Trinidad--_January._
|WHAT a world! What a woman!
From the way in which Mrs. Mink collected you and me, it was clear
that she had a knack, a genius, nay, even let us say, a tendency toward
collecting people. In point of fact, no sooner were you gone than she
collected a Professor of Logic.
His name was Simpson, Professor Simpson. It was at San Juan. Why did
she collect him? Now you speak of it, I reckon it was for a sort of a
breakwater to me. Gracious heavens! It wasn't for want of logic. Never!
But it is just possible that she found me, at the time,--I suspected
it--that she found me rather--shall I say?--overflowing, rather a
deluge.
Professor Simpson was a man whose presence I should ordinarily have
welcomed for the educational value of his company, but I didn't welcome
him. He was small in person, dry of face, categorical in manner, testy
in temper, Presbyterian in religion, pedantic in language, undoubtedly
learned. But did he understand his function to be merely a breakwater to
me? He did not. Let that pass for the present. Mrs. Mink collected him
at San Juan, and we steamed away to Martinique. Here, one day, on or
about the tenth of December, we lay in the roadstead of St. Pierre.
We were intending to go on that day, but about two-thirds of the
_Violetta's_ crew were in St. Pierre on shore leave. Captain Jansen
came aboard some time after noon, and finding the men had not returned,
became excited, took all the boats, and the remainder of the crew, even
down to the cook, to help him collect delinquent mariners the faster,
and went ashore again. We four were left on the _Violetta_: Mrs. Mink,
Norah, Professor Simpson, and I.
The weather was calm to the point of deadness. Mont Pelée, that
smouldering volcano, that suppressed Titan, was asleep. Not a cloud in
the sky, not a ripple in the bay. Jansen appeared to be having trouble,
for an hour passed, and the missing crew had not returned.
Between you and me, as man and man, the delinquent mariners were in the
lockup, but Mrs. Mink does not know that, as yet. You can't rivet a nail
in a boiled potato, nor temperance in the tempestuous seaman, but Mrs.
Mink doesn't know that, as yet.
We were just commenting upon a dark, small, condensed looking cloud
which had appeared above the shoulder of Mont Pelée, questioning whether
it was an exhalation of the volcano, Pelée in eruption. Was Mont Pelée
about to overwhelm St. Pierre, a Vesuvius to Pompeii? Was I, like
the elder Pliny, to perish, a suffocated naturalist, a philosopher in
cinder?
But it grew with enormous rapidity. It seemed to have an uncommon knack
of taking in nourishment, a terrifying appetite. I saw a house on the
mountain side rise up and vanish, swallowed at a gulp. Professor Simpson
got out his note-book and took notes. He described the cloud in his
notebook as “bulbous, or bulging in form, in colour a bluish black, and
unfolding centrifugally toward the edges.”
“In my opinion,” he said, “we are ourselves in some personal danger. I
believe this is what is commonly called a tornado. Do you differ from
me, Dr. Uls-water?”
I said: “Not there, professor, though it's late in the year for
West-Indian hurricanes. The most pointed opinion I've got is that this
deck is going to be a wet place in a minute.”
We'd hardly got to the cabin before the roar was audible, and grew till
we could not hear ourselves. One minute more and the _Violetta_ gave
a jerk that threw us on the floor, Norah on Professor Simpson and Mrs.
Mink on Norah. Between them they obscured him, on the whole, very
well. I got up and looked through the port-hole, and saw only spray and
splashing water. The ship was engaged in a sort of circular high-kicking
dance, something between a waltz and a cancan. The professor remained
obscure. Neither Mrs. Mink nor Norah saw their way clearly to
getting off him, and for myself,--seeing that he kicked but vaguely,
harmlessly,--I thought Mrs. Mink and Norah might as well suit themselves
about it.
At the end of four minutes, perhaps five or ten, the tumult had subsided
to a strong wind and heavy sea. I went on deck, and discovered that
the _Violetta_ had been torn loose from her anchor, and was drifting
rapidly. The mist, however, was too thick to see far in any direction.
By the point from which the tornado had come, I judged that we had been
driven out of the roadstead and were moving perhaps west, or northwest,
on the open sea. A broken spar hung from the short rigging and beat
against the mast, and the deck was awash with water. I went back to the
cabin, and mentioned my inferences. Mrs. Mink jumped up and said:
“Nonsense! It's impossible.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Mink,” said the professor, rising, “surely a
situation that is _in esse_, in actual existence, cannot be described as
'impossible.' It is, as you mean to imply, however, most distressing.”
“Fiddlesticks! What shall we do?”
The professor reflected. On reflection, he said he thought it needed
reflection. I thought we might as well remain where we were. He objected
that, being in motion with the ship, it was not in our power to remain
where we were, but, as regards our relations to the ship, I was perhaps
right.
What a man!
Mrs. Mink said we'd better have supper.
The mist was turning to rain, the violence of the waves gradually
subsiding, and the wind growing more moderate. Norah and I went to
the galley. She cooked and I carried. After supper it was dark. A
pitch-black and rainy night came down on the troubled sea. The professor
and I agreed to watch alternately. He went to bed and I lay down on the
cabin sofa. I listened to the creak and thump of the loose spar, the
murmur of the rain, the splash of waves against the _Violetta_'s sides.
I reflected that our situation was perhaps more unusual than perilous;
that we were likely to be seen by somebody if the weather cleared; that
after all the sea is in reality a less eventful element than the
land; that a philosophic mind is better than a feather bed; that with
reasonable good luck and a philosophic mind I might have the credit of
a nightlong watch over Mrs. Mink's slumbers, along with the benefit of a
night's rest. So reflecting, I went to sleep.