-that being a sovereign and infallible cure for
indigestion and all other ills that flesh is heir to, as every one
knows!

"I say, old man," he inquired, with that cheerful tone and air which
usually accompanies incapacity for food. "Do it always rain ashes
here?"

The old man whom he addressed was a veteran Malay seaman.

"No," replied the Malay, "sometimes it rain mud--hot mud."

"Do it? Oh! well--anything for variety, I s'pose," returned the sailor,
with a growl which had reference to internal disarrangements.

"Is it often as dark as this in the daytime, an' is the sun usually
green?" he asked carelessly, more for the sake of distracting the mind
from other matters than for the desire of knowledge.

"Sometime it's more darker," replied the old man. "I've seed it so dark
that you couldn't see how awful dark it was."

As he spoke, a sound that has been described by ear-witnesses as
"deafening," smote upon their tympanums, the log on which they sat
quivered, the earth seemed to tremble, and several dishes in a
neighbouring hut were thrown down and broken.

"I say, old man, suthin' busted there," remarked the sailor, taking the
pipe from his mouth and quietly ramming its contents down with the end
of his blunt forefinger.

The Malay looked grave.

"The gasometer?" suggested the sailor.

"No, that _never_ busts."

"A noo mountain come into action, p'raps, an blow'd its top _off_?"

"Shouldn't wonder if that's it--close at hand too. We's used to that
here. But them's bigger cracks than or'nar'."

The old Malay was right as to the cause, but wrong as to distance.
Instead of being a volcano "close at hand," it was Krakatoa eviscerating
itself a hundred miles off, and the sound of its last grand effort
"extended over 50 degrees, equal to about 3000 miles."

On that day all the gas lights were extinguished in Batavia, and the
pictures rattled on the walls as though from the action of an
earthquake. But there was no earthquake. It was the air-wave from
Krakatoa, and the noise produced by the air-waves that followed was
described as "deafening."

The effect of the sounds of the explosions on the Straits Settlements
generally was not only striking but to some extent amusing. At Carimon,
in Java--355 miles distant from Krakatoa--it was supposed that a vessel
in distress was firing guns, and several native boats were sent off to
render assistance, but no distressed vessel was to be found! At Acheen,
i