THE MORNING OF DOOM
"Ay," said the first mate to Stuart, as they paced the bridge on the
little steamer which was taking the boy to Martinique, "yonder little
island is St. Lucia, maybe the most beautiful of the West Indies, though
it isn't safe for folks to wander around much there."
"Why?" asked Stuart in surprise, "are the negroes mutinous?"
"No, bless ye!" the mate gave a short laugh. "Mighty nice folks in St.
Lucia, though Castries, the capital, is a great fever town. It isn't the
folks that are dangerous. Snakes, my bully boy, snakes! It's the home of
the fer-de-lance."
"The Yellow Viper?" queried Stuart.
"The same. An' the name's a good one. It's more viperous than any other
snake of the viper bunch, an' its disposition is mean and yellow right
through. Ever see one?"
"No," said Stuart, "I haven't. I heard there were some in Trinidad, and
there have been a few reported in Cuba. But I guess they're rare there.
What do they look like?"
The mate spat freely over the side, while he gathered his powers for a
description.
"If ye can think of a fish that's been a long time dead," he suggested,
"an' has turned a sort of phosphorescent brown-yellow in decayin', ye'll
have a general idea of the color. The head, like all the vipers, is low,
flat an' triangle-shaped. The eye is a bright orange color, an' so
shinin' that flashes from it look like sparks of red-yellow fire. I've
never seen them at night, but folks who have, say that in the dark the
eyes look like glowin' charcoal.
"If I had to take a walk through the St. Lucia woods, I'd put on armor,
I would! Why, any minute, something you take for a branch, a knot of
liana, a clump of fruit, a hangin' air-plant, may take life an' strike.
An' that's all ye'll ever know in this world."
"There's no cure for it?"
"None. A little while after a fer-de-lance strikes, ye're as dead as if
you'd been dropped in mid-Atlantic, with a shot tied to your feet."
"Maybe I'm just as glad I'm not going to land there," said Stuart,
"though I guess it's one of the most famous fighting spots of the world.
I read once that for a hundred and fifty years there was never a year
without a battle on that island. Seven times it was held by the English
and seven times by the French."
"Like enough," replied the mate. "It's owned by the English now, but
Castries is a French town, through and through. But Castries sticks in
my memory for a reason which means more to a deep-water sailor than any
land fightin'. We were lyin' in the harbor at Castries when the _Roddam_
came in, ay, more'n twenty years ago."
"What was the _Roddam_?" queried Stuart, scenting a story.
"Have ye forgotten," answered the mate in a return query, "or didn't ye
ever know? Let me tell ye what the _Roddam_ was!"
"We were lyin' right over there, in Castries Harbor, dischargin'
coal--which was carried down by negro women in baskets on their
heads--when we saw creep round the headland of Vigie, where you can see
the old barracks from here, the shape of a steamer. She came slowly,
like some wounded an' crippled critter. Clear across the bay we could
hear her screw creakin,' an' her engines clankin' like they were all
poundin' to pieces. What a sight she was! We looked at her, struck still
ourselves an' unable to speak. They talk of a Phantom Ship, but if ever
anything looked like a Phantom Steamer, the _Roddam_ was that one.
"From funnel-rim to water-line she was grey an' ghost-like, lookin' like
a boat seen in an ugly dream. Every scrap o' paint had been burned from
her sides, or else was hangin' down from the bare iron like flaps o'
skin. She had been flayed alive, an' she showed it. Some of her derricks
were gone, the ropes charred an' the wires endin' in blobs o' melted
metal. The planks of her chart-house were blackened. Her ventilators had
crumpled into masses without any shape.
"Laborin' like a critter in pain, she managed to make shallow water, an'
a rattle o' chain told o' the droppin' o' the anchor. After that,
nothin'! There wasn't a sign o' life aboard.
"The harbor folks pulled out to take a look at the craft. As they came
near, the smell o' fire an' sulphur met them. A hush, like death, seemed
to hang over her. The colored boatmen quit rowin', but the harbor-master
forced them on. Her ladder was still down. The harbor-master climbed
aboard.
