Pere Rabeaut's interest in the venture continued to delight him. a companion was no common favor, since in the town proved that the regular guides were in of approaching the Monster now. Soronia, Pere Rabeaut, and his new servant awaited him in the Rue Rivoli. The latter was a huge Creole, of gloomy visage. They would not find any one to accompany them in the lower part of the city, he said, as the fear there was greater than ever since the Guerin disaster. In Morne , however, they would doubtless be able to , food, and other servants if necessary, for a day's trip to the craters. All of which appeared reasonable to Charter, though he wondered again at the vital interest of Pere Rabeaut, and the general tension of the starting.
The two passed down through the city, and into the crowd of the market-place, where a little drama unfolded. Peter Stock had been talking to the people about their volcano, urging them, no doubt, to take the advice of Father Fontanel and flee to Fort de France, when he had perceived M. Mondet passing in his carriage. Charter saw his friend quickly from the crowd and seize the . Despite the protestations of the driver, the capitalist drew the vehicle into view of all. His face was red with the heat and ashine with laughter and . Alarm and merriment in the native . All eyes followed the towering figure of the American who now swung open the door of the carriage and bowed low to M. Mondet.
"This, dear friends," Peter Stock announced, as one would produce a rabbit from a silk hat,—"this, you all perceive, is your little editor of Les Colonies. Is he not bright and clean and pretty? He is very fond of American humor. See how the little editor laughs!"
M. Mondet's smile was yellowish-gray and of sickly contour. His article relative to the American appealed to him now stripped of the humor with which it was a few days before, as he had composed it in the inner of inner-offices. This of crackling French and restless hands would stop at nothing. M. Mondet pictured himself being picked up for dead presently. As the blow did not fall on the instant, the sorry thought tried him that he was to be played with before being dispatched.
"This is the man who tells you that Saint Pierre is in no danger—who at those who have already gone—who inquires in his paper, 'Where on the Island could a more secure place than Saint Pierre be found in the event of an earthquake visitation?' M. Mondet advises us to flee with all dispatch to the live craters of a volcano to escape his hypothetical earthquake." Peter Stock was now holding up the Frenchman's arm, as a upraises the whip of a winning fighter. "He says there's no more from Pelée than from an old man shaking ashes out of his pipe. I proposed to my ship against M. Mondet's rolled-top desk that he was wrong, but there was a difficulty in the way. Do you not see, my friends of Saint Pierre, that, if I won the wager, I should not be able to distinguish between M. Mondet's rolled-top desk and M. Mondet's cigarette case in the ruins of the city——"
There had been a steady from the mountain.
"Ah!" Stock exclaimed after a pause, "Pelée speaks again! 'I will repay—verily, I will repay!' the Monster. Let it be so, then, friends of mine. I will turn over my little account to the big fire-eater yonder who will collect all debts. I tell you, we who tarry too long will be buying political extras and last editions in hell from this bit of a newspaper man!"
Charter laughingly turned away to avoid being seen, just as M. Mondet was chucked like a large, soft bundle into the seat of his carriage and the door slammed forcibly, whatever appertained. In any of the red-blooded zones, a foreigner who performed such antics at the expense of a portly and respected citizen would have encountered a quietus quick and blasting, but the people of Martinique are not swift to anger nor forward in .
Charter's physical energy was imperious, but the of his scalp was a pregnant warning against the of heat. There were moments in which his mind moved in a light, irresponsible fashion, as if at quick , one after another, by mad kings who dared anything, and whom no one dared refuse. Somehow his brain with striking to keep the Wyndam-Skylark conflict in the background; yet, as often as he became aware of old Vulcan muttering his agonies ahead, just so often did the reality rise that the meaning and direction of his life was gone, if he was not to see again the woman at the Palms.
Jacques, his guide, followed in silence. They crossed the Roxelane, and presently were toward Morne Rouge. Saint Pierre was just still enough now to act like a vast sounding-board. Remote voices reached them, even from the harbor-front to the left, and from shut shops everywhere.... It was nearly mid-day, when he rode out from Morne Rouge, with three more companions.
The ash-hung valley was far behind, and Charter drank deeply of the clean, east wind from the Atlantic. There was a rush of bitterness, too, because the woman was not there to share these priceless volumes of sunlit . All the of enterprise was needed now to turn the point of conflict, and force it into the background again.... They pushed through Ajoupa Boullion to the of the Falaise, the bank of which marked the trail which Jacques chose to the summit.
And now they moved upward in the midst of the old glory of Martinique. The brisk Trades blowing evenly in the heights, wiped the eastern slope of the mountain clear of stone-dust and whipped the blasts of sulphur down into the valley toward the shore. Green lakes of filled the valleys behind, and of cocoa-palms, so distant and so orderly that they looked like a city garden set with hen and chickens.... Northward, through the , the sea, steel-blue and cool. Before them rose the vast, green-clad mass of the mountain, its dim with smoke and by storm. Down in the southwest lay the ghastly , the hidden, tortured city, tranced under the cobra-head of the volcano and already laved in its poison.
The trail became very steep at two thousand feet, and this fact, together with the back-thresh of the summit , forced Charter to abandon the animals. It that two of the three later guides felt it their duty, at this point, to stay behind with the mules. A little later, when the growling from the , upturned face of the Monster suddenly arose to a roar that twisted the flesh and the senses of man, Charter looked back and found that only one native was behind, instead of two. And this one was Jacques, of the eyes. Pere Rabeaut was praised again.
for the dying Thing took hold of him now and drew him on. Charter was little conscious of fear for his life, but of a
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