n.

By the advice of his father, Nigel had changed his sailor costume for
the "shore-goin' toggery" in which he had landed on the Keeling Islands,
as being more suitable to his new character as a traveller, namely, a
white cloth cap with a peak in front and a curtain behind to protect his
neck, a light-grey tunic belted at the waist, and a pair of strong
canvas trousers. He had also purchased an old-fashioned
double-barrelled fowling-piece, muzzle-loading and with percussion
locks.

"For you see, Nigel," the captain had said, "it's all very well to use
breech-loaders when you've got towns and railways and suchlike to supply
you wi' cartridges, but when you've got to cruise in out-o'-the-way
waters, there's nothin' like the old style. It's not difficult to carry
a few thousand percussion-caps an' a bullet-mould about wi' you wherever
you go. As to powder, why, you'll come across that 'most everywhere,
an' lead too; and, for the matter o' that, if your life depended on it
you could shove a handful of gravel or a pen-knife or tooth-pick into
your gun an' blaze away, but with a breech-loader, if you run out o'
cartridges, where are you?"

So, as Nigel could not say where he was, the percussion-gun had been
purchased.

The peak of Rakata--the highest in the island--a little over 2600 feet,
came in sight first; gradually the rest of the island rose out of the
horizon, and ere long the rich tropical verdure became distinguishable.

Krakatoa--destined so soon to play a thrilling part in the world's
history; to change the aspect of the heavens everywhere; to attract the
wondering gaze of nearly all nations, and to devastate its immediate
neighbourhood--is of volcanic origin, and, at the time we write of
(1883) was beginning to awaken from a long, deep slumber of two hundred
years. Its last explosion occurred in the year 1680. Since that date
it had remained quiet. But now the tremendous subterranean forces which
had originally called it into being were beginning to reassert their
existence and their power. Vulcan was rousing himself again and
beginning once more to blow his bellows. So said some of the sailors
who were constantly going close past the island and through Sunda
Straits, which may be styled the narrows of the world's highway to the
China seas.

Subterranean forces, however, are so constantly at work more or less
violently in those regions that people took little notice of these
indications in the com