Peter Stock had been hurled across the cabin, but clutched the chair in which the priest was sitting, and clung to an arm of it, pinning the other to his seat. Several moments may have passed before he regained his feet. Though badly burned, he felt pain only in his throat and lungs, from that awful, outer breath as he regained the cabin. Firebrands still screamed into the sea outside, but the Saragossa was steadying a trifle, and vague day returned. Stock was first to reach the deck, the woodwork of which was burning everywhere. He tried to shout, but his throat was closed by the hot dust. The body of a man was hanging over the railing of the bridge. It was Laird, with his face burned away. There were others fallen.
The shock of his burns and the terrible outer heat was beginning to overpower the commander when Pugh, the third officer, untouched by fire, appeared from below. In a horrid, tongueless way, Stock fired the other to act, and staggered back into the cabin. Pugh shrieked up the hands, and set to the fires and the ship's course. Out of two officers and three sailors on deck when Pelée struck, none had lived. Peter Stock owed his life to the mute and momentary appearance of Father Fontanel.
The screaming of the native-women reached his ears from the hold. Father Fontanel stared at him with the most pitiful eyes ever seen in child or woman. Black clouds were rolling out to sea. Deep thunder of a righteous source answered Pelée's lamentations. The sailors were fighting fire and carrying the dead. The thin shaken voice of Pugh came from the bridge. The engines were throbbing. Macready, Stock's personal servant, entered with a blast of heat.
"Thank God, you're alive, sir!" he said, with the little roll of Ireland on his tongue. "I was below, where better men were not.... Eight miles at sea—the long-armed divil av a mountain—what must the infightin' have been!"
Peter Stock beckoned him close and called huskily for lint and oils. Macready was back in a moment from the store-room, removed the cracked and twisted boots; cleansed the ashes from the face and ears of his chief; administered stimulant and talked incessantly.
"It's rainin' evenchooalities out.... Ha, thim burns is not so bad, though your shoes were pretty thin, an' the deck's smeared with red-hot paste. It's no bit of a geyser in a dirt-pile, sure, can tell Misther Stock whin to come and whin to go."
The cabin filled with the odor of burnt flesh as he stripped the coat from Stock's shoulder, where an incandescent pebble had fallen and burned through the cloth. Ointments and bandages were applied before the owner said:
"We must be getting pretty close in the harbor?"
This corked Macready's effervescence. Pugh had been putting the Saragossa out to sea, since he assumed control. It hadn't occurred to the little Irishman that Mr. Stock would put back into the harbor of an island freshly-exploded.
"I dunno, sir. It's hard to see for the rain."