at my coming back from the dead.  Well, I’ll admit I almost was done for.”

Again the volcano breathed in torment.  It was like the sudden opening of a gigantic blast-furnace, and in that instant I saw him vividly—­his thin, saturnine face, his damp black hair pushed sleekly back, his lips twisted to a cruel smile, his eyes craftily alert, as if to some ambushed danger continually at hand.  He was watching me with a sort of malicious relish in the shock he had given me.

“It was not your intention to stop at Muloa,” he observed, dryly, for the plight of the schooner was obvious.

“We’ll float clear with the tide,” I muttered.

“But in the meantime”—­there was something almost menacing in his deliberate pause—­“I have the pleasure of this little call upon you.”

A head lifted from among the inert figures and sleepily regarded us before it dropped back into the shadows.  The stranded ship, the recumbent men, the mountain flaming overhead—­it was like a phantom world into which had been suddenly thrust this ghastly and incredible reality.