In her story (published in several Javanese newspapers) Johanna describes the last wretched evening she spent at her home, surrounded by her servants:

If I shut my eyes, I see it all before me, the pieces of chicken, the rice and my faithful young Radjah exhorting me to eat. "You must eat, Madam, for you don't know what is going to happen. Come now, take a little rice." He served some up but I could not get it down. It was if my throat was sealed. I went to the front balcony. The pumice had been falling for hours but in pieces no bigger than peas. Then I saw someone coming up the garden with a lantern.

It was Jeroemoeidi (one of her servants) who said to me in a very worried manner, "The Antoe Laoet (the Sea Ghost) is close by. The sea has gone. Far, far away I hear the waves."

"How can it have gone? Perhaps it is at low ebb," I said.

"Come and see. It should now be high tide. It is a worrying sight, for all the coral reefs along the coast, which at the lowest ebb lie a fathom below the surface and which I can sail over in my sloop, are now dried out."

A whole lot of natives now came up to the house and corroborated Jeroemoeidi's story.

My eldest boy was playing with the ayah (babu) on the sofa. My eldest girl was standing in the bedroom. I was lying on the bed and the maid was standing near me. I was feeding my youngest son. Then I heard, above the noise of the pumice falling on the roof, above the thunder from the mountain, a frightful roaring, which approached at lightning speed. My hair stood on end. I leapt up clutching my youngest child and shouted, "Come here, come here, everyone together!"

The wave reached the house but it didn't go further than the back yard. It destroyed the office and surrounding outhouses, and my husband and Mr. Tojaka (his clerk) were only just able to escape with their lives by climbing up a cocoa-nut tree after they fled from the office.

As soon as the wave receded, my husband dashed to the house, but he could not get upstairs as they had been washed away. He shouted, "Wife, wife, come downstairs quickly — just jump and I'll catch you!" And to the servant he called, "Turn the horses and animals loose."

It must have been about 8:30 p.m. when the Beyerinck family began their flight into the interior. They didn't dare take the coastal road and were forced to walk through an extensive paddy field full of water, then through a wood with no path.

They sank into mud at every step — sometimes it reached Mrs. Beyerinck's knees. Behind came a terrible roaring, as if the sea was trying to catch them.

When Mrs. Beyerinck tried to say something to Mr. Tojaka, who was helping her along, she found she couldn't speak. It felt as though her throat was dried out and someone was trying to cut her tonsils with a knife. She felt her neck. To her horror, it was covered with leeches.

When they reached the wood they lost their way. A crowd of natives came fleeing in their direction. One of them led the way with the Beyerincks following, holding onto one another. They reached their hut at midnight.

Mrs. Beyerinck laid the exhausted children on the bed and opened the box of provisions. The family settled down in the tiny room, which had two windows covered by bamboo slats.

Everything was smothered in ash and sheets of pumice — ash and dust continued to fall.

No one could sleep because the noises coming from Krakatoa were ghastly. Around the hut lay 3,000 terrified natives, moaning and crying and praying to Allah for deliverance. The journey had taken five hours.