urious blast. Every nerve and muscle had to be devoted to the task of
holding on, and in this way hour after hour of that awful night slowly
passed away till one and all of the crew strained their eyes, though
vainly, for the coming of the day.

"At last!" shouted the mate.

Oliver Lane looked up in his direction, so thoroughly exhausted and weak
that he could not comprehend the meaning of his companion's words. Then
by slow degrees he began to realise that the wind was falling fast,
though the vessel was labouring as much as ever.

Then he managed to grasp the fact that it was some time since the deck
had been flooded by a wave, and with a faint gleam of hope crossing the
darkness which had enshrouded them, he said with an effort--

"Lulling a little?"

"Lulling?" cried the mate. "You couldn't have talked to me like that a
couple of hours ago."

"Then we have escaped?"

"I don't know yet. All that I know is that we are getting through the
storm, and the sooner it is daylight the better I shall be pleased."

Some hours passed. The wind had died out and the sea was rapidly going
down, but a strange feeling of uneasiness had come upon the occupants of
the little vessel. Visit after visit had been paid to the cabins, and
the watches which had been consulted and doubted were now acknowledged
to be trusty and truth-telling, for the chronometers supported their
evidence and announced that it was well on toward noon of the next day.
Though to all appearance it was midnight of the blackest, dense clouds
shutting out the sky, while the long-continued darkness had a singularly
depressing effect upon men worn out by their struggle with the storm.

Arthur Panton, the mineralogist of the little expedition, had pretty
well recovered from the battering he had received, and he at once gave
his opinion as to the cause of the darkness.

"I cannot speak learnedly upon the subject," he said, "but these
terrible storms, as Mr Rimmer says, do appear to be somehow connected
with electric disturbances, and often enough these latter seem to be
related to volcanic eruptions."

"And you think there is a volcanic eruption somewhere near?" asked Lane.

"I do not say somewhere near, for the wind may have brought this dense
blackness from hundreds of miles distant but certainly I should say that
one of the many volcanoes in this region is in eruption."

"If it were, sir, we should be having fine ashes coming down upon us,"
said t