"On deck, nothin' moved. The harbor-master stepped down into grey ashes,
sinkin' above his knee. With a scream he drew back. The ashes were hot,
almost white-hot, below. The light surface ash flew up about him and
half-suffocated him. His boot half-burned from his foot and chokin', the
harbor-master staggered back to the rail for air.
"No life was to be seen, nothin' but piles o' grey ash, heaped in
mounds. Ash was everywhere. From it rose a quivering heat, smellin' o'
sulphur an' the Pit.
"Yet everyone couldn't be dead on this ghost-ship, for someone must ha'
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
Pelée, 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 ashore, 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 Pelée and the destruction of the town of St.
Pierre, in 1902, over 30,000 people being killed in the space 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 Rivière 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 Pelée 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 passing of
carriages is no longer heard in the streets. The wheels are muffled.
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 hoar 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, Pelée 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 Pelée had been hoarse 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 débris 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 Basse-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 Pelée 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 mass 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 muffled 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 bass 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, principally, 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. Massive
machinery was crumpled up as if it had been clutched in a titanic
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 pass 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 Pelée 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 shore. 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, encompassed 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."
Two of the inhabitants, and two only, escaped; one a negro prisoner, who
was not found until three days later, burned half to death in his prison
cell; and one, a shoemaker, who, by some strange eddy in the all-killing
gas, and who was on the very edge of the track of destruction, fled,
though others fell dead on every side of him.
A second eruption, coupled with an earthquake, on May 20, completed the
wreckage of the buildings. This outburst was even more violent than the
first. There was no loss of life, for no one was left to slay.
Five years later, Sir Frederick Treves visited St. Pierre. "Along the
whole stretch of the bay," he writes, "there is not one living figure to
be seen, not one sign of human life, not even a poor hut, nor grazing
cattle.... A generous growth of jungle has spread over the place in
these five years. Rank bushes, and even small trees, make a thicket
along some of the less traversed ways.... Over some of the houses
luxuriant creepers have spread, while long grass, ferns and forest
flowers have filled up many a court and modest lane."
Twelve years later, a visitor to St. Pierre found a small wooden pier
erected. A tiny hotel had been built. Huts were clustering under the
ruins. Several parties were at work clearing away the ruins, but slowly,
for the government of the colony would not assist in the work,
believing that the region was unsafe. At the time of this visit, Mont
Pelée was still smoking.
This was the ruined city which Stuart was going to see. On board the
steamer were the two or three books which tell the story of the great
eruption, and the boy filled his brain full of the terrible story that
he might better feel the great adventure that the next day should bring
him.
The steamer reached Fort-de-France in the evening, and the boy found the
town, though ill-lighted, gay. A band was playing in the Plaza, not far
from the landing place and most of the shops were still open. Morning
showed an even brighter Fort-de-France, for, though when St. Pierre was
in its glory, Fort-de-France was the lesser town, the capital now is the
center of the commercial prosperity of the island. For this, however,
Stuart had little regard. Sunrise found him on the little steamer which
leaves daily for St. Pierre.
The journey was not long, three hours along a coast of steep cliffs with
verdant mountains above. Small fishing hamlets, half-hidden behind
coco-nut palms, appeared in every cove. The steamer passed Carbet, that
town on the edge of the great eruptive flood, which had its own
death-list, and they turned the point of land into the harbor of St.
Pierre.
Before the boy's eyes rose the Mountain of Destruction, sullen, twisted,
wrinkled and still menacing, not all silent yet. The hills around were
green, and verdure spread over the country once deep in volcanic ash.
But Mont Pelée was brown and bald still.
Nineteen years had passed since the eruption, but St. Pierre had not
recovered. At first sight, from the sea, the town gave a slight
impression of being rebuilt. But this was only the strange combination
of old ruins and modern fishing huts. The handsome stone wharves still
stood, but no vessels lay beside them.
The little steamer slowed and tied up at a tiny wooden pier. A statue,
symbolical of St. Pierre in her agony, had been erected on the end of
the pier. The boy landed, and walked slowly along the frail wooden
structure, to take in the scene as it presented itself to him.
