“I say, old man,” he inquired, with that cheerful tone and air which usually accompanies incapacity for food.  “Do it always rain ashes here?”

The old man whom he addressed was a veteran Malay seaman.

“No,” replied the Malay, “sometimes it rain mud—­hot mud.”

“Do it?  Oh! well—­anything for variety, I s’pose,” returned the sailor, with a growl which had reference to internal disarrangements.

“Is it often as dark as this in the daytime, an’ is the sun usually green?” he asked carelessly, more for the sake of distracting the mind from other matters than for the desire of knowledge.

“Sometime it’s more darker,” replied the old man.  “I’ve seed it so dark that you couldn’t see how awful dark it was.”

As he spoke, a sound that has been described by ear-witnesses as “deafening” smote upon their tympanums, the log on which they sat quivered, the earth seemed to tremble, and several dishes in a neighbouring hut were thrown down and broken.

“I say, old man, suthin’ busted there,” remarked the sailor, taking the pipe from his mouth and quietly ramming its contents down with the end of his blunt forefinger.

The Malay looked grave.

“The gasometer?” suggested the sailor.

“No, that never busts.”

“A noo mountain come into action, p’raps, an’ blow’d its top off?”

“Shouldn’t wonder if that’s it—­close at hand too.  We’s used to that here.  But them’s bigger cracks than or’nar’.”

The old Malay was right as to the cause, but wrong as to distance.  Instead of being a volcano “close at hand,” it was Krakatoa eviscerating itself a hundred miles off, and the sound of its last grand effort “extended over 50 degrees = about 3000 miles.”

On that day all the gas lights were extinguished in Batavia, and the pictures rattled on the walls as though from the action of an earthquake.  But there was no earthquake.  It was the air-wave from Krakatoa, and the noise produced by the air-waves that followed was described as “deafening.”

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!  At Acheen, in Sumatra—­1073 miles distant—­they supposed that a fort was being attacked and the troops were turned out under arms.  At Singapore—­522 miles off—­they fancied that the detonations came from a vessel in distress and two steamers were despatched to search for it.  And here the effect on the telephone, extending to Ishore, was remarkable.  On raising the tubes a perfect roar as of a waterfall was heard.  By shouting at the top of his voice, the clerk at one end could make the clerk at the other end hear, but he could not render a word intelligible.