also a
pretty regular dropping of small stones into the water around them.
Their attention was sharply aroused to this fact by the fall of a lump
of semi-molten rock, about the size of a cannon shot, a short distance
off, which was immediately followed by not less than a cubic yard of
lava which fell close to the canoe and deluged them with spray.

"We must go," said the hermit quietly. "No need to expose ourselves
here, though the watching of the tremendous forces that our Creator has
at command does possess a wonderful kind of fascination. It seems to me
the more we see of His power as exerted on our little earth, the more do
we realise the paltriness of our conception of the stupendous Might that
upholds the Universe."

While he was speaking, Van der Kemp guided the canoe into its little
haven, and in a few minutes he and Moses had carried it into the shelter
of the cave out of which Nigel had first seen it emerge. Then the lading
was carried up, after which they turned into the track which led to the
hermit's home.

The whole operation may be said to have been performed under fire, for
small masses of rock kept pattering continually on the dust-covered
ground around them, causing cloudlets, like smoke, to spring up wherever
they struck. Nigel and Moses could not resist glancing upward now and
then as they moved quickly to and fro, and they experienced a shrinking
sensation when a stone fell very near them, but each scorned to exhibit
the smallest trace of anxiety, or to suggest that the sooner they got
from under fire the better! As for Van der Kemp, he moved about
deliberately as if there was nothing unusual going on, and with an
absent look on his grave face as though the outbursts of smoke, and
fire, and lava, which turned the face of day into lurid night, and
caused the cliffs to reverberate with unwonted thunders, had no effect
whatever on his mind.

A short walk, however, along the track, which was more than ankle-deep
in dust, brought them under the sheltering sides of Rakata, up which
they soon scrambled to the mouth of their cave. Here all was found as
they had left it, save that the entrance was knee-deep in pumice dust.

And now a new and very strange sensation was felt by each of them, for
the loud reports and crackling sounds which had assailed their ears
outside were reduced by the thick walls of the cave to a continuous dull
groan, as it were, like the soft but thunderous bass notes of a
stupen