Blown to Bits: The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago

Chapter Twenty Five
Adventures of the “Sunshine” and an Unexpected Reunion

We must request the reader to turn back now for a brief period to a very different scene.

A considerable time before the tremendous catastrophe described in the last chapter—which we claim to have recorded without the slightest exaggeration, inasmuch as exaggeration were impossible—Captain David Roy, of the good brig Sunshine, received the letter which his son wrote to him while in the jungles of Sumatra.

The captain was seated in the back office of a Batavian merchant at the time, smoking a long clay pipe—on the principle, no doubt, that moderate poisoning is conducive to moderate health!

As he perused the letter, the captain’s eyes slowly opened; so did his mouth, and the clay pipe, falling to the floor, was reduced to little pieces. But the captain evidently cared nothing for that. He gave forth a prolonged whistle, got up, smote upon his thigh, and exclaimed with deep-toned emphasis—

“The rascal!”

Then he sat down again and re-perused the letter, with a variety of expression on his face that might have recalled the typical April day, minus the tears.

“The rascal!” he repeated, as he finished the second reading of the letter and thrust it into his pocket. “I knew there was somethin’ i’ the wind wi’ that little girl! The memory o’ my own young days when I boarded and captured the poetess is strong upon me yet. I saw it in the rascal’s eye the very first time they met—an’ he thinks I’m as blind as a bat, I’ll be bound, with his poetical reef-point-pattering sharpness. But it’s a strange discovery he has made and must be looked into. The young dog! He gives me orders as if he were the owner.”

Jumping up, Captain Roy hurried out into the street. In passing the outer office he left a message with one of the clerks for his friend the merchant.

“Tell him,” he said, “that I’ll attend to that little business about the bill when I come back. I’m going to sail for the Keeling Islands this afternoon.”

“The Keeling Islands?” exclaimed the clerk in surprise.

“Yes—I’ve got business to do there. I’ll be back, all bein’ well, in a week—more or less.”

The clerk’s eyebrows remained in a raised position for a few moments, until he remembered that Captain Roy, being owner of his ship and cargo, was entitled to do what he pleased with his own and himself. Then they descended, and he went on with his work, amusing himself with the thought that the most curious beings in the world were seafaring men.

“Mr Moor,” said the captain somewhat excitedly, as he reached the deck of his vessel, “are all the men aboard?”

“All except Jim Sloper, sir.”

“Then send and hunt up Jim Sloper at once, for we sail this afternoon for the Keeling Islands.”

“Very well, sir.”

Mr Moor was a phlegmatic man; a self-contained and a reticent man. If Captain Roy had told him to get ready to sail to the moon that afternoon, he would probably have said “Very well, sir,” in the same tone and with the same expression.

“May I ask, sir, what sort of cargo you expect there?” said Mr Moor; for to his practical mind some re-arrangement of the cargo already on board might be necessary for the reception of that to be picked up at Keeling.

“The cargo we’ll take on board will be a girl,” said the captain.

“A what, sir?”

“A girl.”

“Very well, sir.”

This ended the business part of the conversation. Thereafter they went into details so highly nautical that we shrink from recording them. An amateur detective, in the form of a shipmate, having captured Jim Sloper, the Sunshine finally cleared out of the port of Batavia that evening, shortly before its namesake took his departure from that part of the southern hemisphere.

Favouring gales carried the brig swiftly through Sunda Straits and out into the Indian Ocean. Two days and a half brought her to the desired haven. On the way, Captain Roy took note of the condition of Krakatoa, which at that time was quietly working up its subterranean forces with a view to the final catastrophe; opening a safety-valve now and then to prevent, as it were, premature explosion.

“My son’s friend, the hermit of Rakata,” said the captain to his second mate, “will find his cave too hot to hold him, I think, when he returns.”

“Looks like it, sir,” said Mr Moor, glancing up at the vast clouds which were at that time spreading like a black pall over the re-awakened volcano. “Do you expect ’em back soon, sir?”

“Yes—time’s about up now. I shouldn’t wonder if they reach Batavia before us.”

Arrived at the Keeling Islands, Captain Roy was received, as usual, with acclamations of joy, but he found that he was by no means as well fitted to act the part of a diplomatist as he was to sail a ship. It was, in truth, a somewhat delicate mission on which his son had sent him, for he could not assert definitely that the hermit actually was Kathleen Holbein’s father, and her self-constituted parents did not relish the idea of letting slip, on a mere chance, one whom they loved as a daughter.

“Why not bring this man who claims to be her father here?” asked the perplexed Holbein.

