"Shall we have a stormy night, think you?" asked Nigel, as he assisted in striking a light.
"It may be so," replied the hermit, flinging down one after another of his wet matches, which failed to kindle. "What we hear may be distant thunder, but I doubt it. The sounds seem to me more like the mutterings of a volcano. Some new crater may have burst forth in the Sumatran ranges. This thick darkness inclines me to think so--especially after the new activity of volcanic action we have seen so recently at Krakatoa. Let me try your matches, Nigel, perhaps they have escaped--mine are useless."
But Nigel's matches were as wet as those of the hermit. So were those of the professor. Luckily Moses carried the old-fashioned flint and steel, with which, and a small piece of tinder, a spark was at last kindled, but as they were about to apply it to a handful of dry bamboo scrapings, an extra spirt of rain extinguished it. For an hour and more they made ineffectual attempts to strike a light. Even the cessation of the rain was of no avail.
"Vat must ve do _now_?" asked the professor in tones that suggested a wo-begone countenance, though there was no light by which to distinguish it.
"Grin and bear it," said Nigel, in a voice suggestive of a slight expansion of the mouth--though no one could see it.
"Dere's nuffin' else left to do," said Moses, in a tone which betrayed such a very wide expansion that Nigel laughed outright.
"Hah! you may laugh, my yoong frond, hot if zee tigers find us out or zee elephants trample on us, your laughter vill be turned to veeping. Vat is zat? Is not zat vonderful?"
The question and exclamation were prompted by the sudden appearance of faint mysterious lights among the bushes. That the professor viewed them as unfriendly lights was clear from the click of his rifle-locks which followed.
"It is only phosphoric light," explained Van der Kemp. "I have often seen it thus in electric states of the atmosphere. It will probably increase--meanwhile we must seat ourselves on our boxes and do the best we can till daylight. Are you there, boys?"
This question, addressed to the bearers in their native tongue, was not answered, and it was found, on a _feeling_ examination, that, in spite of leeches, tigers, elephants, and the whole animal creation, the exhausted porters had flung themselves on the wet ground and gone to sleep while their leaders were discussing the situation.