TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
THE _SARAGOSSA_ ENCOUNTERS THE RAGING FIRE-MISTS FROM _PELEE_ EIGHTMILES AT SEA, BUT LIVES TO SEND A BOAT ASHORE
Peter Stock stared long into the faint film of smoke, until the launchbearing Charter ashore was lost in the shipping. The pale, winding sheetwas unwrapped from the beauty of morning. There was an edging of roseand gold on the far dim hills. His eyes smarted from weariness, but hismind, like an automatic thing, swept around the great circle--from theship to the city, to the plantation-house on the _Morne_ and back to theship again. He was sick of the shore, disgusted with people who wouldlisten to M. Mondet and not to him. Miss Wyndam had refused him sooften, that he was half afraid Charter would not be successful, but hewas willing to wait two hours longer, for he liked the young womanimmensely, liked her breeding and her brain.... He joined Laird, hisfirst officer, on the bridge. The latter was scrutinizing through theglass a blotch of smoke on the city-front.
"What do you make of it, sir?" Laird asked.
The lenses brought to the owner a nucleus of red in the black bank. Therest of Saint Pierre was a gray, doll-settlement, set in the shelter oflittle gray hills. He could see the riven and castellated crest of Peleeweaving his black ribbon. It was all small, silent, and unearthly.
"That's a fire on the water-front," he said.
"That's what I made of it, sir," Laird responded.
Shortly afterward the trumpetings of the Monster began. The harbor grewyellowish-black. The shore crawled deeper into the shroud, and was lostaltogether. The water took on a foul look, as if the bed of the sea werechurned with some beastly passion. The anchor-chain grew taught,mysteriously strained, and banged a tattoo against its steel-bound eye.Blue Peter drooping at the foremast, livened suddenly into a spasm ofwrithing, like a hooked lizard. The black, quivering columns of smokefrom the funnels were fanned down upon the deck, adding soot to thewhite smear from the volcano.
"Better get the natives below--squall coming!" Peter Stock said, in alow tone to Laird, and noted upon the quiet, serious face of thisofficer, as he obeyed, an expression quite new. It was the look of a manwho sees the end, and does not wince.
The women wailed, as the sailors hurried them below and sealed the waysafter them. A deep-sea language passed over the ship. There were runningfeet, bells below, muffled cries from the native-women, quick oaths fromthe sailors; and then, Peter Stock felt the iron-fingers of fear abouthis heart--not for himself and his ship eight miles at sea, but for hisgood young friend and for the woman who had refused to come.
A hot, fetid breath charged the air. The ship rose and settled like afeather in a breeze; in a queer light way, as though its element wereheavily charged with air, the water danced, alive with the yeast ofworlds. The disordered sky intoned violence. Pelee had set thefoundations to trembling. A step upon the bridge-ladder caused theAmerican to turn with a start. Father Fontanel was coming up.
"Oh, this won't do at all," Peter Stock cried in French. "We're going tocatch hell up here, and you don't belong."
He dashed down the ladder, and led the old man swiftly back to thecabin, where he rushed to the ports and screwed them tight withlightning fingers, led the priest to a chair and locked it in itssocket. Father Fontanel spoke for the first time.
"It's very good of you," he said dully, "but what of my people?"
Stock did not answer, but rushed forth. Six feet from the cabin-door, hemet the fiery van of the cataclysm, and found strength to battle his wayback into the cabin.... From out the shoreward darkness thunderedvibrations which rendered soundless all that had passed before. Cometsflashed by the port-holes. The _Saragossa_ shuddered and fell to herstarboard side.
Eight bells had just sounded when the great thunder rocked over thegray-black harbor, and the molten vitals of the Monster, wrapped in ablack cloud, filled the heavens, gathered and plunged down upon the cityand the sea. As for the ship, eight miles from the shore and twelvemiles from the craters, she seemed to have fallen from a habitableplanet into the firemist of an unfinished world. She heeled over like abiscuit-tin, dipping her bridge and gunwales. She was deluged by blastsof steam and molten stone. Her anchor-chain gave way, and, burning in adozen places, she was sucked inshore.
