Falling behind a little, till the negro came up with him, Nigel tried to obtain information from him, for he felt that he had a sort of right to know at least something about the expedition in which he was about to act a part.
"Do you know, Moses, what business your master is going about ?" he asked, in a low voice.
"No more nor de man ob de moon, Massa Nadgel," said Moses, with an air at once so truthful and so solemn that the young man gave it up with a laugh of resignation.
On arriving at Perboewatan, and ascending its sides, they at last became aware of the approach of the excursion steamer.
"Strange," muttered the hermit, "vessels don't often touch here." "Perhaps they have run short of water," suggested Nigel.
"Even if they had it would not be worth their while to stop here for that," returned the hermit, resuming the ascent of the cone after an intervening clump of trees had shut out the steamer from view.
It was with feelings of profound interest and considerable excitement that our hero stood for the first time on the top of a volcanic cone and gazed down into its glowing vent.
The crater might be described as a huge basin of 3000 feet in diameter.
From the rim of this basin on which the visitors stood the sides sloped so gradually inward that the flat floor at the bottom was not more than half that diameter.

This floor--which was about 150 feet below the upper edge--was covered with a black crust, and in the centre of it was the tremendous cavity--between one and two hundred feet in diameter--from which issued the great steam-cloud.

The cloud was mixed with quantities of pumice and fragments of what appeared to be black glass.

The roar of this huge vent was deafening and stupendous.

If the reader will reflect on the wonderful hubbub that can be created even by a kitchen kettle when superheated, and on the exasperating shrieks of a steamboat's safety-valve in action, or the bellowing of a fog-horn, he may form some idea of the extent of his incapacity to conceive the thunderous roar of Krakatoa when it began to boil over.
When to this awful sound there were added the intermittent explosions, the horrid crackling of millions of rock-masses meeting in the air, and the bubbling up of molten lava--verily it did not require the imagination of a Dante to see in all this the very vomiting of Gehenna! So amazed and well-nigh stunned was Nigel at the sights and sounds that he neither heard nor saw the arrival of the excursionists, until the equally awe-stricken Moses touched him on the elbow and drew his attention to several men who suddenly appeared on the crater-brim not fifty yards off, but who, like themselves, were too much absorbed with the volcano itself to observe the other visitors.