Plotting in Pirate Seas Part 25

steered her into the harbor, an' dropped the anchor. Makin' his way along the rail, the harbor-master made his way to where he could reach the iron ladder goin' to the bridge, an' climbed it. The bridge was clear of ash, blown free by the mornin' breeze.

"The chart-house door was open. In it, lyin' across the steam steerin'

wheel, was Captain Freeman, unconscious. His face was so blistered that his eyes were nearly shut. His hair was singed right down to the skull.

His hands were raw an' bleedin'. His clothes were scorched into something that was black an' brittle. The harbor-master lifted him, an'

laid him on the chart-house bunk."

"What others were there?"

"Pickin' his way, he got to the bow an' found the deck hand who had let down the anchor. He was blind an' his flesh was crisped and cracking.

"From below, crawled up four o' the engine-room crew. Most o' the others aboard lay dead under those heaps o' hot ash on the deck."

"What had happened?"

"This had happened. The _Roddam_ had been through the eruption of Mont Pelee, the only ship which escaped o' the eighteen that were in the harbor. She got away only because she made port just fifty-two minutes before the eruption, an' had been ordered to the quarantine station, some distance off."

"Did you see anything of the eruption yourself?"

"We knew that somethin' had happened, even down here in St. Lucia. It turned almost as black as night for a few minutes, an' our skipper, who was ash.o.r.e, said he had felt a slight earthquake. But we saw enough of it, right after."

"How?" queried Stuart.

"We had a lot o' foodstuff in our cargo, some of which was billed for Caracas. But, as soon as we heard the story, our captain told the engineer to get up full steam an' make for Fort-de-France. He knew the owners would have wanted him to go to the relief of the folks of Martinique. We got there the next day an' saw sights! Sights I can't ever forget!"

The eruption of Mont Pelee and the destruction of the town of St.

Pierre, in 1902, over 30,000 people being killed in the s.p.a.ce of three seconds, was one of the most tragic disasters of history, and the ruins of St. Pierre are today the most astounding ruins that the world contains of so vast and terrible a calamity, outrivaling those of Pompeii.

The cataclysm did not come without warning. As early as March 23, a scientist ascended the volcano and reported that a small crater was in eruption. By the end of April, to quote from Heilprin, "vast columns of steam and ash had been and were being blown out, boiling mud was flowing from its sides and terrific rumblings came from its interior. Lurid lights hung over the crown at night-time, and lightning flashed in dazzling sheets through the cloud-world. What further warnings could any volcano give?"

On April 25, a crater broke into a small eruption, throwing out showers of rock-material, which, however, did not reach the town, distant a mile from the foot of the volcano. On May 5, an avalanche of boiling mud, many acres wide, tumbled down from the volcano, and went roaring along the bed of the Riviere Blanche at the rate of a mile a minute. A large sugar factory was engulfed and some 159 lives lost. On May 6 and 7, the sulphur fumes were so strong in the streets that horses, and even people, dropped from suffocation.

Again--what further warning could any volcano give?

There were other warnings. On April 30, light ashes had begun to fall.

On May 1 an excursion was announced for the summit of Mont Pelee for those who wished to see a volcano in action, but that morning a deeper coat of ashes blanched the streets. The Jardin des Plantes--one of the richest tropical gardens of the West Indies--lay buried beneath a cap of gray and white. The heights above the city seemed snow-clad. The country roads were blocked and obliterated, and horses would neither work nor travel. Birds fell in their noiseless flight, smothered by the ash that surrounded them, or asphyxiated by poisonous vapors or gases that were being poured into the atmosphere.

"The rain of ashes never ceases," the local paper wrote on May 3. "At about half-past nine, the sun shone forth timidly. The pa.s.sing of carriages is no longer heard in the streets. The wheels are m.u.f.fled.

Many business houses are closed to customers.... The excursion which had been organized for tomorrow morning cannot take place, the crater being absolutely inaccessible. Those who had planned to take part will be informed on what date this excursion will become possible."

On May 4 the paper wrote: "The sea is covered in patches with dead birds. Many lie asphyxiated on the roads. The cattle suffer greatly, asphyxiated by the dust of ashes. The children of the planters wander aimlessly about the courtyards, with their little donkeys, like human wrecks. They are no longer black, but white, and look as if h.o.a.r frost had formed upon them.... Desolation, aridity and eternal silence prevail over the countryside."

