CHAPTER III.
THE ISLANDS VANISH.
Nat sat upright with a strange singing sound in his ears. It wasinsufferably hot. He fairly panted as he opened his eyes. The sweat ranoff him in rivulets. For an instant recollection paused, and thenrushed back in an overwhelming flood.
“We were in that channel between those two queer islands,” mused Nat;“and we—gracious, where are the islands?”
He had staggered dizzily to his feet and was looking about him. He knewhe could not have lain senseless very long, for his garments were stillwet, despite the intense heat. But the islands were nowhere to be seen.
It was still partially dark, a murky twilight replacing the formerdeeper blackness. But an indefinable change had taken place, somehow,in the atmosphere. Nat drew in his breath with difficulty. It seemed toscorch his lungs.
He glanced over the side of the craft and then drew back with analarmed cry. The water all about them was bubbling and eddyingfuriously. A shower of spray from one of the miniature waterspoutsstruck Nat in the face. It was this that caused his exclamation andmade him step back hastily, just as if, in fact, he had been struck ablow in the face.
The water was boiling hot!
Where it had spattered on the lad’s skin it had instantly raisedblisters.
“Well, we certainly have landed in a surprising sort of fix this time,”muttered Nat to himself.
He bent over Joe. The lad had not yet regained his senses. But he wasbreathing heavily, and this stilled a dreaded fear, which, for a momenthad almost caused Nat’s heart to stop beating.
“This air is suffocating,” gasped Nat presently. “It smells like itdoes when they are fumigating a room.”
He ran his tongue around his dry mouth in an effort to moisten it, forit felt parched and cracked. The reek of sulphur in the air, too,caused his throat to contract and his nose and eyes to tingleunmercifully.
But this stench also told Nat something. It furnished him with apartial explanation of the extraordinary occurrences that, as itseemed, were not yet over.
“This whole disturbance is volcanic,” reasoned the boy. “That is thecause of this awful sulphur smell. But that doesn’t account altogetherfor the sudden disappearance of those islands. I wonder——” But here hebroke off his meditations.
Joe was plainly in need of immediate attention, and Nat devoted hisefforts to trying to raise the recumbent lad. He wanted to get himbelow to the cabin, where there was a well-stocked medicine chest and asupply of reasonably cool water.
But, weakened as he was, Nat couldn’t accomplish the task.
“What’s the matter with me, anyhow?” he asked himself half angrily.“This sulphur stuff must have knocked all my senses out of my head.Where’s Ding-dong, I wonder?”
He rang the engine-room call sharply. But there was no response. NoDing-dong appeared.
“Maybe the signal is out of whack,” muttered Nat, who had noticed sometime before that the engine had stopped running. “Guess I’ll go belowand see what’s the matter.”
It was the work of an instant to reach the hatchway leading below, anddive into the engine room. What met Nat’s eyes there made him jumpalmost as violently as he had when the boiling water struck him.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, as his gaze fell on the unconsciousengineer, “if this isn’t worse and more of it. Poor Ding-dong isknocked out, too; cut on the head. It doesn’t seem to be a bad gash,but it has deprived him of his senses. Well, if this isn’t a finekettle of fish! In the midst of a boiling sea with two unconsciouschaps on my hands!”
Ding-dong stirred and moved uneasily as Nat examined his wound.
“Let me be!” he muttered peevishly; “lemme be.”
“That’s just what I’m not going to do,” rejoined Nat cheerfully.
On the wall of the engine room was a tap leading from the drinkingwater tanks of the craft. Nat saturated his handkerchief under thisfaucet and bathed Ding-dong’s wound. Then he applied the waterplentifully to the lad’s face, and, opening his shirt, doused him withit.
Under this treatment, the unconscious lad sat up and opened his eyes.
“Hullo, Nat!” he exclaimed, like one awakening from a long sleep.“What’s up? What on earth has happened? Where are we? What makes it sohot?”
As usual, under strong excitement, Ding-dong forgot to stutter, as Joetermed it.
“I can only answer two of your questions,” replied Nat. “‘What’s up’ isthat poor Joe is lying senseless on the bridge. He was washed overboardin that chasm. You’ve got to try to help me get him to the cabin. ‘Whaton earth has happened,’ is this: We have, apparently, passed throughthe chasm, and the islands have vanished in some mysterious fashion,although we can’t be far from where they were. The sea all about us isboiling hot, and I guess we are in the very core of some strangevolcanic disturbance or other.”
“Cc-c-c-crickets!” sputtered Ding-dong, rising dizzily but pluckily tohis feet, “we do seem to run into some mighty queer adventures, don’twe? Come on. I’ll give you a hand with poor old Joe. But, by the way,what have you been doing all this time?”
“Oh, I-I-guess I went to sleep for a while, too,” responded Nat, ratherconfusedly, and without mentioning his heroic rescue of Joe from thewaters of the rift.
He was spared answering further questions, for it required their unitedstrength to carry Joe to the cabin. Ordinarily, this would not havebeen so, but the heat was so terrific that it had sapped the strengthof both boys till they had but half of their accustomed energy and vim.
Joe was laid on a locker and restoratives applied. Presently he wasable to sit up, and then out came the story of Nat’s rescue. The ladcolored brilliantly as Joe and Ding-dong both poured out their praiseunstintedly.
“But, say,” exclaimed Joe, rubbing his head and looking suddenlybewildered, “I’ve got an awful bump here. I guess I must have hit myhead before your brave——”
“I hit it for you to keep you quiet,” burst out Nat; “and if you don’tshut up now, I’ll bust it again.”
Going on deck, the three lads found that it had grown lighter. But thewater still boiled about them furiously. Clouds of sulphurous steamarose from it, making them cough and choke.
In the brighter light they had quite an extensive view of theirsurroundings. But, of the islands, not a trace appeared. They hadvanished as if they had been the fabric of a dream.
“By George! I have it!” cried Joe suddenly. “Those islands were ofvolcanic origin. Didn’t you notice how bare and bleak they were? I’llbet that in this disturbance, whatever it is, they have subsided assuddenly as they arose.”
“Such cases are not uncommon,” rejoined Nat. “Only last year, CaptainRose, of the missionary schooner _Galilee_, of San Francisco, reportedseeing an island of some extent arise and then vanish again before hisvery eyes.”
“W-w-w-well,” sputtered Ding-dong, with a grin and a return to his oldmanner, “w-w-w-we can r-r-r-report the same thing; but as t-t-thisisn’t a go-go-gospel schooner maybe nobody w-w-w-will believe us.”
“My suggestion is, that we get the engines going and get out of thiswithout delay,” said Nat.
“Here, too,” agreed Joe Hartley. “There’s nothing to hang about herefor.”
An examination of the engines showed that, in falling, Ding-dong hadshut off the gasolene supply valve, and had thus stopped the motors.This was soon remedied and the motors set going again. As the _Nomad_cut her way through the boiling sea where lately the twin islands hadstood, they all felt like raising a fervent prayer of thanks toProvidence for their wonderful deliverance.
“I’ve often heard of such things on the Pacific, but I never expectedto live through one,” was Nat’s comment.
“Nor I,” was Joe’s rejoinder; “and I don’t know that I should care torepeat the experience. But hullo!” he broke off suddenly, “what’s that?No, not over there; off this way!”
He pointed excitedl
y to a small black object, which, in the now clearatmosphere, was visible at the distance of about a mile to thesoutheast of them.
“It’s a boat,” announced Nat, after a brief scrutiny of the strangeobject.