rent? Because, Young Senor, as soon as land is cultivated, the
government puts a high tax on it. The Rats punish the farmers for
improving the country.

"What happens? I can tell you what happens in this province of Oriente.
In the province of Camaguey, too. The small farmer finds a piece of good
land. He settles on it--what you Americans call 'squatting'--and, if he
is wise, he says nothing to the owner. Perhaps he will not be found out
for a year or two, perhaps more, but, when he is found, he must pay a
big rent and the owner a big tax. Perhaps the guarijo cannot pay. Then
he must go away.

"Generally he goes. In some other corner, hidden away, he finds another
piece of land. He squats on that, too, hoping that the tax-Rats may not
find him. He does not cultivate much land, for he may be driven off next
day. He does not build a decent house, for he may have to abandon it
before the week's end.

"Suppose he does really wish to rent land, build a house and have a
small plantation, and is willing to pay the rent, however high it be.
Why then, Young Senor, he will learn that it will be many years before
he finds out whether the man to whom he is paying the rent is really the
owner of the land. And if he wishes to buy, it is worse than a lottery.
In this part of the island no surveys have been made--except a circular
survey with no edges marked--and land titles are all confused. Then the
lawyer-Rats thrive."

"It's not like that near Havana," put in Stuart.

"Havana is not Cuba. Only three kinds of people live in Havana: the
Rats, the tourists, and the people who live off the Rats and the
tourists. They spend, and Cuba suffers.

"For the land tax, Senor, is not all! Nearly all the money that the
government spends--that the Rats waste--comes from the tax on imports.
No grain is grown in Cuba, and there is no clothing industry. All our
food and all our clothes are imported, and it is the guarijo who, at
the last, must pay that tax. Young Senor, did you know that, per head of
population, the poor Cuban is taxed for the necessities of life imported
into this island three and a half times as much as the rich American is
taxed for the goods entering the United States?

"Even that is not all. Here, in Cuba, we grow sugar, tobacco,
pineapples, and citrus fruit, like oranges, grapefruit and lemons. Does
America, which made us a republic, help us? No, Young Senor, it hurts
us, hinders us, cripples us. In Hawaii, in Porto Rico, in the southern
part of the United States, live our sugar, tobacco and fruit
competitors. Their products enter American markets without tax. Ours are
taxed. What happens? Cuba, one of the most fertile islands of the West
Indies is poor. The Cuban cultivator, who is willing to be a hard
worker, gives up the fight in disgust and either tries in some way to
get the dollars from the Americans who come here, or else he helps to
ruin his country by getting a political job."

Stuart, listening carefully to this criticism, noticed in Vellano's
voice a note of hatred whenever he used the word "American." Connecting
this with his own suspicion that Cecil was head of a conspiracy against
the United States and that this supposed fisherman was evidently the
Englishman's tool, he asked, casually:

"Then you don't think that the United States did a good thing in
freeing Cuba from Spain?" he hazarded.

To the boy's surprise, his companion burst out approvingly.

"Yes, yes, a magnificent thing! But they did not know it, and they did
not know why! The Americans thought they were championing an oppressed
people struggling for justice. Nothing of the sort. They took the side
of one party struggling for jobs against another party struggling for
jobs. But the result was magnificent. Under the last American Military
Governor, Leonard Wood, Cuba advanced more in two years than she had in
two centuries. When the Americans went away, though, it was worse than
if they had never come. Cubans did not make Cuba a republic, Americans
made Cuba a republic and then abandoned us. Of course, confusion
followed. And in the revolution of 1906 and other revolutions, the
Americans meddled, and yet did nothing. It is idle to deny that American
influence is strong here! But what does it amount to? We are neither
really free, nor really possessed."

"But what do you want?" queried Stuart. "I don't seem to understand. You
don't want to be a possession of Spain, you don't want to be an American
colony, and you don't want to be a republic. What do you want?"

