er came towering on astern, threatening to
engulf them, but plunging beneath the stern, lifting and bearing them
along upon its tremendous crest with a rush and deafening hissing roar.
Faster and faster, and on and toward the deep glow now right ahead.

Oliver Lane was clinging to the fore shrouds and awake to the fact that
his two friends, Panton and Drew, were at his side, for their faces
loomed out of the black darkness, lit up by the blood-red glow from
which now came a perceptible sense of heat. The next moment they were
joined by the mate, who yelled to them, his voice plainly heard over the
hiss and roar,--

"Earthquake wave! It's all over now."

He said no more, and they all clung there, with the vessel still
balanced accurately upon the huge crest and borne on at almost express
speed.

In his agony of despair and horror Lane now glanced to right and left to
see by the blood-red glow the rolling hill of water upon which he rode
spreading out to right and left, while from the clouds above it was as
if the whole of the firmament were casting down its stars in one great
shower of light as the fiery stones came rushing, hissing into the sea
and many of them crashing upon the doomed ship.

Death was upon them in its most awful form, and as the young man was
conscious of two hands gripping his arms, a voice close to his ear
shouted,--

"The end of all things, my lad; we can never live through this!"

CHAPTER TWO.

A BIT OF BLUE.

As if to endorse these words there was once more a deafening explosion,
the blood-red glow toward which they were being driven suddenly flashed
out into a burst of light so dazzling that all present covered their
blinded eyes; a spurt of fiery blocks of incandescent stone curved over
and fell into the boiling sea, and as the occupants of the deck were
driven prostrate by the shock which followed, silence and darkness once
more reigned.

"Much hurt, sir?"

Oliver Lane heard those words quite plainly, and lay wondering who it
was that was hurt, and why he did not answer so kindly an inquiry.

Then, as a hand was laid upon his shoulder, he grasped the fact that it
was the mate who was speaking, and that he was the object of the
sailor's solicitude.

"I--I don't know," he said, making an effort to sit up, and succeeding.
"Whatever is the matter? My head aches a good deal."

"No wonder, my lad, seeing how you were pitched against the mast. But
you won't hurt now. I doct