‘Then we’re stuck,’ said Captain Ike, sitting down heavily on a hatch cover, pressing his hand against his dizzy head.
‘Are there any gas masks on board?’ Dr Dan asked.
Captain Ike snorted. ‘Gas masks! Whoever heard of a ship carrying gas masks?’
He relaxed and lay down on the hatch cover. That seemed a sensible thing to do. Everyone felt the same way - why not give up and relax?
‘Gas masks,’ Hal mumbled dreamily. Then a sudden thought stirred him awake. ‘Gas masks! Why of course we have gas masks, or something just as good. The aqualungs!’
They stared at each other, trying to clear their brains. Along with the suffocating gas had come intense heat and the perspiration rolled down their faces. It was hard to think. The idea began to penetrate. The aqualungs -yes, why not?
They got unsteadily to their feet and hurried as fast as their wobbly legs would take them down the companionway to get the aqualungs. They brought them to the deck and put them on. When the mouthpieces were in place they began to breathe the sweet and blessed air from the tanks.
It was like gradually coming out of some horrible dream. The mists that had clouded their brains slowly cleared. In the light of the burning houses far above they could see each other’s faces becoming less tight and drawn and the drooping eyes opening with new hope. Life began to seem rather important after all.
But were they to be free of the gas only to be baked in the heat? The sweat rolled down their bodies as the temperature steadily climbed higher and higher. Out of the vent in the cliff came the breath of fires twenty miles down, fires hot enough to make iron run like molasses.
Hal leaned heavily upon the rail and looked down into the black water. It had never looked more cool and inviting. If he could only bury himself in it! It was pretty sad to be so close to coolness and yet perish of the heat.
Bury himself in it - why not? Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
The others were astonished to see him suddenly break into a laugh and beckon them to the rail and point downwards. Then, without bothering to undress, he climbed over the rail and let himself down into the water.
At any other time it would have seemed warm, for, although the fires were not directly beneath it, its temperature had been raised a little by the hot objects that had fallen into it. But to Hal in his superheated condition it seemed delightfully cool. He felt new life flowing through his parched body.
He waited anxiously for the others to join him, hoping they would not be overcome by the heat before they
could enjoy this delicious relief. They were soon with him and floated about with their heads above water, broad smiles on their faces.
But the heat on their heads was still terrific and they presently sought refuge beneath the surface. Down they went, ten feet deep to escape the warmer surface water. There they hung, breathing easily, comfort and coolness stealing into their bones.
Above them was a red glow and at one side was the black shadow of the hull of the Lively Lady. Fish swam over their heads making black silhouettes against the gleam of the fires. They could only hope that the fish would all be small and friendly. Hal thought of the shark that had taken the mail swimmer.
Perhaps there were no sharks in the lagoon. On the other hand, there might be more sharks here than outside because the refuse from the villages was probably thrown into the lake.
But he felt it would be more pleasant to be nibbled by a shark than slowly roasted to death by volcanic heat.
A greater shadow now lay overhead, shutting out the glow. It was too broad to be a shark, and too still. What would be that broad? A moon fish would be only four or five feet wide - this was much wider.
It could be a sea bat or manta ray, that great pancake of a fish that measures ten feet or more across. Hal looked for the long whip tail that could cut like a knife, but could not see it.
Roger had also noticed the thing and decided to find out what it was. Before Hal could stop him he swam up and poked his fist into the black object. All he got for his pains were a few bruised knuckles but the black thing did not move.
Hal and Dr Dan joined in the investigation. Touching the bottom of the mass, they swam out until they reached its edge. Then they raised their heads above water and found that the thing was a small island of pumice, the rock that floats. The pumice blocks were piled almost three feet high.
Roger, who could never let well enough alone, gleefully clambered up on to the island.
‘This is something to tell them when I get home,’ he crowed. ‘Afloat on a raft made of rock.’
Then the raft suddenly gave way beneath him and he dropped through the hole into the water, scratching himself plentifully on the sharp-edged rocks as he passed.
Hal and Dr Dan also retreated again underwater, for the heat above was still intense.
How long would they have to stay below? The air in the aqualungs would last for only one hour. Then they would have no choice. They must come up, or drown.
Their watery prison seemed to be growing darker and darker. Hal hoped this meant that the fires above were dying down. But he was afraid that this explanation was too simple. He suspected a different reason for the growing darkness - more pumice was drifting in to cover the surface. A rock roof was forming over their heads that might become so thick and so broad that their escape would be cut off.
They would be like the divers he had heard of who had gone down in arctic waters to explore a wreck that lay on the bottom. The ice floes closed in over their
heads and they never came up. This situation would be the same except that the roof would be rock instead of ice.
He could see Dr Dan looking up and knew that the scientist was also aware of the growing danger. Would it excite him, cause him to do wild things, or freeze him in one of his strange trances? Then the air intake would drop from his mouth and he would be finished.
Hal thought of the bitter and untrue things the doctor had said of him. He had practically called him a coward and a sneak. If it had been anybody else, thought Hal, he would have given him a sound thrashing. But he couldn’t thrash a sick man. There was nothing for Hal to do but to swallow his resentment and play nurse to this crackpot, and hope that some day whatever was wrong in that brilliant brain would be corrected.
