"Indeed!" "Oh, it is very simple. See here,"--he pointed to the chart,--"read that." The words, "Volcanic region of the Atlantic," were printed across a large tract of ocean in the vicinity of the equator. "Now, if you will turn over the pages of the _South Atlantic Pilot Directory_, you will read that this part of the Atlantic is peculiarly subject to volcanic disturbance; so much so, that mariners are in this book warned on the subject. There are no soundings hereabouts with two thousand fathoms of line, and yet the disturbance is transmitted upwards through all those miles of water; so you can imagine the violent forces that are at work below us. It is rare that a vessel crosses this strange corner of the sea without experiencing some manifestation or other of this nature. Sometimes it may be only a discoloration of the water that is noticed; sometimes a shock is felt as if the vessel had struck a rock, or she shivers till the masts are like to be thrown out of her. It is a region terrible to superstitious sailors; but I believe it is rare that a vessel has sustained any serious damage from these convulsions." "Even if I had known all that I should have lost my nerve; for, say what you like, captain, our danger was a very real one. The _terremoto_ has done one good thing, anyhow: it has inspired El Chico and El Toro with an immense respect for your courage. We won't tell them that you were forewarned by the pilot book. You can do what you like with those men after this, Captain Allen. For the future they are your obedient slaves." The brave trade wind blew without intermission for ten days, and then Carew, being in the latitude of Rio de Janeiro, steered due west for the land, which, according to his dead-reckoning, was not two hundred miles distant. It was night, and the wind having fallen light, the yacht made little progress. At midnight Carew came on deck to relieve the mate. "Look over there," said Baptiste, pointing across the vessel's bows to the westward. "Those are the lights of Rio." "What! so soon?" cried Carew; and turning his eyes in the indicated direction he perceived, not indeed the gleam of a lighthouse or other ordinary sign of approaching land, but an appearance as of a stormy dawn. High above the horizon hung masses of clouds whose lower surface was of a faint red, as if they were reflecting some immense conflagration too far away to be yet visible.