“Because—because, p’raps he won’t come,” answered the puzzled mariner, who did not like to say that he was simply and strictly obeying his son’s orders. “Besides,” he continued, “the man does not claim to be anything at all. So far as I understand it, my boy has not spoken to him on the subject, for fear, I suppose, of raisin’ hopes that ain’t to be realised.”

“He is right in that,” said Mrs Holbein, “and we must be just as careful not to raise false hopes in dear little Kathy. As your son says, it may be a mistake after all. We must not open our lips to her about it.”

“Right you are, madam,” returned the captain. “Mum’s the word; and we’ve only got to say she’s goin’ to visit one of your old friends in Anjer—which’ll be quite true, you know, for the landlady o’ the chief hotel there is a great friend o’ yours, and we’ll take Kathy to her straight. Besides, the trip will do her health a power o’ good, though I’m free to confess it don’t need no good to be done to it, bein’ A1 at the present time. Now, just you agree to give the girl a holiday, an’ I’ll pledge myself to bring her back safe and sound—with her father, if he’s him; without him if he isn’t.”

With such persuasive words Captain Roy at length overcame the Holbein objections. With the girl herself he had less difficulty, his chief anxiety being, as he himself said, “to give her reasons for wishin’ her to go without tellin’ lies.”

“Wouldn’t you like a trip in my brig to Anjer, my dear girl?” He had almost said daughter, but thought it best not to be too precipitate.

“Oh! I should like it so much,” said Kathleen, clasping her little hands and raising her large eyes to the captain’s face.

“Dear child!” said the captain to himself. Then aloud, “Well, I’ll take you.”

“But I—I fear that father and mother would not like me to go—perhaps.”

“No fear o’ them, my girl,” returned the captain, putting his huge rough hand on her pretty little head as if in an act of solemn appropriation, for, unlike too many fathers, this exemplary man considered only the sweetness, goodness, and personal worth of the girl, caring not a straw for other matters, and being strongly of opinion that a man should marry young if he possess the spirit of a man or the means to support a wife. As he was particularly fond of Kathleen, and felt quite sure that his son had deeper reasons than he chose to express for his course of action, he entertained a strong hope, not to say conviction, that she would also become fond of Nigel, and that all things would thus work together for a smooth course to this case of true love.

It will be seen from all this that Captain David Roy was a sanguine man. Whether his hopes were well grounded or not remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, having, as Mr Moor said, shipped the cargo, the Sunshine set sail once more for Sunda Straits in a measure of outward gloom that formed a powerful contrast to the sunny hopes within her commander’s bosom, for Krakatoa was at that time progressing rapidly towards the consummation of its designs, as partly described in the last chapter.

Short though that voyage was, it embraced a period of action so thrilling that ever afterwards it seemed a large slice of life’s little day to those who went through it.

We have said that the culminating incidents of the drama began on the night of the 26th. Before that time, however, the cloud-pall was fast spreading over land and sea, and the rain of pumice and ashes had begun to descend.

The wind being contrary, it was several days before the brig reached the immediate neighbourhood of Krakatoa, and by that time the volcano had begun to enter upon the stage which is styled by vulcanologists “paroxysmal,” the explosions being extremely violent as well as frequent.

“It is very awful,” said Kathleen in a low voice, as she clasped the captain’s arm and leaned her slight figure on it. “I have often heard the thunder of distant volcanoes, but never been so near as to hear such terrible sounds.”

“Don’t be frightened, my ducky,” said the captain in a soothing tone, for he felt from the appearance of things that there was indeed some ground for alarm. “Volcanoes always look worse when you’re near them.”

“I not frightened,” she replied. “Only I got strange, solemn feelings. Besides, no danger can come till God allows.”

“That’s right, lass. Mrs Holbein has been a true mother if she taught you that.”

“No, she did not taught me that. My father taught me that.”

“What! Old Holbein?”

“No—my father, who is dead,” she said in a low voice.

“Oh! I see. My poor child, I should have understood you. Forgive me.”

As the captain spoke, a tremendous outburst on Krakatoa turned their minds to other subjects. They were by that time drawing near to the island, and the thunders of the eruption seemed to shake not only the heavens but even the great ocean itself. Though the hour was not much past noon the darkness soon became so dense that it was difficult to perceive objects a few yards distant, and, as pieces of stone the size of walnuts, or even larger, began to fall on the deck, the captain sent Kathleen below.

“There’s no saying where or when a big stone may fall, my girl,” he said, “and it’s not the habit of Englishmen to let women come under fire, so you’ll be safer below. Besides, you’ll be able to see something of what’s goin’ on out o’ the cabin windows.”

With the obedience that was natural to her, Kathleen went down at once, and the captain made everything as snug as possible, battening down the hatches and shortening sail so as to be ready for whatever might befall.

