CHAPTER XLV MOUNT PELéE

The good fortune that had followed him pursued also the Anne Martin, the wind held steady, the sky clear; flying, fresh weather and a sparkling sea brought her into the Caribbean; they sighted ships but always at a distance, sails that flecked the far off horizon and vanished, long wreaths of steamer smoke, phantoms speaking as vaguely of the world of men as the strips of fucus floating past on the swell.

Not only had they good weather but good temper reigned on board.

Stock, a “hard case” in the language of sailors, had taken in, with the news of Sagesse’s death, a cargo of good humour that promised to last him till they fetched Martinique.

Gaspard had his meals in the cabin, with the few words of English that he knew and a few more that he picked up daily, he could make his wants understood without the assistance of Diego; as for conversation, he did just as well with his half dozen words as with a thousand, for conversation there was none amidst the after guard of the Anne Martin.

As day followed day and Martinique crept closer to them, so did the idea of Marie grow in Gaspard’s mind, ousting the idea of Fortune and all other ideas and preoccupations. Just as, on the approach to Skeleton Island,294 the vision of treasure drove her image from his mind, now on his approach to Martinique, so did her image cast out the vision of treasure. If he thought of his wealth at all, it was only connection with her.

One night, under a sky blazing with stars, he was standing on deck watching the phosporescent gleams in the water. Captain Stock, who had just emerged from the cabin companion-way came towards him, leaned over the bulwark, took his cigar from his mouth and expectorated into the sea.

“To-morrow,” said the Captain, pointing right ahead.

Gaspard started.

“Martinique?”

“Yes.”

Then the Captain went forward, leaving Gaspard alone.

He knew they were close to the island, but he had not reckoned that they were so near as that.

To-morrow, he would see Marie to-morrow. To-morrow, he would be walking the pleasant sunlit streets of St. Pierre, he remembered the shops of the Rue Victor Hugo. O, what would he not buy her! He would take her and say, “All St. Pierre is yours—take what you please.”

Then he cast his thoughts abroad, all through St. Pierre, wandering hither and thither, and touching this person, and that, with a loving hand. Man’m Faly, Pierre-Alphonse, the girls who were Marie’s friends. Finotte, Honorine, Lys, they would all share in his jubilee, and there was something grim in the idea that the pleasantest thing he was bringing with him, the thing that would make him most welcome in the coloured city, was the news of Pierre Sagesse’s death.

He went below and turned in, and fell asleep with his mind full of these pleasant imaginings.

295 This was the season of the most heavy rains and he had been asleep scarcely an hour when the Anne Martin sailed into a rain squall, and the thunder of rain on the deck reached him in dreamland.

The scenery of his dreams at once took the form of the little Place de la Fontaine, where he had first met Marie. He was walking there with her and the sun was shining brightly, the sky was blue. Then, all at once, he lost her. She had vanished amidst the crowd of dream people who were strolling through the Place.

Then, just as on the day he first met her “clash—ripple—clash” came the carillon of the cathedral bells, but they did not bring him to Marie, clouds darkened the sky and the thunder of rain filled the air, and through it all the bells ringing on joyous, triumphant, golden, like the voice of the love that lives beyond disaster and death—Then he awoke.

It was pitch dark and the thunder of the rain on deck was ceasing.

He lay awake for an hour and then he slept again, only to repeat the dream.

A little after dawn he awoke with the bells sounding so loudly in his ears that he could have sworn they were anchored in the bay and that the cathedral was greeting them with a peal, but he knew by the movement of the ship that this was not so.

He put his hand into the upper bunk, and taking the treasure bundle from beneath the mattress, put it in his pocket. Then he came on deck.

The sun had already shewed himself just above the horizon, but the sky was clouded to southward and rain squalls dimmed the horizon.

S. S. E. and perhaps not more than ten miles away lay296 Martinique with Pelée wrapped in ragged and dirty-coloured clouds. He looked like a king whose robes had gone to tatters till the sun rising more fully, touched him with gold, and white, and pearl against the deepening blue of the sky.

