highest in the island--a little over 2600 feet,
came in sight first; gradually the rest of the island rose out of the
horizon, and ere long the rich tropical verdure became distinguishable.

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 roma