f walnuts, or even larger, began to fall on the deck, the captain sent
Kathleen below.

"There's no saying where or when a big stone may fall, my girl," he
said, "and it's not the habit of Englishmen to let women come under
fire, so you'll be safer below. Besides, you'll be able to see
something of what's goin' on out o' the cabin windows."

With the obedience that was natural to her, Kathleen went down at once,
and the captain made everything as snug as possible, battening down the
hatches and shortening sail so as to be ready for whatever might befall.

"I don't like the look o' things, Mr Moor," said the captain when the
second mate came on deck to take his watch.

"No more do I, sir," answered Mr Moor calmly.

The aspect of things was indeed very changeable. Sometimes, as we have
said, all nature seemed to be steeped in thick darkness, at other times
the fires of the volcano blazed upward, spreading a red glare on the
rolling clouds and over the heaving sea. Lightning also played its part
as well as thunder, but the latter was scarcely distinguishable from the
volcano's roar. Three days before Sunday the 26th of August, Captain
Roy--as well as the crews of several other vessels that were in Sunda
Straits at the time--had observed a marked though gradual increase in
the violence of the eruption. On that day, as we read in the _Report of
the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society_, about 1 p.m. the
detonations caused by the explosive action attained such violence as to
be heard at Batavia, about 100 English miles away. At 2 p.m. of the
same day, Captain Thompson of the _Medea_, when about 76 miles
east-north-east of the island, saw a black mass rising like clouds of
smoke to a height which has been estimated at no less than 17 miles!
And the detonations were at that time taking place at intervals of ten
minutes. But, terrible though these explosions must have been, they
were but as the whisperings of the volcano. An hour later they had
increased so much as to be heard at Bandong and other places 150 miles
away, and at 5 p.m. they had become so tremendous as to be heard over
the whole island of Java, the eastern portion of which is about 650
miles from Krakatoa.

And the sounds thus heard were not merely like distant thunder. In
Batavia--although, as we have said, 100 miles off--they were so violent
during the whole of that terrible Sunday night as to prevent the people
from sleeping. They were compare