Not The Usual Kind Of Thing

By davidbunch

With Krakatoa fuming, even the Dutch in Batavia realized that this was not just the usual kind of thing. Krakatoa's rumblings had grown into a continuous, angry roar heard along the entire east coast of Java. In Buitenzorg, 61 miles from Krakatoa, people were seeking shelter from what they thought was a gathering thunderstorm. In the afternoon of August 26. R.D.M. Verbeek wrote in his description of the catastrophe, "The low rumbling was interrupted by sharp, reverberating detonations. They grew louder and more frequent. People were terrified. Night came, but no one thought of sleeping. Toward morning the incessant noise was drowning out every other sound. Suddenly, shortly before seven, there Natives packed their belonging' and set out in their proas for lands in the Sunda Strait, or for the nearby coasts of Sumatra and Java.

“A retired sea captain was looking at the fantastic spectacle in the skies when suddenly he noticed a new island in the strait. The next moment he was running for his life, as a tremendous explosion erupted. Buildings shook, walls cracked, street lamps fell down, plaster rained from the ceilings, and doors flew open as if pushed by invisible hands. Everybody rushed into the streets. Another deafening explosion, and then everything was quiet as if the volcano had ceased to exist."

The volcano had ceased to exist. Under the combined weight of Krakatoa, Danan and Perboewatan, the subterranean pocket of white-hot lava had been building up an enormous pressure. Seething with the expansion of its gases, it found temporary outlets in the two craters, which normally acted as safety valves. But, as the weight on the lava increased, the craters became too small to control the pressure. Unimaginable energies were straining against hundreds of feet of solid rock overhead. The rock heaved, buckled; suddenly it cracked wide open like the wall of a defective cauldron. With all the fury of a primordial cataclysm a stream of lava burst forth in a deafening roar. Seconds later the ocean rushed into the opening. On contact with the white-hot lava the water changed to superheated steam. The opening widened; colossal blocks of granite and obsidian rocketed upward amidst a cloud of dust and smoke. Again the ocean rushed in, battling the pent-up lava, changing into expanding, exploding superheated steam, breaking down barrier after barrier of rock, smashing the walls of the cauldron from the inside and tearing the bowels of Krakatoa to shreds.

No one knows how many times this happened, how often the white-hot magma pushed back the ocean and how often the ocean returned to the assault. In the end the water won.

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