“Ay, ay, sir,” was the prompt reply.

Moses and Nigel kept the little craft straight to the wind while the foresail was being reefed, Van der Kemp and the former performing the same duty while Nigel reefed the mainsail.

Suddenly there came a brief but total cessation of the gale, though not of the tumultuous heaving of the waters.  During that short interval there burst upon the world a crash and a roar so tremendous that for a few moments the voyagers were almost stunned!

It is no figure of speech to say that the world heard the crash.  Hundreds, ay, thousands of miles did the sound of that mighty upheaval pass over land and sea to startle, more or less, the nations of the earth.

The effect of a stupendous shock on the nervous system is curiously various in different individuals.  The three men who were so near to the volcano at that moment involuntarily looked round and saw by the lurid blaze that an enormous mass of Krakatoa, rent from top to bottom, was falling headlong into the sea; while the entire heavens were alive with flame, lightning, steam, smoke, and the upward-shooting fragments of the hideous wreck!

The hermit calmly rested his paddle on the deck and gazed around in silent wonder.  Nigel, not less smitten with awe, held his paddle with an iron grasp, every muscle quivering with tension in readiness for instant action when the need for action should appear.  Moses, on the other hand, turning round from the sight with glaring eyes, resumed paddling with unreasoning ferocity, and gave vent at once to his feelings and his opinion in the sharp exclamation—­“Blown to bits!”

[Illustration:  BLOWN TO BITS—­PAGE 342.]

CHAPTER XXV.

ADVENTURES OF THE “SUNSHINE” AND AN UNEXPECTED REUNION.

We must request the reader to turn back now for a brief period to a very different scene.

A considerable time before the tremendous catastrophe described in the last chapter—­which we claim to have recorded without the slightest exaggeration, inasmuch as exaggeration were impossible—­Captain David Roy, of the good brig Sunshine, received the letter which his son wrote to him while in the jungles of Sumatra.

The captain was seated in the back office of a Batavian merchant at the time, smoking a long clay pipe—­on the principle, no doubt, that moderate poisoning is conducive to moderate health!

As he perused the letter, the captain’s eyes slowly opened; so did his mouth, and the clay pipe, falling to the floor, was reduced to little pieces.  But the captain evidently cared nothing for that.  He gave forth a prolonged whistle, got up, smote upon his thigh, and exclaimed with deep-toned emphasis—­

“The rascal!”

Then he sat down again and re-perused the letter, with a variety of expression on his face that might have recalled the typical April day, minus the tears.