Laird was on the bridge. Plass, the second officer, on his way to thebridge, to relieve or assist Laird as the bell struck, was felled at thedoor of the chart-room. A sailor trying to drag the body of Plass toshelter, was overpowered by the blizzard of steam, gas, and moltenstone, falling across the body of his officer. The ship was rolling likea runaway-buoy.
Peter Stock had been hurled across the cabin, but clutched the chair inwhich the priest was sitting, and clung to an arm of it, pinning theother to his seat. Several moments may have passed before he regainedhis feet. Though badly burned, he felt pain only in his throat andlungs, from that awful, outer breath as he regained the cabin.Firebrands still screamed into the sea outside, but the _Saragossa_ wassteadying a trifle, and vague day returned. Stock was first to reach thedeck, the woodwork of which was burning everywhere. He tried to shout,but his throat was closed by the hot dust. The body of a man was hangingover the railing of the bridge. It was Laird, with his face burned away.There were others fallen.
The shock of his burns and the terrible outer heat was beginning tooverpower the commander when Pugh, the third officer, untouched by fire,appeared from below. In a horrid, tongueless way, Stock fired the otherto act, and staggered back into the cabin. Pugh shrieked up the hands,and set to the fires and the ship's course. Out of two officers andthree sailors on deck when Pelee struck, none had lived. Peter Stockowed his life to the mute and momentary appearance of Father Fontanel.
The screaming of the native-women reached his ears from the hold. FatherFontanel stared at him with the most pitiful eyes ever seen in child orwoman. Black clouds were rolling out to sea. Deep thunder of a righteoussource answered Pelee's lamentations. The sailors were fighting fire andcarrying the dead. The thin shaken voice of Pugh came from the bridge.The engines were throbbing. Macready, Stock's personal servant, enteredwith a blast of heat.
"Thank God, you're alive, sir!" he said, with the little roll of Irelandon his tongue. "I was below, where better men were not.... Eight milesat sea--the long-armed divil av a mountain--what must the infightin'have been!"
Peter Stock beckoned him close and called huskily for lint and oils.Macready was back in a moment from the store-room, removed the crackedand twisted boots; cleansed the ashes from the face and ears of hischief; administered stimulant and talked incessantly.
"It's rainin' evenchooalities out.... Ha, thim burns is not so bad,though your shoes were pretty thin, an' the deck's smeared with red-hotpaste. It's no bit of a geyser in a dirt-pile, sure, can tell MistherStock whin to come and whin to go."
The cabin filled with the odor of burnt flesh as he stripped the coatfrom Stock's shoulder, where an incandescent pebble had fallen andburned through the cloth. Ointments and bandages were applied before theowner said:
"We must be getting pretty close in the harbor?"
This corked Macready's effervescence. Pugh had been putting the_Saragossa_ out to sea, since he assumed control. It hadn't occurred tothe little Irishman that Mr. Stock would put back into the harbor of anisland freshly-exploded.
"I dunno, sir. It's hard to see for the rain."
"Go to the door and find out".
The rain fell in sheets. Big seas were driving past, and the steady beatof the engines was audible. There was no smoke, no familiar shadow ofhills, but a leaden tumult of sky, and the rollers of open sea beaten bya cloudburst. The commander did not need to be told. It all came back tohim--Laird's body hanging over the railing of the bridge; Plass down;Pugh, a new man, in command.
"Up to the bridge, Macready, and tell Pugh for me not to be in such adamned hurry--running away from a stricken town. Tell him to put back inthe roadstead where we belong."
Macready was gone several moments, and reported, "Pugh says we'reshort-handed; that the
ship's badly-charred, but worth savin'; in short,sir, that he's not takin' orders from no valet--meanin' me."
Nature was righting herself in the brain of the American, but theproblems of time and space still were mountains to him. Macready saw thegray eye harden, and knew what the next words would be before they werespoken.
"Bring Pugh here!"
It was rather a sweet duty for Macready, whose colors had been loweredby the untried officer. The latter was in a funk, if ever a seaman hadsuch a seizure. Pugh gave an order to the man at the wheel and followedthe Irishman below, where he encountered the gray eye, and felt Macreadybehind him at the door.
"Turn back to harbor at once--full speed!"
Pugh hesitated, his small black eyes burning with terror.
"Turn back, I say! Get to hell out of here!"