When Hal judged that three-quarters of an hour had passed he went up to investigate. He had to search for several minutes before he could find a hole in the pumice. He thrust out his head.
The flame spouting from the fissure in the cliff was no longer white-hot, only red-hot. The heat that lay on the water was less terrific than before, but still too much for a human body to bear. Hal felt his head steaming as if it had been poked into an oven and his eyes began to ache.
He dropped again below the surface and saw the light above him fade as the pumice closed in and filled the hole.
He could not see a thing. He could only hope that the others were still near by. He groped about in the dark, hoping to lay his hands upon Roger, Dr Dan, anybody.
At last he got hold of something cool and smooth -but it Jumped away from him with such speed that he concluded it must be a surprised fish.
Then bis hand closed upon someone’s wrist. It was a fairly small wrist and might be Roger’s - he hoped so.
Keeping his grip, he continued the search with his free hand. Finally, he clutched a trembling something that might be the tentacle of a giant octopus - no, it was a human arm, and it would hardly be Captain Ike’s or Omo’s for he could not conceive of any power on earth making those hard-bitten sailors tremble. It must be Dr Dan, and his nerves had begun to slip. The arm jerked once or twice but Hal held on.
Just a few minutes now and everything would be decided, for better or worse.
It happened sooner than he expected. His air died down, failed completely, and he found himself sucking a vacuum. He took his hand away from Roger long enough to turn the little lever on his tank that switched on the five-minute reserve.
He felt for Roger’s lever to see if the boy had turned it on - he had. Then he explored to see if the doctor had done the same - he had not. Hal twisted the lever so that new air would rush into the scientist’s lungs.
He felt other hands now, probably Omo’s and Captain Ike’s. It was good that they were all together. They must stand by each other. They had only five minutes now before the reserve air would fail - five minutes to escape from their underwater tomb.
Hal rose towards the surface, drawing the others with him. He had laid his plans. It would do no good to go
hunting for holes. There might not be a hole for hundreds of yards and the chances of their finding it were very slim.
If they scattered and went in different directions one or two of them might find holes but the rest would perish. They must stay together and work together.
He rose until his head grazed the pumice roof.
He took the block his head had touched, drew it down into the water, and pressed it into Roger’s hands. Then he gave Roger a push.
The boy guessed his brother’s plan. The blocks were to be removed one by one to make a hole in the roof. Each block must be taken several yards away before it was released or it would simply pop back into the hole. Roger left his rock at a safe distance and came back for another. In the meantime Hal had been initiating the others. Dr Dan joined him in plucking chunks from overhead and passing them to Roger, Omo and Captain Ike who carried them away.
Presently a light broke through; after the removal of a few more blocks there was a man-sized hole.
Then Hal seized Roger and in spite of that young gentleman’s efforts to make somebody else go first he was pushed up through the hole. He scrambled out on the roof. He reached down and helped the next man up -Dr Dan.
The doctor noticed that the hole was beginning to close again. He worked above to keep it open while the men below removed more blocks. Then up came Omo, Captain Ike and, finally, Hal. The last man was hardly out before the opening closed again.
The men breathed the last of the tank air, then dropped the intakes from their mouths. The evil gases had thinned and the heat was no longer intolerable.
The next thing was to get to the ship. It lay fifty yards away. That did not seem far; but moving over the roof was more of a job than it appeared to be. Although the blocks were wedged tightly together and, in some cases, lightly cemented to each other by the heat, it was unsafe to trust one’s full weight on any one spot. Also the roof was thicker in some places than in others.
So they went along on all fours, sometimes even lying flat, the better to distribute their weight, and inching forward as if on thin ice. At one time Dr Dan’s foot went through and he would have followed it if Captain Ike and Omo had not been close enough to pull him out. After this incident the doctor lay for a moment, breathing hard. But he pulled himself together and the crawl to the ship continued.
Only when they were all safely aboard did he let go completely. In the middle of a sentence he dropped to the deck and was at once sound asleep - or had he fainted? Hal could not be sure which.
Just to make certain that the man had not died of heart attack Hal felt for the pulse. The fact that it was going like a power hammer indicated that the doctor was far from dead. ‘Let’s get him into his bunk,’ Hal said. Omo unstrapped the aqualung and he and Hal carried the limp figure down to the cabin. They stripped off the wet clothes, towelled down the body, and tucked the doctor still sound asleep into his bunk.
Hal and Roger were glad to crawl into their own bunks for a few hours’ sleep. Omo curled up on the open deck for a nap, ready to jump into action at any moment.
Chapter 14
Saint Elmo’s Fire
Captain Ike was too anxious about his ship to take rest. He strode up and down the deck muttering and grumbling, watching the spurts of flame from the cliff, the firelight of burning villages, the blazing fountains that shot up irregularly from the thirty craters.
