Krakatoa—­destined so soon to play a thrilling part in the world’s history; to change the aspect of the heavens everywhere; to attract the wondering gaze of nearly all nations, and to devastate its immediate neighbourhood—­is of volcanic origin, and, at the time we write of (1883) was beginning to awaken from a long, deep slumber of two hundred years.  Its last explosion occurred in the year 1680.  Since that date it had remained quiet.  But now the tremendous subterranean forces which had originally called it into being were beginning to reassert their existence and their power.  Vulcan was rousing himself again and beginning once more to blow his bellows.  So said some of the sailors who were constantly going close past the island and through Sunda Straits, which may be styled the narrows of the world’s highway to the China seas.

Subterranean forces, however, are so constantly at work more or less violently in those regions that people took little notice of these indications in the comparatively small island of Krakatoa, which was between five and six miles long by four broad.

As we have said, it was uninhabited, and lying as it does between Sumatra and Java, about sixteen miles from the former and over twenty miles from the latter, it was occasionally visited by fishermen.  The hermit whom Nigel was about to visit might, in some sort, be counted an inhabitant, for he had dwelt there many years, but he lived in a cave which was difficult of access, and held communication with no one.  How he spent his time was a mystery, for although his negro servant went to the neighbouring town of Anjer in Java for supplies, and sometimes to Batavia, as we have seen, no piece of inanimate ebony from the forest could have been less communicative than he.  Indeed, our hero was the first to unlock the door of his lips, with that key of mysterious sympathy to which reference has already been made.  Some of the bolder of the young fishermen of the neighbouring coasts had several times made futile efforts to find out where and how the hermit lived, but the few who got a glimpse of him at a distance brought back such a report that a kind of superstitious fear of him was generated which kept them at a respectful distance.

He was ten feet high, some romancers said, with shoulders four feet broad, a chest like a sugar-hogshead, and a countenance resembling a compound of orang-utan and tiger.

Of course our hero knew nothing of these rumours, and as Moses declined to give any information regarding his master beyond that already given, he was left to the full play of his imagination.

Moses was quite candid about it.  He made no pretence to shroud things in mystery.

“You mus’ know, Massa Nadgel,” he said, as they slowly drew near to the island, “I’s ’fraid ob ’im dough I lub ’im.”

“But why do you love him, Moses?”

“‘Cause he sabe my life an’ set me free.”

“Indeed? well, that is good reason.  And why do you fear him?”