kettle
when superheated, and on the exasperating shrieks of a steamboat's
safety-valve in action, or the bellowing of a fog-horn, he may form some
idea of the extent of his incapacity to conceive the thunderous roar of
Krakatoa when it began to boil over.

When to this awful sound there were added the intermittent explosions,
the horrid crackling of millions of rock-masses meeting in the air, and
the bubbling up of molten lava--verily it did not require the
imagination of a Dante to see in all this the very vomiting of Gehenna!

So amazed and well-nigh stunned was Nigel at the sights and sounds that
he neither heard nor saw the arrival of the excursionists, until the
equally awe-stricken Moses touched him on the elbow and drew his
attention to several men who suddenly appeared on the crater-brim not
fifty yards off, but who, like themselves, were too much absorbed with
the volcano itself to observe the other visitors. Probably they took
them for some of their own party who had reached the summit before them.

Nigel was yet looking at these visitors in some surprise, when an
elderly nautical man suddenly stood not twenty yards off gazing in
open-mouthed amazement, past our hero's very nose, at the volcanic
fires.

"Hallo, Father!" shouted the one.

"Zounds! Nigel!" exclaimed the other.

Both men glared and were speechless for several seconds. Then Nigel
rushed at the captain, and the captain met him half-way, and they shook
hands with such hearty goodwill as to arrest in his operations for a few
moments a photographer who was hastily setting up his camera!

Yes, science has done much to reveal the marvellous and arouse exalted
thoughts in the human mind, but it has also done something to crush
enthusiasts and shock the romantic. Veracity constrains us to state that
there he was, with his tripod, and his eager haste, and his hideous
black cloth, preparing to "take" Perboewatan on a "dry plate"! And he
"took" it too! And you may see it, if you will, as a marvellous
frontispiece to the volume by the "Krakatoa Committee"--a work which is
apparently as exhaustive of the subject of Krakatoa as was the great
explosion itself of those internal fires which will probably keep that
volcano quiet for the next two hundred years.

But this was not the Great Eruption of Krakatoa--only a rehearsal, as it
were.

"What brought you here, my son?" asked the captain, on recovering
speech.

"My legs, father."

"Don't be insole