"Not in those words, Miss Wyndam, but he seemed to be a bit afraid of me—kept watching my hands and pulling at his cravat. When he finally showed me to the door, his was the delicacy of one who handles dynamite. At all events, I'm waiting for his next issue to see if my call 'took!' I really do wish that a lot of these people would forget their clothes, chickens, coals, coins, and all such, for a few days and camp somewhere between here and Fort de France."
Paula was thrilled by the American's zeal. He was not content, now that he had begun, to deal with boatloads, but wanted to stir the city. She would have given much to know the exact part of Father Fontanel in this rousing ardor of her new friend. "And you really think Pelée may not hold out?" she asked.
"I'm not a monomaniac—at least, not yet," he replied, and his voice suggested a certain pent savagery in his brain. "Call it an experiment that I'm sufficiently interested in to finance. The ways of volcanoes are past the previsions of men. I'd like to get a lot of folks out of the fire-zone, until Pelée is cool—or a billion tons lighter. This ordered-up-to-Nineveh business is out of my line, but it's absorbing. I don't say that Pelée will blow his head off this week or this millennium, but I do say that there are vaults of explosives in that monster, the smallest of which could make this city look like a leper's corpse upon the beach. I say that the internal fires are burning high; that they're already playing about the vital cap; that Pelée has already sprung several leaks, and that the same force which lifted this cheerful archipelago from the depths of the sea is pressing against the craters at this moment. I say that Vesuvius warned before he broke; that Krakatoa warned and then struck; that down the ages these safety valves scattered over the face of the earth have mercifully joggled before giving way; that Pelée is joggling now."
"If M. Mondet would write just that," Paula said softly, "I think you would have your exodus."
She sought her room shortly afterward. Pelée's moods had been variable that day. The north had been obscured by a fresh fog in the afternoon. The ash and sulphur fumes, cruel to the lungs on the breezy Morne, six miles from the craters, gave her an intimation of the anguish of the people in the intervening depression where the city lay. The twilight had brought ease again and a ten-minute shower, so there was real freshness in the early evening. Rippling waves of merriment reached her from the darky quarters, as the young men from the fields came forth to bathe in the sea. Never before was the volatile tropic soul so strongly evidenced for her understanding, as in that glad hour of reaction—simple hearts to glow at little things, whose swift tragedies come and go like blighting winds which, though they may slay, leave no wound; instant to gladden in the groves of serenity, when a black cloud has blown by.
Her mind was sleepless.... Once, long after midnight, when she fell into a doze, it was only to be awakened by a dream of a garrote upon her throat. The ash had thickened again, and the air was acrid. The hours seemed to fall asleep in passing. From her balcony she peered into the dead-black of the North where Pelée rumbled at intervals. Back in the south, the blurred moon impended with an evil light. A faint wailing of children reached her from the servants' cabins. The sense of isolation was dreadful for a moment. It seemed to rest entirely with her that time passed at all; that she must grapple with each moment and fight it back into the past....
The Panther, a fast ship with New York mail, was due to call at Saint Pierre within forty-eight hours. Paula, to hasten the passing of time, determined to take the little steamer over to Fort de France for a day, if morning ever came. She must have slept an hour after this decision, for she was unconscious of the transition from darkness to the parched and brilliant dawn which roused her tired eyes. The glass showed her a pallid face, darkly-lined.
The blinding light from the East changed the dew to steam before it touched the ground. The more delicate blossoms in the gardens withered in that hectic burning before the sun was an hour high. Driving down through the city to the Landing she found the Rue Victor Hugo almost deserted. The porteuses were gone from the highway; all doors were tightly shut, strangely marring the tropical effect; broken window-panes were stuffed with cloths to keep out the vitiated air. The tough little island mules (many in their panniers with no one leading), scarcely moved, and hugged the east walls for shade. From the by-ways she imagined the smell of death.
"Hottest morning Saint Pierre has known for years," the captain said, as she boarded the little steamer which hurriedly put off.... Night had fallen (and there had been little to break the misery of Saint Pierre that day), when she reached the Hotel once more. She retired immediately after dinner to take advantage of a fresh, south wind which came with the dark and promised to make sleep possible.... Rumblings from the volcano awoke her just before dawn. Glancing out over the harbor, she perceived the lights of a big liner lying near the Saragossa. There was no sleep after this discovery, since she felt this must be the Panther with letters from New York. According to her schedule, the steamer had cleared from Manhattan a full week after the Fruitlands. Paula breakfasted early, and inquired at the desk how soon the mails would be distributed.