The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1908-10-03


ped of the humor with which it was
fraught yesterday, as he composed it in
the inner of inner Offices. This demon
of cracking French and restless hands
would stop at nothing. NJ. Mondet pic
tured himself being picked up for dead
presently. As the blow did not fall in
simultaneously, he amended the picture
with the sorry thought that he was to
be played with before being dispatched.
''This is the little man who tells you
that Saint Pierre is in no danger-who
SCOTS at those who have already gone"
Constable informed his hearers now hold
ing up the Frenchman's arm, as referee
upraises the whip of a winning fighter.
HE says there is no more peril from
Pelee than from an old man shaking ashes
out of his pipe. Yesterday proposed to
wager my ship against NJ. Mondet's rolled
top desk that he was wrong, but there
was a difficulty in the way. Do you not
see, dear friends. that if won the wager,
l should not be able to distinguish be-
tween NJ. Mondet's rolled-top desk and
NJ. Mondet's cigarette case in the ruins of
Saint Pierre? You would not think that
such a small white person could contain
so much poison"
There had been steady growing from
the mountain.
'Pelee speaks again! Ugh, get in
there !"
Constable's irritation against the entire
tribe of editorial opinion breeders must
have found an instant vent at last. NJ.
Mondet was chucked like large soft
bundle into the seat of his carriage and
the door slammed forcibly, corking the
walls of his wrath. In any of the red
blooded zones, a stranger who performed
such antics at the expense of portly
and respected citizen would have encoun-
tered a quietus quick and blasting. but
the people of Martinique are not swift to
anger nor forward at reprisals.
"Come!" Constable yelled, in voice
which jerked up his hearers. "Who has
use for my offer? Who goes to Fort de
France?"
A few came forward, perhaps a dozen
in all, out of the fifty or sixty who had
listened. Half in anger, half in admira-
ton, which he did not seek to understand,
he ran his eye last time over the dusty,
haggard, stifed crowd which he had failed
to move.
From their eyes, sullen, startled and
pitiful, he glanced beyond to the place
where old Vulcan lay, muttering his ag-
onies. The sight completed the circuit of
rending voltage, made him think of Lara.
With furious zeal he grappled the work
at hand, forced his way out of the crowd,
crossed the Roxelane and hurried toward
the Hotel des Palms. His physical en-
ergy was imperious, but the numbness of
his scalp was pregnant warning against
the perils of heat. The city was silent
enough to act like vast sounding board.
Voices reached him from far behind, from
the harbor front to the left, from shut
shops and houses everywhere. At the
hotel after much difficulty, he procured
guides and small outfit for the journey
to the summit of the mountain. 1t was
after midday when the party rode into
Morne Rouge. The ash-hung valley was
behind, and Constable drank deeply of
the clean east wind from the Atlantic.
There was a rush of bitterness, too, be-
cause Lara was not sharing the priceless
volumes of sun-lit vitality. All the inn
petus of his mad enterprise was needed
now to turn the point of bereavement,
and force it into the background again.
The party pushed through Ajoupa Bouil-
lion to the gorge of the Falaise, the north
ward bank of which marked the chosen
trail to the summit
And now they moved upward in the
midst of the old glory of Martinique The
| ", To- h. ho;-
wiped the eastern slope of the mountain
clear of stone-dust and whipped the blast
of sulphur down into the valley toward
the shore. Green lakes of cane filled the
valleys behind, and groves of cocoa-palms,
so distant and so orderly that they looked
like a city garden set with hen and
chickens.
Northward, through the riffs, glistened
the sea, steel-blue and cool. Before them
arose the huge, green-clad mass of the
mountain, its corona dim with smoke and
dashed by storm. Down in the southwest
lay the CHASTITY pail, the hidden, tortured
city, tranced under the cobra-head of the
monster, and already laved in its poison
The trail became very steep at two
thousand feet, and this fact, together with
ance, forced Constable to abandon the
animals. 1t transpired that four of the
seven natives felt it their duty. at this
| point, to stay behind with the mules. A
little later, when the growing from the
prone upturned face of the great beast
suddenly arose to a roar that twisted the
| flesh and outraged the senses of man,
| the American looked back and found that
| only one native was faltering behind, in
stead of three.
Fascination for the dying Thing took
hold of him now, and drew him on Con-
stable was conscious of no fear for his
life, but of fixed terror lest he should
prove physically unable to go on to the
end. He found himself tearing up
handkerchief and stufing the shres;s in
his ears, to deaden the horrid vibrations
With the linen remaining, he filled his
mouth, shutting his jaws together upon it,
! as the wheels of wagon are blocked on
an incline.
The titanic disorder placated his own.
He revelled in it, unconscious of passing
time. He did not realize that he was
l l. l.-A u Ill E