way to go."

"Yet, they would be as likely to come from the west as the east."

"Of course, and from the north as from the south. There, I've got blue
lights ready, and the men's arms are lying to hand. If they don't come
soon, and the blacks make their appearance instead, I'm afraid they will
find me vicious."

"Let's try to be patient," said Oliver.

"Patience, sir! I've none of that left. Now then, I think it's time
you gentlemen went below."

"Not yet," said Oliver. "It is so much cooler here, and if we went
below we should be fidgety, and fretting horribly. There goes the sun."

For as he spoke the great glowing disk of orange light dipped below the
horizon, great broad rays shot up nearly to the firmament, which for a
few minutes was of a transparent amber; then all rapidly turned grey,
dark grey, pale purple, purple, and almost directly black, covered with
brilliant stars.

"No moon for three hours," said the mate, as he looked round at the
black darkness, when the silence was suddenly broken by a chorus of
croaking, roaring and chirruping from reptile and insect. Then came the
strange trumpetings of birds; the splashings of crocodiles, accompanied
by roaring barks and the flogging of the water with their tails. Once
there was the unmistakable wailing cry of one of the great panther cats
answered at a distance, while from the north there came every now and
then a flickering flash of lightning evidently from the clouds hanging
heavily over the huge crater. Then for a few moments silence, and a
soft moist coolness floated by the watchers, followed by a heated puff,
suggestive of a breath from the volcano, and they were conscious of a
dull quivering of the deck.

"Wasn't thunder," said the mate. "That was a grumble down below."

Almost as he finished speaking there was a dull muttering, soon
followed, not preceded, by flash after flash.

"Like a storm upside down," said Panton. "Not likely to have rain, are
we, with the sky clear?"

"Likely to have anything," said the mate, "round the foot of a great
volcano."

_Ha ha ha, haw haw haw_!

"Bah those birds again," said Panton, as the peculiar laughing hoot of a
great owl was heard, raising up quite a chorus from the nearest patch of
forest, but silenced by another muttering from below.

"We're going to have some terrible trouble, I'm afraid," said the mate.
"The volcano's waking up again, and the birds and things know it.
What's that?"

"