Chapter 20

An isolated rock, thirty feet in length, twenty in breadth, scarcely ten from the water’s edge, such was the only solid point which the waves of the Pacific had not engulfed. It was all that remained of the structure of Granite House! The wall had fallen headlong and been then shattered to fragments, and a few of the rocks of the large room were piled one above another to form this point. All around had disappeared in the abyss; the inferior cone of Mount Franklin, rent asunder by the explosion; the lava jaws of Sh…