August 26, 1883

The noise grew louder and louder, so that we all were covering our ears, trying to muffle the sound. It didn’t help. Although the island was miles away, we had heard the volcano on it rumbling for days. Today, August 26, 1883, was my eleventh birthday, and I childishly felt the island was celebrating with its own version of fireworks.

“Bethany, get inside immediately,” I heard my mother calling out to me. “Don’t you want a piece of your birthday cake before your two brothers gobble it all up?” I raced into the kitchen since Jacob and John, my nine-year-old twin brothers, were complete pigs about food. If they had their way, I wouldn’t get any cake at all.

Outside, the sky started to darken even though it was only a bit after two o’clock in the afternoon. My father, an emissary from England to this island, was still at work, but my mother felt it was all right to serve my birthday cake for early tea. I promised to wait until my father came home this evening to open my presents. However, I’d already peeked and knew I was getting the doll I’d seen in the local toy store.

“Mother,” I asked, looking outside after finishing the large slice of cake. “My ears hurt. Why is that sound getting louder?”

Mother came to stand beside me at the open window, a worried look on her face. Jacob and John were still at the kitchen table, finishing off the last of the chocolate cake. By now it was 2:30, and the sky overhead was as dark as midnight. The sounds of the distant volcano had increased until they drowned out all other noise on our island.

Suddenly, the ground around our home started heaving under our feet, and Mother and I both fell to the kitchen floor. Without warning, the ceiling crashed down to cover my screaming brothers in seconds. Dishes bounced on shelves, and then flew through the air coming dangerously close to where my mother and I huddled terrified on the floor.

The noise kept increasing until I thought my head would explode from the sound. Lying on the floor, too scared to move, I watched as Mother crawled on hands and knees to where she had last seen my brothers. She reached the heavy boards that once was the ceiling and tried to lift them. I could tell even from where I was that John was dead. Blood was seeping from his crushed skull onto the linoleum to mix with something that resembled gray snow.

Jacob was still alive, though, and tumbled crying into Mother’s arms after she managed to pull him free from the boards. He had no time to be comforted by her before the ground started shaking again. This time, the earthquake seemed to go on forever, although it probably was only for a minute or so.

“Bethany,” screamed my mother over the sound of the rest of our home crashing around us. “Head for the door. Get outside if you can. Jacob and I will be right behind you. Now run, baby, run for your life!”

I struggled to my feet, all the time the shaking of the ground underneath me continued. The kitchen door was only a few feet away, but there was a tree in between it and me. Somehow, the beautiful tree just outside in the back yard had been torn up by its roots and landed half inside and half on the pathway outside. Crawling over the tree scraped my knees, already bleeding from where the flying dishes had cut them.

Finally outside, I waited for Mother and Jacob to join me, but they never came. At least I didn’t see them, but in the dark they might have passed right next to me. The gray snow, which I would learn was ash from the distant volcano, filled the sky and drifted down to cover the ground. At first it was only ankle deep, but as I tried walking in it, I discovered it soon was up to my bloody knees.

‘Mother! Jacob! Where are you?” My cries of panic went unanswered. For hours, I plowed through the ash, trying to find my family. The sound of the volcano kept rising until I felt pain in my ears. The sudden total silence scared me, and I started screaming soundlessly. Later, the doctor told me my ear drums had ruptured.

Unable to hear anything and blinded by the falling ash, I stumbled to where I remembered neighbors lived, but quickly lost my way. The ash soon was drawn into my lungs making breathing difficult. Finally, unable to make it any further in the deep ash, I lay down underneath a straggly bush and waited to die.

After a lifetime of silence and pain, I felt hands at my neck. Someone was checking to see if I was still alive. A stranger lifted me into his arms and carried me to a nearby horse-drawn wagon. There were about a dozen dazed and bleeding people already in the back of the wagon, and I was placed gently among them.

Weeks later, lying on a clean hospital bed in England, the homeland of my parents, I learned how others had spent my eleventh birthday and many days afterwards. Around noon on August 27, hot ash fell around Ketimbang in Sumatra. Around a thousand people were killed from what scientists later called pyroclastic flow.

The eruption on the distant volcanic island of Krakatau had also killed my parents and two younger brothers. Only I survived to end my childhood with my father’s relatives in Derbyshire. I remained deaf for the rest of my life, but would never forget my horrible eleventh birthday on August 26, 1883.