Rev. M. Frater — Volcanic Eruption, Ambry m Island. 499 



a neighbouring trader who had two boys in the hospital arrived by 

 motor-launch and reported that it was a volcano which had burst 

 out. At the same instant, terrified natives from the inland villages 

 arrived with the news that the earth had opened some distance up 

 the valley and the molten lava had formed a lake of fire. They told 

 of villages blown up, of villages surrounded by fire, of hairbreadth 

 escapes from death. Most of the adults carried children. Large 

 numbers of old people had been left behind to perish. Preparations 

 were at once made for the removal of the patients. One of them, 

 the wife of a missionary, had given birth to a child a few hours 

 before, and she with her new-born son were the first to be rescued 

 from the doomed hospital. Another lady, the wife of a planter, had 

 her baby born when on the way to a place of safety. A motor-launch 

 was filled with the more helpless patients and sent, under the charge 

 of one of the assistants, to Malekula, an island 15 miles away. 

 The launch had scarcely left the beach when the engine stopped; 

 a valve had jammed. After watching for a little the medical 

 superintendent rowed off in a small boat and, locating the trouble, 

 banged the obstinate valve down with a hammer. As he was 

 returning to the shore the doctor saw his wife and a number of 

 hospital patients racing for their lives along the beach ; the crisis had 

 come one step nearer. At this moment the doctor went back to the 

 station ; he could see one side of a hill belching fire, not a quarter of 

 a mile away ; he set his teeth and made for the station and, when he 

 had ascertained that the place was clear, made a race back to the 

 boat on the beach, while the ground heaved and swayed beneath him. 

 At the boat landing another problem confronted him ; the sea was 

 boiling hot, and the boat lay out a little from the beach. Fortunately, 

 a box was found, and throwing it down at the edge of the water, the 

 doctor sprang from it into the boat. The native crew pulled with 

 might and main, but they had only gone a short distance when the 

 earth reeled with a great thunder, and looking back the doctor 

 saw the fragments of his house and hospital hurled into the air. 

 A volcano had burst out in the middle of the hospital grounds, and 

 from the place where the hospital stood a column of steam was shot 

 up with such prodigious velocity that in less than a minute it had 

 risen 20,000 feet above the level of the crater. At this elevation the 

 particles of finely powdered rock were caught by the prevailing winds 

 and carried great distances out to sea. A steamer running between 

 Sydney and Fiji, several hundred miles away from the islands, had 

 her decks covered with minute particles of volcanic dust. On the 

 surrounding islands it rained ash and cinders, and vegetation was 

 sheathed in a thick layer of sulphurous ash. Besides this a sticky 

 mud rain fell, a mixture of condensed steam and ejected dust. The 

 compressed steam rushing at lightning velocity through the main 

 vent and the fissures in the sides of the crater formed a gigantic 

 hydro-electrical machine and charged the atmosphere with electricity. 

 Every few seconds there issued from the murky cloud, which hung 

 like a pall over the island, flashes of vivid lightning. The French 

 steamer Pacifique arrived on the scene four days after the eruption 

 and, owing to the abundance of atmospheric electricity, could not get 

 its wireless to work. 



