as it was one o' they blacks?"

"Ay, or, if it warn't that, one o' they hissing things as lives in the
burnin' mountain. I've heerd 'em before now a pretendin' to be steam
when yer went to look for 'em."

"Now, my lads, off with you!" cried the mate, and they hurried down from
the side, joining Drew with arms shouldered, and a minute after they had
disappeared in the darkness on their way to the sea.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

NATURE'S WARNINGS.

That hot sunny day passed with Oliver Lane and Panton seated in wicker
chairs, under a sail stretched out as an awning, for they both declared
that they could get better out in the air sooner than in the stuffy
cabin. A regular watch was kept on deck, and, in addition, a man was
stationed in the main-top, where a doubly folded sail had been rigged so
as to form sides, and to act as a protection in case he were seen by the
enemy and made a mark for their arrows; but nothing particular occurred.
All around looked very beautiful, for nature was beginning to rapidly
obliterate the devastation caused by the eruption and the earthquake
wave. There was heat and there was moisture, with plenty of rich soil
washed up in places, and these being three of her principal servants in
beautifying a tropic land, they had been hard at work. Trees, whose
roots had been buried in mud and sand, were putting forth green buds,
the water was pretty well dried away, and in places the bare earth was
showing faintly, bright patches of a tender green, while bird and
insect, wonderful to see, were darting about like brilliant gems.

As the two young men sat there weak and faint, but with the happy
sensation of feeling that they were, if only at the beginning, still on
the road back to health and strength, it seemed to them as if the events
of the night when they returned from the expedition to the volcano might
have been a dream. For the blacks had scared them on that day when they
were fishing, and again during the absence of part of the crew. Then
they had disappeared as suddenly as they appeared, and possibly they
might never come again.

Oliver thought and said so to Mr Rimmer, who, with a double gun resting
in the hollow of his left arm, had joined them, for he spent nearly the
whole of his time on deck.

"Perhaps you are right," he said. "I hope it is so. We did give them a
terrible peppering. I don't think anyone was killed, but they took away
enough shot to make them remember us b