“I don’t like the look o’ things, Mr Moor,” said the captain when the second mate came on deck to take his watch.

“No more do I, sir,” answered Mr Moor calmly.

The aspect of things was indeed very changeable. Sometimes, as we have said, all nature seemed to be steeped in thick darkness, at other times the fires of the volcano blazed upward, spreading a red glare on the rolling clouds and over the heaving sea. Lightning also played its part as well as thunder, but the latter was scarcely distinguishable from the volcano’s roar. Three days before Sunday the 26th of August, Captain Roy—as well as the crews of several other vessels that were in Sunda Straits at the time—had observed a marked though gradual increase in the violence of the eruption. On that day, as we read in the Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society, about 1 p.m. the detonations caused by the explosive action attained such violence as to be heard at Batavia, about 100 English miles away. At 2 p.m. of the same day, Captain Thompson of the Medea, when about 76 miles east-north-east of the island, saw a black mass rising like clouds of smoke to a height which has been estimated at no less than 17 miles! And the detonations were at that time taking place at intervals of ten minutes. But, terrible though these explosions must have been, they were but as the whisperings of the volcano. An hour later they had increased so much as to be heard at Bandong and other places 150 miles away, and at 5 p.m. they had become so tremendous as to be heard over the whole island of Java, the eastern portion of which is about 650 miles from Krakatoa.

And the sounds thus heard were not merely like distant thunder. In Batavia—although, as we have said, 100 miles off—they were so violent during the whole of that terrible Sunday night as to prevent the people from sleeping. They were compared to the “discharge of artillery close at hand,” and caused a rattling of doors, windows, pictures, and chandeliers.

Captain Watson of the Charles Bal, who chanced to be only 10 miles south of the volcano, also compared the sounds to discharges of artillery, but this only shows the feebleness of ordinary language in attempting to describe such extraordinary sounds, for if they were comparable to close artillery at Batavia, the same comparison is inappropriate at only ten miles’ distance. He also mentions the crackling noise, probably due to the impact of fragments in the atmosphere, which were noticed by the hermit and Nigel while standing stunned and almost stupefied on the giddy ledge of Rakata that same Sunday.

About five in the evening of that day, the brig Sunshine drew still nearer to the island, but the commotion at the time became so intense, and the intermittent darkness so profound, that Captain Roy was afraid to continue the voyage and shortened sail. Not only was there a heavy rolling sea, but the water was seething, as if about to boil.

“Heave the lead, Mr Moor,” said the captain, who stood beside the wheel.

“Yes, sir,” answered the imperturbable second mate, who thereupon gave the necessary order, and when the depth was ascertained, the report was “Ten fathoms, sand, with a hot bottom.”

“A hot bottom! what do you mean?”

“The lead’s ’ot, sir,” replied the sailor.

This was true, as the captain found when he applied his hand to it.

“I do believe the world’s going on fire,” he muttered; “but it’s a comfort to know that it can’t very well blaze up as long as the sea lasts!”

Just then a rain of pumice in large pieces, and quite warm, began to fall upon the deck. As most people know, pumice is extremely light, so that no absolute injury was done to any one, though such rain was excessively trying. Soon, however, a change took place. The dense vapours and dust-clouds which had rendered it so excessively dark were entirely lighted up from time to time by fierce flashes of lightning which rent as well as painted them in all directions. At one time this great mass of clouds presented the appearance of an immense pine-tree with the stem and branches formed of volcanic lightning.

Captain Roy, fearing that these tremendous sights and sounds would terrify the poor girl in the cabin, was about to look in and reassure her, when the words “Oh! how splendid!” came through the slightly opened door. He peeped in and saw Kathleen on her knees on the stern locker, with her hands clasped, gazing out of one of the stern windows.

“Hm! she’s all right,” he muttered, softly re-closing the door and returning on deck. “If she thinks it’s splendid, she don’t need no comfortin’! It’s quite clear that she don’t know what danger means—and why should she? Humph! there go some more splendid sights for her,” he added, as what appeared to be chains of fire ascended from the volcano to the sky.

Just then a soft rain began to fall. It was warm, and, on examination at the binnacle-lamp, turned out to be mud. Slight at first, it soon poured down in such quantities that in ten minutes it lay six inches thick on the deck, and the crew had to set to work with shovels to heave it overboard. At this time there was seen a continual roll of balls of white fire down the sides of the peak of Rakata, caused, doubtless, by the ejection of white-hot fragments of lava. Then showers of masses like iron cinders fell on the brig, and from that time onward till four o’clock of the morning of the 27th, explosions of indescribable grandeur continually took place, as if the mountains were in a continuous roar of terrestrial agony—the sky being at one moment of inky blackness, the next in a blaze of light, while hot, choking, and sulphurous smells almost stifled the voyagers.

