iceberg--as you might call it--that floated a hundred miles on
a stream of molten lava before melting.

"I was not there; I was two hundred miles to the sou'west, first mate
of one of those old-fashioned, soft-pine, centerboard barkentines--three
sticks the same length, you know--with the mainmast stepped on the port
side of the keel to make room for the centerboard--a craft that would
neither stay, nor wear, nor scud, nor heave to, like a decent vessel.

"But she had several advantages; she was new, and well painted, deck,
top-sides, and bottom. Hence her light timbers and planking were not
water-soaked. She was fastened with 'trunnels,' not spikes and bolts,
and hemp rigged.

"Perhaps there was not a hundredweight of iron aboard of her, while her
hemp rigging, though heavier than water, was lighter than wire rope,
and so, when we were hit by the back wash of that tidal wave, we did
not sink, even though butts were started from one end to the other of
the flimsy hull, and all hatches were ripped off.

"I have called it the back wash, yet we may have had a tidal wave of
our own; for, though we had no knowledge of the frightful catastrophe
at Java, still there had been for days several submarine earthquakes
all about us, sending fountains of water, steam bubbles, and mud from
the sea bed into the air.

"As the soundings were over two thousand fathoms in that neighborhood,
you can imagine the seismic forces at work beneath us. There had been
no wind for days, and no sea, except the agitation caused by the
upheavals. The sky was a dull mud color, and the sun looked like
nothing but a dark, red ball, rising day by day in the east, to move
overhead and set in the west. The air was hot, sultry, and stifling,
and I had difficulty in keeping the men--a big crew--at work.

"The conditions would try anybody's temper, and I had my own troubles.
There was a passenger on board, a big, fat, highly educated German--a
scientist and explorer--whom we had taken aboard at some little town on
the West Australian coast, and who was to leave us at Batavia, where he
could catch a steamer for Germany.

"He had a whole laboratory with him, with scientific instruments that I
didn't know the names of, with maps he had made, stuffed beasts and
birds he had killed, and a few live ones which he kept in cages and
attended to himself in the empty hold; for we were flying light, you
know, without even ballast aboard, and bound to Batavia for a c