Above all he watched the weather. His seaman’s nose told him that the huge cloud of steam, smoke, and gas that shut out the sky was very much like the clouds that announce a hurricane. Not knowing much about volcanoes, he couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t trust those rolling, tumbling masses that seemed to be fighting battles with each other as they were carried here and there by’ contradictory air currents.
Forked lightning leaped back and forth, as if the giants of the upper air were making war upon each other with huge yellow spears. In other parts of the cloud there was a different kind of lightning that came in sudden sheets instead of spears. It was as if someone were hanging out washing on the clothes lines of heaven and then suddenly snatching it away again.
‘I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like it.’ Each time Captain Ike put his foot down he said, ‘I don’t like it.’
Then he stopped in amazement and looked up at the
masts. They were glowing like the illuminated hands of a watch. A shimmering ghostly light bathed them from top to bottom. Even the rigging was all lined with light.
‘A good sign!’ cried Captain Ike.
Omo started up. ‘Did you call?’
‘No, lad. But look what we got here. Ghosts have come aboard.’
‘That is very bad,’ said Omo. ‘Our people believe those are the spirits of the dead. Something very bad will happen.’
‘Nonsense. Don’t you know what this is? It’s St Elmo’s Fire. St Elmo protects sailors. This is a sign he’s looking after us. We’re going to get out of here okay.’
‘Isn’t that just a white man’s superstition?’
‘White men don’t have superstitions. It’s just you browns who have the superstitions.’
But he had no sooner said it than doubt struck him. How could he say that the brown man’s notions were any more foolish than the white man’s? He had known some pretty silly whites and some very sensible Polynesians.
‘Oh well, perhaps we’re both wrong,’ he admitted. ‘The science fellows say it ain’t ghosts at all, just electricity. Look at that!’
An orangey-coloured star glowed just above the point of the foremast. Captain Ike stared. ‘Spooky, ain’t it? Some say it’s the Star of Bethlehem that will lead us safe.’
‘But our people say…’
‘There we go again,’ laughed Captain Dee. ‘It never happens except when there’s lightning so it’s probably electric, as they say. And there’s a blue star perched on the mainmast. The orange, they tell me, is a positive discharge and the blue is negative. Listen to it!’
A distinct hissing or crackling sound came from the illuminated masts and rigging. It grew louder when lightning flashed overhead and died away whenever the sky went dark. For more than an hour the orange and blue blurs of light, vaguely star-shaped, burned above the mastheads. Then they disappeared as a heavy fall of rain hit the ship.
With the rain came wind, wild blundering wind that seemed to come in circles rather than in straight lines. The ship was anchored fore and aft but the anchors began to drag. Now it seemed that the Lively Lady would be carried against the rocky slope of one of the small islands, and now that she would be dashed into the
cliff.
Hal and Roger came tumbling up, but there was little that anyone could do. Man was weak and small indeed in the grip of the volcanic storm. Dr Dan, if he had been awake, might have told the why of what was going on, but could have done nothing to prevent it.
The crater lake began to twist and bounce under the wind and the floating pumice scraped up and down on the ship’s hull. At every grind and scratch, Captain Ike winced.
‘Won’t be a speck of paint left on her!’ he lamented. ‘We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t scrape a hole in her hull.’
The heat was now a thing of the past. The men, soaked to the skin, were chilled by the rain and wind.
And still there was heat, plenty of it, where the craters
tossed up their fire into the face of the rain and the houses burned in spite of the d
ownpour. Frequent earthquakes rumbled, starting avalanches on the cliffs and opening new cracks and fissures.
At dawn the storm abated but the earthquakes continued. After each one there could be heard several loud explosions that did not seem to come from the quakes themselves nor from the craters. Evidently they woke Dr Dan, who came on deck at sunrise.
‘Those big bangs - what are they?’ asked Captain Ike.
‘Steam explosions,’ Dr Dan said. ‘Those quakes open up big cracks in the earth. If the cracks are under water, the water rushes down into them and strikes the hot lava. There it is changed into steam and that makes an explosion.’
Omo brought some hot food from the galley. The tropic sun began to dry out the wet clothes and warm the chilled bodies.
But there was small comfort in the fact that they were still trapped within a live volcano. They might save themselves by landing where the cliffs were low and crossing the island to the outer beach where they could be taken aboard the Matua.
But how about the Lively Lady ? ‘I won’t leave her,’ insisted Captain Ike. Nor did anyone else want to leave her. Their ship had become a trusted and loyal friend and they would not abandon her. But how could you ride a ship over a wall twenty feet high?
‘Let’s up anchor and take a look at that channel,’ said Captain Dee. ‘It may be open now.’
There was no reason why it should be open and it wasn’t. After the ship had ploughed slowly and heavily through the drifting pumice, the path that led to the ocean was found to be still choked with rock. They gazed at it helplessly.
‘If we only had some dynamite,’ mourned the unhappy captain.
‘Dynamite,’ repeated the others. At that moment dynamite seemed the most precious thing in the world. But there wasn’t so much as a firecracker on board, let alone a stick of dynamite.
At one side of the pass a few feet above the water’s edge was a crack in the rock. Smoke was coming from it.
‘One of the quakes must have done that,’ the doctor said.
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