eat ten-mile long valley of silver sand
which glittered in the sunlight like a great silver carpeted ballroom
floor. Tourists from all over the world have thrilled to its strange
beauty. Like the gown of some great and ancient queen this silver cloth
lies there; or like some great silver rug of Oriental weaving it
carpeted that valley floor at noon.

But at daybreak it was a sea of mist into which it looked as if one
might plunge, naked to the skin and wash his soul clean of its tropical
sweat and dirt; a fit swimming pool for the gods of Java, of whom there
are so many.

Then something happened as we stood looking down into that smooth sea of
white fog, rolling in great billows below us. There was a sudden roar as
if an entire Hindenburg line had let loose with its "Heavies." There was
a sudden and terrific trembling of the earth under our feet which made
us jump back from that precipice in terror.

Then slowly, as if it were on a great mechanical stage, the perfect cone
of old rumbling Bromo, from which curled a thin wisp of black smoke,
bulged its way out of the center of that sea of white fog, rising
gradually higher and higher as though the stage of the morning had been
set, the play had begun, and unseen stage hands behind the curtain of
fog, with some mighty derrick and tremendous power were lifting a huge
volcano as a stage piece.

Then came the quick, burning tropical sun, shooting above the eastern
horizon as suddenly as the volcanic cone had been lifted above the fog.
This hot sun burned away the mists in a few minutes and there,
stretching below us, in all its oriental beauty was the sinewy,
voluptuous form of the silver sand sea--Bromo's subtle mistress.

* * * * *

There is another Physical Flash-light that will never die.

Coming out of the Singapore Straits one evening at sunset, bound for the
island of Borneo across the South China Sea, I was sitting on the upper
deck of a small Dutch ship. The canvas flapped in the winds. A cool,
tropical breeze fanned our faces. Back of us in our direct wake a
splashing, tumbling, tumultuous tropical sunset flared across the sky.
It was crimson glory. In the direct path of the crimson sun a lighthouse
flashed its blinking eyes like a musical director with his baton beating
time.

I watched this flashing, lesser, light against the crimson sunset and
was becoming fascinated by it.

Then great black clouds began to roll down over