Alas, for St. Pierre! As Lafcadio Hearn described it--"the quaint,
whimsical, wonderfully colored little town, the sweetest, queerest,
darlingest little city in the Antilles.... Walls are lemon color, quaint
balconies and lattices are green. Palm trees rise from courts and
gardens into the warm blue sky, indescribably blue, that appears almost
to touch the feathery heads of them. And all things within and without
the yellow vista are steeped in a sunshine electrically white, in a
radiance so powerful that it lends even to the pavement of basalt the
glitter of silver ore.
"Everywhere rushes mountain water--cool and crystal--clear, washing the
streets; from time to time you come to some public fountain flinging a
silvery column to the sun.... And often you will note, in the course of
a walk, little drinking fountains contrived in the angle of a building,
or in the thick walls bordering the bulwarks or enclosing public
squares; glittering threads of water spurting through lion-lips of
stone."
Alas for St. Pierre!
Above the pier but one street had been partly restored, and, at every
gap, the boy's gaze encountered gray ruins. The ash, poured out by the
mountain in its vast upheaval, has made a rich soil. To Stuart's eyes,
the town was a town of dreams, of great stone staircases that led to
nowhere, of high archways that gave upon a waste. The entrance hall of
the great Cathedral, once one of the finest in the West Indies, still
leads to the high altar, but that finds its home in a little wooden
structure with a tin roof, shrinking in what was once a corner of the
apse.
Built as a lean-to in the corner of what had once been a small, but
strongly-built house was a store, a very small store, outside the door
of which a crippled negro was sitting. Thinking that this might be one
of the old-timers of St. Pierre, Stuart stopped and bought a small
trinket, partly as a memento, partly as a means of getting into
conversation.
"But yes, Monsieur," answered the storekeeper, "it was my wife and I--we
escaped. My wife, she had been sent into Morne Rouge, that very morning,
with a message from her mistress. Me, I was working on the road, not
more than a mile away. I saw nothing of it, Monsieur. About half-past
seven that morning (twenty-two minutes, therefore, before the final
eruption) a shower of stones fell where I was working. One fell on my
back, and left me crippled, as you see. But my four children, ah!
Monsieur, they sleep here, somewhere!"
He waved his hand toward the riot of ruin and foliage which now marks
the city which once prided itself on being called "the gayest little
city in the West Indies."
"Yet you have come back!" exclaimed Stuart.
"But yes, Monsieur, what would you? It pleased God that I should be born
here, that my children should be taken away from me here; and, maybe,
that I should die here, too."
"You are not afraid that Mont Pelée will begin again?"
The negro shrugged his shoulders.
"It is my home, Monsieur," he said simply. "Better a home which is sad
than the place of a stranger which is gay. But we hope, Monsieur, that
some day the government of Martinique will accept a parole of good
conduct from the Great Eater of Lives"--he pointed to Mont Pelée--"and
give us back our town again."
Next morning, studying the life of the little town, Stuart found that
many others shared the view of the crippled negro. The little
market-place on the Place Bertin, though lacking any shelter from
pouring rain or blazing sun, was crowded with three or four hundred
market women. Daily the little steamer takes a cargo from St. Pierre,
for the ash from the volcano has enriched the soil, and the planters are
growing wealthy. There are many more little houses and thatched huts
tucked into corners of the ruins than appear at first sight, and a hotel
has been built for the tourists who visit the strange spot.
The crater in Mont Pelée is silent now; the great vent which hurled
white-hot rocks, incandescent dust and mephitic gases, is now covered
with a thick green shrubbery, only here and there do small smoke-holes
emit a light sulphurous vapor; but the great mountain, treeless,
wrinkled, implacable, seemed to Stuart to throw a solemn shadow of
threat upon the town. The secret of St. Pierre, as Stuart wrote to his
paper, "lies in the hope of its inhabitants, but its real future lies in
the parole of good conduct from the Great Eater of Human Lives, Mont
Pelée."