At this point the captain again became anxious about Kathleen and went below. He found her in the same place and attitude—still fascinated!

“My child,” he said, taking her hand, “you must lie down and rest.”

“Oh! no. Do let me stay up,” she begged, entreatingly.

“But you must be tired—sleepy.”

“Sleepy! who could sleep with such wonders going on around? Pray don’t tell me to go to bed!”

It was evident that poor Kathy had the duty of obedience to authority still strong upon her. Perhaps the memory of the Holbein nursery had not yet been wiped out.

“Well, well,” said the captain with a pathetic smile, “you are as safe—comfortable, I mean—here as in your berth or anywhere else.”

As there was a lull in the violence of the eruption just then, the captain left Kathleen in the cabin and went on deck. It was not known at that time what caused this lull, but as it preceded the first of the four grand explosions which effectually eviscerated—emptied—the ancient crater of Krakatoa, we will give, briefly, the explanation of it as conjectured by the men of science.

Lying as it did so close to the sea-level, the Krakatoa volcano, having blown away all its cones, and vents, and safety-valves—from Perboewatan southward, except the peak of Rakata—let the sea rush in upon its infernal fires. This result, ordinary people think, produced a gush of steam which caused the grand terminal explosions. Vulcanologists think otherwise, and with reason—which is more than can be said of ordinary people, who little know the power of the forces at work below the crust of our earth! The steam thus produced, although on so stupendous a scale, was free to expand and therefore went upwards, no doubt in a sufficiently effective gust and cloud. But nothing worthy of being named a blow-up was there.

The effect of the in-rushing water was to cool the upper surface of the boiling lava and convert it into a thick hard solid crust at the mouth of the great vent. In this condition the volcano resembled a boiler with all points of egress closed and the safety-valve shut down! Oceans of molten lava creating expansive gases below; no outlet possible underneath, and the neck of the bottle corked with tons of solid rock! One of two things must happen in such circumstances: the cork must go or the bottle must burst! Both events happened on that terrible night. All night long the corks were going, and at last—Krakatoa burst!

In the hurly-burly of confusion, smoke, and noise, no eye could note the precise moment when the island was shattered, but there were on the morning of the 27th four supreme explosions, which rang loud and high above the horrible average din. These occurred—according to the careful investigations made, at the instance of the Dutch Indian Government, by the eminent geologist, Mr R.D.M. Verbeek—at the hours of 5:30, 6:44, 10:02, and 10:52 in the morning. Of these the third, about 10, was by far the worst for violence and for the widespread devastation which it produced.

At each of these explosions a tremendous sea-wave was created by the volcano, which swept like a watery ring from Krakatoa as a centre to the surrounding shores. It was at the second of these explosions—that of 6:44—that the fall of the mighty cliff took place which was seen by the hermit and his friends as they fled from the island, and, on the crest of the resulting wave, were carried along they scarce knew whither.

As the previous wave—that of 5:30—had given the brig a tremendous heave upwards, the captain, on hearing the second, ran down below for a moment to tell Kathleen there would soon be another wave, but that she need fear no danger.

“The brig is deep and has a good hold o’ the water,” he said, “so the wave is sure to slip under her without damage. I wish I could hope it would do as little damage when it reaches the shore.”

As he spoke a strange and violent crash was heard overhead, quite different from volcanic explosions, like the falling of some heavy body on the deck.

“One o’ the yards down!” muttered the captain as he ran to the cabin door. “Hallo, what’s that, Mr Moor?”

“Canoe just come aboard, sir.”

“A canoe?”

“Yes, sir. Crew, three men and a monkey. All insensible—hallo!”

The “hallo!” with which the second mate finished his remark was so unlike his wonted tone, and so full of genuine surprise, that the captain ran forward with unusual haste, and found a canoe smashed to pieces against the foremast, and the mate held a lantern close to the face of one of the men while the crew were examining the others.

A single glance told the captain that the mud-bespattered figure that lay before him as if dead was none other than his own son! The great wave had caught the frail craft on its crest, and, sweeping it along with lightning speed for a short distance, had hurled it on the deck of the Sunshine with such violence as to completely stun the whole crew. Even Spinkie lay in a melancholy little heap in the lee scuppers.

You think this a far-fetched coincidence, good reader! Well, all we can say is that we could tell you of another—a double-coincidence, which was far more extraordinary than this one, but as it has nothing to do with our tale we refrain from inflicting it on you.