ome 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 halfway, 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 insolent, boy."

"It's not insolence, father. It's only poetical licence, meant to
assure you that I did not come by 'bus or rail, though you did by
steamer! But let me introduce you to my friend, Mr ---"

He stopped short on looking round, for Van der Kemp was not there.

"He hoed away wheneber he saw de peepil comin' up de hill," said Moses,
who had watched the meeting of father and son with huge delight. "But
you kin interdooce _me_ instead," he added, with a crater-like smile.

"True, true," exclaimed Nigel, laughing. "This is Moses, father, my
host's servant, and my very good friend, and a remarkably free-and-easy
friend, as you see. He will guide us back to the cave, since Van der
Kemp seems to have left us."

"Who's Van der Kemp?" asked the captain.

"The hermit of Rakata, father--that's his name. His father was a
Dutchman and his mother an English or Irish woman--I forget which. He's
a splendid fellow; quite different from what one