them for some of their own party who had reached the summit before them.

Nigel was yet looking at these visitors in some surprise, when an
elderly nautical man suddenly stood not twenty yards off gazing in
open-mouthed amazement, past our hero's very nose, at the volcanic
fires.

"Hallo, Father!" shouted the one.

"Zounds! Nigel!" exclaimed the other.

Both men glared and were speechless for several seconds. Then Nigel
rushed at the captain, and the captain met him half-way, and they shook
hands with such hearty goodwill as to arrest in his operations for a few
moments a photographer who was hastily setting up his camera!

Yes, science has done much to reveal the marvellous and arouse exalted
thoughts in the human mind, but it has also done something to crush
enthusiasts and shock the romantic. Veracity constrains us to state that
there he was, with his tripod, and his eager haste, and his hideous
black cloth, preparing to "take" Perboewatan on a "dry plate"! And he
"took" it too! And you may see it, if you will, as a marvellous
frontispiece to the volume by the "Krakatoa Committee"--a work which is
apparently as exhaustive of the subject of Krakatoa as was the great
explosion itself of those internal fires which will probably keep that
volcano quiet for the next two hundred years.

But this was not the Great Eruption of Krakatoa--only a rehearsal, as it
were.