Next day, May 5, was the day when the mud crater opened. It was followed by an upsurging wave from the ocean, which added to the fear of the people, but which receded slowly and with little damage. On the day following, Pelee was shrouded in a heavy cloud, and ashes and cinders fell over a wide stretch of country. The surface waters had disappeared.

Trees had been burned of their leaves. Yet a commission appointed to investigate the condition of the volcano made light of it, saying "the relative position of the craters and the valleys, leading towards the sea, enables the statement that the safety of St. Pierre is complete."

Wednesday, May 7, opened one of the saddest and most terrorizing of the many days that led up to the final eruption. Since four o'clock in the morning, Mont Pelee had been hoa.r.s.e with its roaring, and vivid lightning flashed through its shattered clouds. Thunder rolled over its head, and lurid glares played across the smoky column which towered aloft. "Some say," says Heilprin, "that at this time it showed two fiery crater-mouths, which shone out like fire-filled blast furnaces. The volcano seemed prepared for a last effort.

"When daylight broke through the clouds and cast its softening rays over the roadstead, another picture of horror rose to the eyes. The shimmering waters of the open sea were loaded with wreckage of all kinds--islands of debris from field and forest and floating fields of pumice and jetsam. As far as the eye could reach, it saw but a field of desolation." The river of Ba.s.se-Pointe overflowed with a torrent of black water, which carried several houses away. Black rains fell.

Again, and for the last time--could a volcano give any further warning?

Yet the governor, a scientific commission, and the local paper joined in advising the inhabitants of St. Pierre not to flee the city, the article closing with the words, "Mont Pelee presents no more dangers to the inhabitants of St. Pierre than does Vesuvius to those of Naples."

Next day the governor was dead, the members of the commission were dead, the editor was dead, and the presses on which this article had been printed had, in one blast, been fused into a ma.s.s of twisted metal.

Came the 8th of May, 1902.

Shortly after midnight the thunders ceased for a while, but by four o'clock, two hours before the shadows of night had lifted, an ominous cloud was seen flowing out to sea, followed in its train by streaks of fiery cinders. The sun was barely above the horizon when the roaring began again. The Vicar-General describes these sounds as follows: "I distinguished clearly four kinds of noises; first the clap of thunder, which followed the lightning at intervals of twenty seconds; then the mighty m.u.f.fled detonations of the volcano, like the roaring of many cannon fired simultaneously; third, the continuous rumbling of the crater, which the inhabitants designated the 'roaring of the lion,' and then last, as though furnishing the ba.s.s for this gloomy music, the deep noise of the swelling waters, of all the torrents which take their source upon the mountain, generated by an overflow such as has never yet been seen. This immense rising of thirty streams at once, without one drop of water having fallen on the sea-coast, gives some idea of the cataracts which must pour down upon the summit from the storm-clouds gathered around the crater."

"Hundreds of agonized people," writes Heilprin, in his great scientific work on the catastrophe, "had gathered to their devotions in the Cathedral and the Cathedral Square, this being Ascension Day, but probably there were not many among them who did not feel that the tide of the world had turned, for even through the atmosphere of the sainted bells, the fiery missiles were being hurled to warn of destruction. The fate of the city and of its inhabitants had already been sealed.

"The big hand of the clock of the Military Hospital had just reached the minute mark of 7:50 a.m. when a great brown cloud was seen to issue from the side of the volcano, followed almost immediately by a cloud of vapory blackness, which separated from it and took a course downward to the sea. Deafening detonations from the interior preceded this appearance, and a lofty white pennant was seen to rise from the summit of the volcano.

"With wild fury the black cloud rolled down the mountain slope, pressing closely the contours of the valley along which had previously swept the mud-flow that overwhelmed the factory three days before, and spreading fan-like to the sea.

"In two minutes, or less, it had reached the doomed city, a flash of blinding intensity parted its coils, and St. Pierre was ablaze. The clock of the Military Hospital halted at 7:52 a.m.--a historic time-mark among the ruins, the recorder of one of the greatest catastrophic events that are written in the history of the world."

Just before the cloud struck, its violet-grey center showed, and the forepart of this was luminous. It struck the town with the fury of a tornado of flame. Whirls of fire writhed spirally about it. The mountain had belched death, death in many forms: death by fire, death by poisonous gases, death by a super-furnace heat, but, princ.i.p.ally, death by a sudden suffocation, the fiery and flaming cloud having consumed all the breathable air.

Whole streets of houses were mown down by the flaming scythe. Walls three to four feet in thickness were blown away like paper. Ma.s.sive machinery was crumpled up as if it had been clutched in a t.i.tanic white-hot metal hand. The town was raked by a hurricane of incandescent dust and super-heated gas.

