midnight
Vast tongues of flame protruded heavenward . The elements must be melting in that fervent heat . The blazing bowels of the earth were pouring forth . Twelve , midnight ! A reverberation thundered out which shook the solid earth , and a roaring hell-breath of flame and smoke belched up so awful in its dread magnificence that every man who saw it and lived to tell his story might justly have claimed to have seen perdition . In that hurricane of incandescent matter the island was blotted out for ever from the map of this world . Notwithstanding the speed of the _ Esmeralda _ she was a sloth when compared with the speed of the wave from such an earthquake .