the water.

"This is wonderful. What is going to occur next?" I exclaimed.

"Perhaps the wind is just taking a rest," observed Van Graoul.

We waited in expectation of again feeling the fury of the blast, and
anxiously looked at the compass to see from what quarter it came. While
our eyes were trying to pierce the darkness, as if we could discover the
coming danger, a bright light burst on them from the south. Never was a
spectacle of a like nature, more awful yet more magnificent, beheld.
The darkness for an instant cleared away, and we saw, but a few miles
distant it seemed, a lofty mountain. From its broad summit there burst
forth three distinct columns of flame. They thus rose to an enormous
height, and then, their summits uniting in one, they seemed to contend
with each other, twisting and intertwining together, till their crests
broke into a mass of fiery foam, and expanded over the heavens. Now and
then a still larger quantity of flame would burst forth, and darting
upwards for many thousand feet, would fall in burning streams to the
earth. Other streams also burst forth and flowed down the sides of the
mountain, till the whole side towards us seemed one mass of liquid fire.

Although we were some miles distant, the light from the burning mountain
cast a lurid glare on the hull and rigging of the schooner; and as we
looked at each other, our faces shone as if formed of some red-hot metal
rather than of flesh, while the whole expanse of sea between us and the
land seemed a mass of molten copper. An artist would have delighted to
paint the wondering countenances of the seamen, some still full of
doubts and fears; the various attitudes in which they stood transfixed;
the many tints of their skins, from the dark hues of the Javanese and
Malays, in their picturesque costume, to the fair colour of the
Europeans, in the ordinary dress in which English and American seamen
delight, now blended into one line.

All this time the loud reports continued to be heard; but knowing their
cause, they no longer appeared to us like those of cannon. Almost as
suddenly as the awful spectacle had been exhibited to our eyes, it was
once more obscured by the dense masses of cinders, and even of stone,
which filled the sky and fell around us.

The wind returned, as before, from the east; and, to avoid the fiery
shower, we stood away to the northward. It was in vain to hope to
escape it altogether. The stones which fell