"But a firefly couldn't live in there, sir----"
"Call two sailors, Macready!" Stock commanded, and when they came,added, "Put him in irons, you men!... Macready, help me to the bridge."
* * * * *
It was after eleven when the _Saragossa_ regained the harbor. Theterrific cloudburst had spent itself. Out from the land rolled anunctuous smudge, which bore suggestions of the heinous impartiality of agreat conflagration. The harbor was cluttered with wreckage, a doompicture for the eyes of the seaman. Dimly, fitfully, through the pall,they began to see the ghosts of the shipping--black hulls without helmor hope. The _Saragossa_ vented a deep-toned roar, but no answer wasreturned, save a wailing echo--not a voice from the wreckage, not eventhe scream of a gull. A sailor heaved the lead, and the scathed steamerbore into the rising heat.
Ahead was emptiness. Peter Stock, reclining upon the bridge, andsuffering martyrdoms from his burns, gave up his last hope that the gunsof Pelee had been turned straight seaward, sparing the city or a portionof it. Rough winds tunnelling through the smoke revealed a hint of hillsshorn of Saint Pierre. A cry was wrung from the American's breast, andMacready hastened to his side with a glass of spirits.
"I want a boat made ready--food, medicines, bandages, two or threehundred pounds of ice covered with blankets and a tarpaulin," Stocksaid. "You are to take a couple of men and get in there. Get the stewardstarted fitting the boat, and see that the natives are kept a bitquieter. Make 'em see the other side--if they hadn't come aboard."
"Mother av God," Macready muttered as he went about these affairs. "Icould bake a potatie here, sure, in the holla av my hand. What, thin,must it be in that pit of destruction?" He feared Pelee less, however,than the gray eye, and the fate of Pugh.
The launch had not returned from taking Charter ashore, so one of thelife-boats was put into commission. The German, Ernst, and anothersailor of Macready's choice, were shortly ready to set out.
"You know why I'm not with you, men," the commander told them at thelast moment. "It isn't that I couldn't stand it in the boat, but there'sa trip ashore for you to make, and there's no walking for me on thesepuff-balls for weeks to come. Macready, you know Mr. Charter. He hadtime to reach the _Palms_ before hell broke loose. I want you to gothere and bring him back alive--and a woman who'll be with him! Alsoreport to me regarding conditions in the city. That's all. Lower away."
A half-hour later, the little boat was forced to return to the ship. Thesailor was whimpering at the oars; the lips of Ernst were twisted inagony; while Macready was silent, sign enough of his failing endurance.Human vitality could not withstand the withering draughts of heat. Atnoon, another amazing downpour of rain came to the aid of Peter Stockwho, granting that the little party had encountered conditions whichflesh could not conquer, had, nevertheless, been chafing furiously. Attwo in the afternoon, a second start was made.
Deeper and deeper in toward the gray low beach the little boat waspulled, its occupants the first to look upon the heaped and over-runningmeasure of Saint Pierre's destruction. The three took turns at the oars.Fear and suffering brought out a strange feminine quality in the sailor,not of cowardice; rather he seemed beset by visionary terrors. Rarerunning-mates were Macready and Ernst, odd as two white men can be, butmatched to a hair in courage. The German bent to his work, a grim stolidmechanism. Macready jerked at the oars, and found breath and energyremaining to assail the world, the flesh and the devil, which was Pugh,with his barbed and invariably glib tongue. How many times the blue eyesof the German rolled back under the lids, and his grip relaxed upon theoars; how many times the whipping tongue of Macready mumbled, forgettingits object, while his senses reeled against the burning walls of hisbrain; how many times the sailor hoarsely commanded them to look throughthe fog for figures which alone he saw--only God and these knew. But thelittle boat held its prow to the desolate shore.
They gained the Sugar Landing at last, or the place where it had been,and strange sounds came from the lips of Ernst, as he pointed to thehulk of the _Saragossa's_ launch, burned to the water-line. It had beenin his care steadily until its last trip. Gray-covered heaps weresprawled upon the shore, some half-covered by the incoming tide, othersentirely awash. Pelee had brought down the city; and the fire-tiger hadrushed in at the kill. He was hissing and crunching still, under theruins. The sailor moaned and covered his face.
