he 8th an enormous column of vapour escaping
from the crater rose with frightful explosions to a height of more than
three thousand feet. The wall of Dakkar Grotto had evidently given way
under the pressure of the gases, and the sea, rushing through the
central shaft into the igneous gulf, was at once converted into vapour.
But the crater could not afford a sufficient outlet for this vapour. An
explosion, which might have been heard at a distance of a hundred miles,
shook the air. Fragments of mountains fell into the Pacific, and, in a
few minutes, the ocean rolled over the spot where Lincoln Island once
stood.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

AN ISOLATED ROCK IN THE PACIFIC--THE LAST REFUGE OF THE COLONISTS OF
LINCOLN ISLAND--DEATH THEIR ONLY PROSPECT--UNEXPECTED SUCCOUR--WHY AND
HOW IT ARRIVES--A LAST KINDNESS--AN ISLAND ON TERRA FIRMA--THE TOMB OF
CAPTAIN PRINCE DAKKAR NEMO.

An isolated rock, thirty feet in length, twenty in breadth, scarcely ten
from the water's edge, such was the only solid point which the waves of
the Pacific had not engulfed.

It was all that remained of the structure of Granite House! The wall
had fallen headlong and been then shattered to fragments, and a few of
the rocks of the large room were piled one above another to form this
point. All around had disappeared in the abyss; the inferior cone of
Mount Franklin, rent asunder by the explosion; the lava jaws of Shark
Gulf, the plateau of Prospect Heights, Safety Islet, the granite rocks
of Port Balloon, the basalts of Dakkar Grotto, the long Serpentine
Peninsula, so distant nevertheless from the centre of the eruption. All
that could now be seen of Lincoln Island was the narrow rock which now
served as a refuge to the six colonists and their dog Top.

The animals had also perished in the catastrophe; the birds, as well as
those representing the fauna of the island--all either crushed or
drowned, and the unfortunate Jup himself had, alas! found his death in
some crevice of the soil.

If Cyrus Harding, Gideon Spilett, Herbert, Pencroft, Neb, and Ayrton had
survived, it was because, assembled under their tent, they had been
hurled into the sea at the instant when the fragments of the island
rained down on every side.

When they reached the surface they could only perceive, at half a
cable's length, this mass of rocks, towards which they swam and on which
they found footing.

On this barren rock they had now existed for nine days. A few
pro