Gaspard gazed awhile at this majestic sight. They had not opened the Bay of St. Pierre yet, but the Anne Martin was already altering her course and in half an hour or less they would have the bay and city full in view.

Dominica to eastward lay unclouded, haze-blue upon the morning sea, beautiful as a dream.

Gaspard, turning from the weather bulwarks on which he had been leaning, began to cut some tobacco in the palm of his hand and to fill his pipe. Whilst he was engaged in this business, he heard a hurried footstep and Skinner came running aft.

The mate darted down the companion-way to the cabin and almost immediately reappeared with a telescope; after him came Captain Stock, a pair of marine glasses in his hand.

The two men went forward to the bow. Gaspard followed them. He judged from their manner that something of interest had hove in sight and he was not wrong; leaning against the weather bulwarks a little forward of the foremast, Skinner clapped the glass to his eye and pointed it at Martinique. Stock raised his binoculars. At that moment, there was nothing to be seen, for the clouds on Pelée had fanned out and the bay of St. Pierre was veiled by sheets of sun-dazzled rain, then, against the vanishing clouds, slowly appeared the stem of a broken arch, the foot of a rainbow. It passed with the clouds and the sun struck Martinique.

The sun was high now and it struck the western coast297 over the shoulders of Pelée and the mountains; not a cloud lingered upon the island, except a cloud, a cone of smoke rising from Pelée, yet to Gaspard as he strained his eyes, it seemed that a thick grey cloud clung to Pelée from apex to base, clung to St. Pierre, veiling the coloured houses utterly from sight, and to the whole arc of the bay, hiding the trees, the triumphant palms, the angelines, the tamarinds.

“My God!” said Skinner. The hand that held the glass was shaking, his face had become bloodless under its bronze. Captain Stock, the binoculars still glued to his eyes, was talking rapidly to himself in an undertone. Gaspard, who could not see as they saw, who could not understand as they understood, could, yet, comprehend dimly the terror before him, sunlit, and facing the gem-like sea.

St. Pierre had vanished utterly, Pelée was no longer the verdant mountain towering triumphantly above the flower-like city; a cone of dismal ashes smoking to the sky, above a land of dismal ashes, that was all there was left of that lovely world. And it was all so still, so peaceful with the peace that hangs over ruins of great antiquity!

Yet, but a few weeks ago, Pelée was youthful with foliage, the canotiers were paddling in the sapphire bay, the city was waving its flags to the sun, mirroring its coloured houses in the water. The children were singing their songs and telling their Tim-Tim in the streets. The market-place was gay with life, the gardens gay with colour, the streets with laughter and over all hung the poetry of eternal summer. And now all that was with Thebes, with Nineveh—a world of ashes, desolation, silence.

Stock, the Yankee skipper, a man whom few things could move, lowered the glasses, pressed his left hand tight over his eyes as if they had been hurt by some painful light and298 then, leaning over the bulwarks, became violently sick.

Gaspard, who had seized the glasses from his hand, looked. As he looked he swayed from side to side as though the vision before him had grasped him by the shoulders and he was wrestling with it.

Skinner caught him as the glasses fell from his hand. He had fainted and Diego, with the assistance of another sailor carried him below and put him in his bunk.

Captain Stock and the mate followed, they loosed his collar and left him lying whilst they sat down at the saloon table and Diego fetched them rum.

It was British Navy rum, thirty above proof and it gave them the stiffening they required.

“It’s that cursed mountain,” said Stock at last. “She’s blown her side out—must have occurred just after we left Boston or we’d have had news of it by cable from some of the other islands, sure.”

They rose to go on deck, but before doing so they looked in to see how Gaspard was doing.

He had recovered consciousness, but he lay like a man dazed after some terrible accident. His eyes were fixed as if on some form seen only by himself and on his cheek there were tears.

They spoke to him and he heard, but he made no reply, only a movement of the hand as though to say, “Let me be.”