The violet luminosity, with its writhing serpents of flame, was followed in a second or two by a thousand points of light as the town took fire, followed, almost instantaneously, by a burst of light of every color in the spectrum, as a thousand substances leaped into combustion, and then, in a moment----

Night!

An impenetrable cloud of smoke and ash absolutely blotted out the sun.

The sky was covered. The hills were hidden. The sea was as invisible as at midnight. Even the grayness of the ash gave back no light; there was none to give.

Three seconds had elapsed since the violet-gray cloud of fury struck the town, but in those three seconds 30,000 people lay dead, slain with such appalling swiftness that none knew their fate. No one had tried to escape.

The eruption was witnessed, from a distance, by only one trained observer, Roger Arnoux, and a translation of his record is, in part, as follows:

"Having left St. Pierre at about five in the evening (May 7) I was witness to the following spectacle: Enormous rocks, being clearly distinguishable, were being projected from the crater to a considerable elevation, so high, indeed, as to occupy a quarter of a minute in their flight.

"About eight o'clock of the evening we recognized for the first time, playing about the crater, fixed fires that burned with a brilliant white flame. Shortly afterwards, several detonations, similar to those that had been heard at St. Pierre, were noted coming from the south, which confirmed me in my opinion that there already existed a number of submarine craters from which gases were being projected, to explode when coming in contact with the air.

"Having retired for the night, at about nine o'clock, I awoke shortly afterwards in the midst of a suffocating heat and completely bathed in perspiration.... I awoke again about eleven thirty-five, having felt a trembling of the earth ... but again went to sleep, waking at half-past seven. My first observation was of the crater, which I found sufficiently calm, the vapors being chased swiftly under pressure of an east wind.

"At about eight o'clock, when still watching the crater (M. Arnoux was the only man who saw the beginning of the eruption and lived to tell the tale), I noted a small cloud pa.s.s out, followed two seconds after by a considerable cloud, whose flight to the Pointe de Carbet (beyond the city) _occupied less than three seconds_, being at the same time already in our zenith, thus showing that it developed almost as rapidly in height as in length. The vapors were of a violet-gray color and seemingly very dense, for, although endowed with an almost inconceivably powerful ascensive force, they retained to the zenith their rounded summits. Innumerable electric scintillations played through the chaos of vapors, at the same time that the ears were deafened by a frightful fracas.

"I had, at this time, an impression that St. Pierre had been destroyed.... As the monster seemed to near us, my people, panic-stricken, ran to a neighboring hillock that dominated the house, begging me to do the same.... Hardly had we arrived at the summit when the sun was completely veiled, and in its place came almost complete blackness.... At this time we observed over St. Pierre, a column of fire, estimated to be 1,200 feet in height, which seemed to be endowed with the movement of rotation as well as onward movement." St. Pierre was no more.

Rescuers were soon on their way. Twenty-three minutes after the clouds had been seen rising from Mont Pelee and the cable and telephone lines were broken, a little steamer left Fort-de-France, the capital. It reached half-way, then, finding that the rain of stones and ashes threatened to sink it, returned. The boat started anew at ten o'clock and rounded the point of Carbet. The volcano was shrouded in smoke and ashes. For three miles the coast was in flames. Seventeen vessels in the roadstead, two of which were American steamers, burned at anchor. The heat from this immense conflagration prevented the boat from proceeding and it returned to Fort-de-France, reaching there at one o'clock, bringing the sinister tidings.

At midday, the Acting Governor of Martinique ordered the _Suchet_ to go with troops to be under the direction of the Governor, then at St.

Pierre. About three o'clock, a party was landed on the sh.o.r.e. The pier was covered with bodies. The town was all in fire and in ruins. The heat was such that the landing party could not endure more than three or four minutes. The Governor was dead also.

"St. Pierre," writes a witness on another rescue ship, which arrived at almost the same moment, "is no more. Its ruins stretch before us, in their shroud of smoke and ashes, gloomy and silent, a city of the dead.

Our eyes seek the inhabitants fleeing distracted, or returning to look for the dead. Nothing to be seen. No living soul appears in this desert of desolation, encompa.s.sed by appalling silence.... Through the clouds of ashes and of smoke diffused in our atmosphere, the sun breaks wan and dim, as it is never seen in our skies, and throws over the whole picture a sinister light, suggestive of a world beyond the grave."