land?

He waded out of the hut, and the water rose to his middle. He looked
round him by the lurid light of the eruption. The one visible object
within the range of view was the sea, stained by reflections from the
blood-red sky, swirling and rippling strangely in the dead calm. In a
moment more, he became conscious that the earth on which he stood was
sinking under his feet. The water rose to his neck; the last vestige of
the roof of the hut disappeared.

He looked round again, and the truth burst on him. The island was
sinking--slowly, slowly sinking into volcanic depths, below even the
depth of the sea! The highest object was the hut, and that had dropped
inch by inch under water before his own eyes. Thrown up to the surface
by occult volcanic influences, the island had sunk back, under the same
influences, to the obscurity from which it had emerged!

A black shadowy object, turning in a wide circle, came slowly near him
as the all-destroying ocean washed its bitter waters into his mouth. The
buoyant boat, rising as the sea rose, had dragged its anchor, and was
floating round in the vortex made by the slowly sinking island. With a
last desperate hope that Aimata might have been saved as _he_ had been
saved, he swam to the boat, seized the heavy oars with the strength of a
giant, and made for the place (so far as he could guess at it now) where
the lake and the Temple had once been.

He looked round and round him; he strained his eyes in the vain attempt
to penetrate below the surface of the seething dimpling sea. Had the
panic-stricken watchers in the canoes saved themselves, without an
effort to preserve the father and daughter? Or had they both been
suffocated before they could make an attempt to escape? He called to her
in his misery, as if she could hear him out of the fathomless depths:
"Aimata! Aimata!" The roar of the distant eruption answered him. The
mounting fires lit the solitary sea far and near over the sinking
island. The boat turned slowly and more slowly in the lessening vortex.
Never again would those gentle eyes look at him with unutterable love!
Never again would those fresh lips touch his lips with their fervent
kiss! Alone, amid the savage forces of Nature in conflict, the miserable
mortal lifted his hands in frantic supplication--and the burning sky
glared down on him in its pitiless grandeur, and struck him to his knees
in the boat. His reason sank with his sinking limbs. In the merciful
fr