s. Joyce, I beg of you...."

The schooner rose and dipped again.

For what seemed an interminable time we paced the deck together while
Lakalatcha flamed farther and farther astern. Her words came in fitful
snatches as if spoken in a delirium, and at times she would pause and
grip the rail to stare back, wild-eyed, at the receding island.

Suddenly she started, and in a sort of blinding, noonday blaze I saw her
face blanch with horror. It was as if at that moment the heavens had
cracked asunder and the night had fallen away in chaos. Turning, I saw
the cone of the mountain lifting skyward in fragments--and saw no more,
for the blinding vision remained seared upon the retina of my eyes.
Across the water, slower paced, came the dread concussion of sound.

"Good God! It's carried away the whole island!" I heard the mate's voice
bellowing above the cries of the men. The _Sylph_ scudded before the
approaching storm of fire redescending from the sky....

The first gray of the dawn disclosed Mrs. Joyce still standing by the
rail, her hand nestling within the arm of her husband, indifferent to
the heavy grayish dust that fell in benediction upon her like a silent
shower of snow.

* * * * *

The island of Muloa remains to-day a charred cinder lapped about by the
blue Pacific. At times gulls circle over its blackened and desolate
surface devoid of every vestige of life. From the squat, truncated mass
of Lakalatcha, shorn of half its lordly height, a feeble wisp of smoke
still issues to the breeze, as if Vulcan, tired of his forge, had banked
its fire before abandoning it.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Lee
Foster Hartman.

THE STICK-IN-THE-MUDS[10]

#By# RUPERT HUGHES

From _Collier's Weekly_

A skiff went prowling along the Avon River in the unhurried English
twilight that releases the sunset with reluctance and defers luxuriously
the roll call of the stars.

The skiff floated low, for the man alone in it was heavy and he was in
no greater haste than the northern night. Which was against the
traditions, for he was an American, an American business man.

He was making his way through the sky-hued water stealthily lest he
disturb the leisure of the swans, drowsy above their own images; lest he
discourage the nightingale trying a few low flute notes in the cathedral
tower of shadow that was a tree above the tomb of Shakespeare.