ot place you at once in
safety? I have been to the ship; I have brought back one of the boats.
The darkness will befriend us--let us embark while we can."

She shrank away as he took her hand. "You forget my father!" she said.

"Your father is in no danger, my love. The canoes are waiting for him at
the cape; I saw the lights as I passed."

With that reply he drew her out of the hut and led her toward the
sea. Not a breath of the breeze was now to be felt. The dead calm had
returned--and the boat was too large to be easily managed by one man
alone at the oars.

"The breeze may come again," he said. "Wait here, my angel, for the
chance."

As he spoke, the deep silence of the forest below them was broken by a
sound. A harsh wailing voice was heard, calling:

"Aimata! Aimata!"

"My father!" she whispered; "he has missed me. If he comes here you are
lost."

She kissed him with passionate fervor; she held him to her for a moment
with all her strength.

"Expect me at daybreak," she said, and disappeared down the landward
slope of the cliff.

He listened, anxious for her safety. The voices of the father and
daughter just reached him from among the trees. The Priest spoke in
no angry tones; she had apparently found an acceptable excuse for her
absence. Little by little, the failing sound of their voices told him
that they were on their way back together to the Temple. The silence
fell again. Not a ripple broke on the beach. Not a leaf rustled in the
forest. Nothing moved but the reflected flashes of the volcano on the
main island over the black sky. It was an airless and an awful calm.

He went into the hut, and laid down on his bed of leaves--not to sleep,
but to rest. All his energies might be required to meet the coming
events of the morning. After the voyage to and from the ship, and the
long watching that had preceded it, strong as he was he stood in need of
repose.

For some little time he kept awake, thinking. Insensibly the oppression
of the intense heat, aided in its influence by his own fatigue,
treacherously closed his eyes. In spite of himself, the weary man fell
into a deep sleep.

He was awakened by a roar like the explosion of a park of artillery. The
volcano on the main island had burst into a state of eruption. Smoky
flame-light overspread the sky, and flashed through the open doorway of
the hut. He sprang from his bed--and found himself up to his knees in
water.

Had the sea overflowed the