ut the necessary preparations for
the launching, which was to take place the morning of the next day, the
9th of March.

But during the night of the 8th an enormous column of vapor escaping
from the crater rose with frightful explosions to a height of more than
three thousand feet. The wall of Dakkar Grotto had evidently given way
under the pressure of gases, and the sea, rushing through the central
shalt into the igneous gulf, was at once converted into vapor. But
the crater could not afford a sufficient outlet for this vapor. An
explosion, which might have been heard at a distance of a hundred miles,
shook the air. Fragments of mountains fell into the Pacific, and, in a
few minutes, the ocean rolled over the spot where Lincoln island once
stood.

Chapter 20

An isolated rock, thirty feet in length, twenty in breadth, scarcely ten
from the water's edge, such was the only solid point which the waves of
the Pacific had not engulfed.

It was all that remained of the structure of Granite House! The wall had
fallen headlong and been then shattered to fragments, and a few of the
rocks of the large room were piled one above another to form this point.
All around had disappeared in the abyss; the inferior cone of Mount
Franklin, rent asunder by the explosion; the lava jaws of Shark Gulf,
the plateau of Prospect Heights, Safety Islet, the granite rocks of Port
Balloon, the basalts of Dakkar Grotto, the long Serpentine Peninsula, so
distant nevertheless from the center of the eruption. All that could
now be seen of Lincoln Island was the narrow rock which now served as a
refuge to the six colonists and their dog Top.

The animals had also perished in the catastrophe; the birds, as well
as those representing the fauna of the island--all either crushed or
drowned, and the unfortunate Jup himself had, alas! found his death in
some crevice of the soil.

If Cyrus Harding, Gideon Spilett, Herbert, Pencroft, Neb, and Ayrton
had survived, it was because, assembled under their tent, they had been
hurled into the sea at the instant when the fragments of the island
rained down on every side.

When they reached the surface they could only perceive, at half a
cable's length, this mass of rocks, towards which they swam and on which
they found footing.

On this barren rock they had now existed for nine days. A few provisions
taken from the magazine of Granite House before the catastrophe, a
little fresh water from the rain which