before--when she spoke to us on the island--"That is her way
of telling you that your horse broke her right arm when she caught him
for you. She held him, you remember, with her left hand. The doctor has
set the limb. She will not suffer long."

"Heaven help us, this awful night," Edith cried. "How do you know that,
Natalie?"

"I know much now, but I shall know more soon." After this she would not
speak again.

With every pound of steam on that the _Esmeralda's_ boilers would bear
without bursting, we were now plunging through the great rollers of the
Arafura Sea. Everything had indeed been done to put the vessel in trim.
She was cleared for action, so to speak. And a gallant fight she made
when the issue was knit. When the hour of midnight must be near at
hand, I looked at my watch. It was one minute to twelve o'clock.

Thirty seconds more!

The stupendous corona of flame which hung over the island was pierced by
long lines of smoke that stretched far above the glare and clutched with
sooty fingers at the stars, now fitfully coming back to view at our
distance. The rumbling of internal thunder waxed louder.

Fifteen seconds now!

Fearful peals rent the atmosphere. Vast tongues of flame protruded
heavenward. The elements must be melting in that fervent heat. The
blazing bowels of the earth were pouring forth.

Twelve, midnight!

A reverberation thundered out which shook the solid earth, and a roaring
hell-breath of flame and smoke belched up so awful in its dread
magnificence that every man who saw it and lived to tell his story might
justly have claimed to have seen perdition. In that hurricane of
incandescent matter the island was blotted out for ever from the map of
this world.

Notwithstanding the speed of the _Esmeralda_ she was a sloth when
compared with the speed of the wave from such an earthquake. From the
glare of the illumination to perfect darkness the contrast was sudden
and extreme. But the blackness of the ocean was soon whitened by the
snowy plumes of the avalanche of water which was now racing us, far
astern as yet, but gaining fast. I, who had no business about the ship
requiring my presence in any special part, decided to wait on deck and
lash myself to the forward, which would be practically the lee-side of a
deckhouse. Edith Metford we prevailed on to go below, that she might not
run the risk of further injury to her fractured arm. As she left us she
whispered to me, "So Natalie will b