that had frozen upon the face of the steersman.

"What do you make of this?" he exclaimed, as I called for the lead.

"Be quiet about it," I said to the hands that had started into movement.
"Look sharp now, and make no noise." Then I turned to the mate, who was
perplexedly rubbing one bare foot against the other and measuring with
his eye our distance from the shore. The _Sylph_ should have turned the
point of the island without a mishap, as she had done scores of times.

"It's the volcano we have to thank for this," was my conjecture. "Its
recent activity has caused some displacement of the sea bottom."

Jackson's head went back in sudden comprehension. "It's a miracle you
didn't plow into it under full sail."

We had indeed come about in the very nick of time to avoid disaster. As
matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to float
clear with the tide."

The mate cocked a doubtful eye at Lakalatcha, uncomfortably close above
our heads, flaming at intervals and bathing the deck with an angry glare
of light. "If she should begin spitting up a little livelier ..." he
speculated with a shrug, and presently took himself off to his bunk
after an inspection below had shown that none of the schooner's seams
had started. There was nothing to do but to wait for the tide to make
and lift the vessel clear. It would be a matter of three or four hours.
I dismissed the helmsman; and the watch forward, taking advantage of the
respite from duty, were soon recumbent in attitudes of heavy sleep.

The wind had died out and a heavy torpor lay upon the water. It was as
if the stars alone held to their slow courses above a world rigid and
inanimate. The _Sylph_ lay with a slight list, her spars looking
inexpressibly helpless against the sky, and, as the minutes dragged, a
fine volcanic ash, like some mortal pestilence exhaled by the monster
cone, settled down upon the deck, where, forward in the shadow, the
watch curled like dead men.

Alone, I paced back and forth--countless soft-footed miles, it seemed,
through interminable hours, until at length some obscure impulse
prompted me to pause before the open skylight over the cabin and thrust
my head down. A lamp above the dining-table, left to burn through the
night, feebly illuminated the room. A faint snore issued at regular
intervals from the half-open door of the mate's state-room. The door of
Joyce's state-room opposite was also upon the hook for the sake of air