headway. Suddenly she vibrated from stem to stern, and with
a soft grating sound that was unmistakable came to rest. We were
aground in what should have been clear water, with the forest-clad
shore of Muloa lying close off to port.

The helmsman turned to me with a look of silly fright on his face,
as the wheel revolved useless in his hands. We had shelved with
scarcely a jar sufficient to disturb those sleeping below, but in a
twinkling Jackson, the mate, appeared on deck in his pajamas, and
after a swift glance toward the familiar shore turned to me with the
same dumfounded look that had frozen upon the face of the steersman.

"What do you make of this?" he exclaimed, as I called for the lead.

"Be quiet about it," I said to the hands that had started into
movement. "Look sharp now, and make no noise." Then I turned to the
mate, who was perplexedly rubbing one bare foot against the other
and measuring with his eye our distance from the shore. The _Sylph_
should have turned the point of the island without mishap, as she
had done scores of times.

"It's the volcano we have to thank for this," was my conjecture.
"Its recent activity has caused some displacement of the sea bottom."

Jackson's head went back in sudden comprehension. "It's a miracle
you didn't plow into it under full sail."

We had indeed come about in the very nick of time to avoid disaster.
As matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to
float clear with the tide."

The mate cocked a doubtful eye at Lakalatcha, uncomfortably close
above our heads, flaming at intervals and bathing the deck with an
angry glare of light. "If she should begin spitting up a little
livelier ..." he speculated with a shrug, and presently took
himself off to his bunk after an inspection below had shown that
none of the schooner's seams had started. There was nothing to do
but to wait for the tide to make and lift the vessel clear. It would
be a matter of three or four hours. I dismissed the helmsman; and the
watch forward, taking advantage of the respite from duty, were soon
recumbent in attitudes of heavy sleep.

The wind had died out and a heavy torpor lay upon the water. It was
as if the stars alone held to their slow courses above a world rigid
and inanimate. The _Sylph_ lay with a slight list, her spars looking
inexpressibly helpless against the sky, and, as the minutes dragged,
a fine volcanic ash, like some mortal pestilence exhaled by the
mons