ASHES
When they came on deck, the vessel, still on her course had drawn
nearer to the land, several men-of-war and relief ships were at anchor
in the bay.
The crew of the _Anne Martin_ were held spellbound by the disaster,
just as their officers had been. Nor did use to the scene break the
spell, for the nearer they approached the more appalling did the
picture of destruction appear.
Had you not known of the catastrophe, had you not known that this place
a few weeks ago was the most beautiful corner of the world, you would
have said, “this is surely the great cinder dumping ground of the
universe. Here from the beginning of time men have cast their ashes
and cities their detritus, if I were to poke a stick amidst all that I
would surely find amphorae from Sparta and broken gourds from Nineveh
along with the empty tomato tins and the broken crockery-ware of the
modern world. What a horror. How dare Time expose this rubbish heap
to insult the gaze of the Creator, this monstrosity of desolation to
insult the eye of man.”
And even then you would not have felt the heart of this great
desolation, you would not have heard the voices of the gardens, the
complaint of the _fleur d’amour_, the weeping of the gouyave water,
the voices of the vanished streets. You would not have known that
beneath that miserable rubbish of nature, that dust, grey as the brick
dust of the old grey temple of Ruin, lay children grasping their
toys, girls once more beautiful than the flowers in the gardens, men,
young, and brave, but a few weeks ago, and filled with the joy of life,
Pierre-Alphonse, the kindly fisherman and Man’m Faly the good-hearted
friend of sailors.
Even still, amidst the ruin one might see some trace of the
configuration of the city, just as in a face ruined by some terrible
disease one may recognize the ghosts of features.
A gun followed by a signal from one of the war vessels, made the
_Anne Martin_ heave to. The bay was full of wrecks and dangerous to
navigation. In-shore lay the cable ship _Grappler_, sunk with all
hands, further out all the shipping that had been in the bay on that
fateful morning lay fathoms deep withered by the burning scoriae—all
save the _Roddam_, that gallant ship saved by the energy and heroism of
her commander.
Warned by a boat from the warship, Captain Stock put the _Anne Martin_
about and made for Fort de France down the coast, there to wait for
orders from the owners.
When the vessel was on her new course, he went down to see how Gaspard
was doing. He was lying just as he had been left, still staring
straight before him, not vacantly, but as if at some definite vision.
When he had looked through the marine glasses, when he had swept the
scene of destruction from smoking Pelée to the sea, the whole tragedy
was made plain to him, even to its cause. The place he loved, all that
he loved, everything that meant life to him had vanished.
His was the greatest tragedy in which a man has ever been condemned
to act. He had sailed, leaving the lovely city and the woman he loved
gazing at him until dimmed by the veil of distance, he had returned,
raised the veil, and found—this.
The immensity of it almost made it a thing impersonal without in the
least destroying the anguish of it. As he lay there in his bunk he saw
Marie and he saw himself, he saw the city. He saw the Rue Victor Hugo
and the blue sky, the Place du Fort, and the waving tamarinds; he heard
the voices of the people and the _carillon_ of the cathedral bells, and
all that seemed the scenery of a beautiful play, acted under a summer
sky in a land of impossible happiness—gone now as though it had never
been.
Marie had never been, surely she had never been, never had he met her
in the Place de la Fontaine. Those coloured streets, those gay people,
that town of pictures, those flowers, and trees, all that was an
illusion so it seemed to his mind, whilst his heart, broken, yet still
beating, told him indistinctly that all this had been, living, warm,
and real. Real as Marie now dead and lost to him forever.