"There's nothing alive!" he repeated with dreadful stress.
"What else would you look for--here at the very fut av the mountain?"Macready demanded. "Wait till we get over the hill, and you'll hear thebirds singin' an' the naygurs laughin' in the fields an' wonderin' whythe milkman don't come."
The market-place near the shore was filled with the stones from thesurrounding buildings, hurled there as dice from a box. Smoke and steamoozed from every ruin. The silence was awful as the sight of death. Thestreets of the city were effaced. Saint Pierre had been felled andaltered, as the Sioux women once altered the corpses of the slainwhites. There was no discernible way up the _Morne_. Breathing piles ofdebris barred every passage. Under one of these, a clock suddenly struckthree--an irreverent survival carrying on its shocking business beneaththe collapsed walls of a burned and beaten city, frightening themhideously. It would have been impossible to traverse _Rue Victor Hugo_had the way been clear, since a hundred feet from the shore or less,they encountered a zone of unendurable heat.
"I could die happy holdin' Pugh here," Macready gasped. "Do you thinkhell is worse than this, Ernst, barrin' the effrontery of the question?Ha--don't step there!"
He yanked the German away from a puddle of uncongealed stuff, hot asrunning metal.... The sailor screamed. He had stepped upon what seemedto be an ash-covered stone. It was soft, springy, and vented a wheezysigh. Rain and rock-dust had smeared all things alike in this grayroasting shambles.
"Won't somebody say something?" the sailor cried in a momentary silence.
"It looks like rain, ma'm," Macready offered.
They had been forced back into the boat, and were skirting the shorearound by the _Morne_. Saint Pierre had rushed to the sea--at the last.The volcano had found the women with the children, as all manner ofvisitations find them--and the men a little apart. Pelee had notfaltered. There was nothing to do by the way, no lips to moisten, novoice of pain to hush, no dying thing to ease. There was not aninsect-murmur in the air, nor a crawling thing upon the beach, not amoving wing in the hot, gray sky--a necropolis, shore of death absolute.
They climbed the cliffs to the north of the _Palms_, glanced downthrough the smoke at the city--sunken like a toothless mouth. Even the_Morne_ was a husk divested of its fruit. Pelee had cut the cane-fields,sucked the juices and left the blasted stalks in his paste. The oldplantation-house pushed forth no shadow of an outline. It might befelled or lost in the smoky distance. The nearer landmarks weregone--homes that had brightened the heights in their day, whose windowshad flashed the rays of the afternoon sun as it rode downoversea--levelled like the fields of cane. Pelee had swept far and leftonly his shroud, and the heaps upon the way, to show that the oldsea-road, so white, so beautiful, had been the haunt of man. The mangoeshad lost their vesture; t
he palms were gnarled and naked fingerspointing to the pitiless sky.
Macready had known this highway in the mornings, when joy was not dead,when the songs of the toilers and the laughter of children glorified thefields; in the white moonlight, when the sea-winds met and mingled withthe spice from tropic hills, and the fragrance from the jasmine androse-gardens.... He stared ahead now, wetting his puffed and torturedlips. They had passed the radius of terrific heat, but he was thinkingof the waiting gray eye, when he returned without the man and the woman.
"It'll be back to the bunkers for Dinny," he muttered.... "Ernst, yegoat, you're intertainin', you're loquenchus."
They stepped forward swiftly now. There was not a hope that the mountainhad shown mercy at the journey's end.... They would find whom theysought down like the others, and the great house about them. Still,there was a vague God to whom Macready had prayed once or twice in hislife--a God who had the power to strike blasphemers dead, to stilltempests, light volcanic fuses and fell Babylons. To this God hemuttered a prayer now....
The ruins of the plantation house wavered forth from the fog. The sailorplucked at Macready's sleeve, and Ernst mumbled thickly that they mightas well get back aboard.... But the Irishman stood forth from them; andin that smoky gloom, desolate as the first day, before Light was turnedupon the Formless Void, bayed the names of Charter and the woman.
Then the answer:
"_In the cistern--in the old cistern!_"
Macready made a mental appointment with his God, and yelled presently:"Didn't I tell you 'twould take more than the sphit of a mountain tosinge the hair of him?... Are you hurted, sir?"