CHAPTER XLVI 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 old300 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.

301 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.