"Do I know?" came the vehement reply. "Does anyone in Cuba know? Does
anyone, anywhere, know? Remember, Young Senor, the Cuban guarijo does
not feel himself to be a citizen of Cuba, as an American farmer feels
himself a citizen of the United States. He has been brought up under
Spanish rule, and is, himself, Spanish in feeling.

"What does he know about a republic? Unless he can get a political job
for himself, unless he sees the chance to be a Rat, he cares nothing
about politics, but he will fight, at any time, under any cause, for any
leader who will promise him a bigger price for his sugar, his tobacco or
his fruit. The World War helped him, for sugar was worth gold. But
now--if the Cuban wishes to say anything to America, he must do it
through the Sugar Trust, the Tobacco Trust or the Fruit Trust.

"What!" Vellano flamed out, "The United States will not answer us when
we pray, nor listen when we speak? Then we will make her hear!"

Upon which, suddenly realizing that in this direct threat he might have
said too much, Vellano dropped the subject. Nothing that Stuart could
suggest would tempt him to say anything more.

The boy had been brought up in Cuba, and, though he had never been in
this eastern part of the island, he knew that a great deal of what his
companion had said was true. At the same time, he realized that Vellano
had not done justice to the modern improvements in Cuba, to the
extension of the railroads, the building of highways, the improvement of
port facilities, the establishment of sugar refineries, the spread of
foreign agricultural colonies, the improved sanitation and water supply
and the development of the island under foreign capital. It was as
foolish, Stuart realized, for Vellano to judge all Cuba from the wild
forest-land of Oriente as it is for the casual tourist to judge the
whole of Cuba from the casinos of Havana.

Cuba is not small. Averaging the width of the State of New Jersey, it
stretches as far as the distance from New York to Indianapolis. Its
eastern and western ends are entirely different. Originally they were
two islands, now joined by a low plain caused by the rising of the
sea-bottom.

Climate, soil and the character of the people vary extremely in the
several provinces. High mountains alternate with low plains, dense
tropical forests are bordered by wastes and desert palm-barrens. Eighty
per cent of the population are Cubans--which mean Spanish and negro
half-breeds with a touch of Indian blood, and of all shades of
color--fifteen per cent Spanish and less than two per cent American.

Foreign colonies are numerous, though small. They are to be found in all
the provinces, and exhibit these same extremes. About one-half have sunk
to a desolation of misery and ruin, one-half have risen to success. As
Stuart once remembered his father having said:

"I will never advise an American, with small capital, to come to Cuba.
If he will devote the same amount of work to a piece of land in the
United States that he will have to give to the land here, he will be
more prosperous, for what he may lose in the lesser fertility of the
land, he will gain by the nearness of the market. There are scores of
derelicts in this island who would have led happy and useful lives in
the United States."

Crossing the hills--by a trail which threatened to shake the cart to
pieces at every jolt--the two travelers reached Palenquito, and thence
descended by a comparatively good road to Vesa Grande and on to Rio
Seco. A mile or so out of the town, Stuart saw the gleaming lines of the
railway and realized that this was to be the end of the long drive.

"I have no money for a trip to Havana!" he remarked.

"That is a pity," answered Vellano gravely, who, since he had searched
the boy's pockets, knew that only a few dollars were to be found
therein, "but Senor Cecil said you were to go to Havana. Therefore, you
will go."

There seemed no reply to this, but Stuart noted that, at the station,
the supposed fisherman produced money enough for two tickets.

"Are you coming, too?" queried Stuart, in surprise.

"Senor Cecil said that I was to see that you did not get lost on the
way," came the quiet answer.

Certainly, Stuart thought, the Englishman's word was a word of power.

From Rio Seco, the train passed at first through heavy tropical forests,
such as those in the depths of which Vellano and Stuart had just driven,
but these were thinned near the railroad by lumbering operations. The
main line was joined a little distance west of Guantanamo. Thence they
traveled over the high plateau land of Central Oriente and Camaguey, on
which many foreign colonies have settled, the train only occasionally
touching the woeful palm barrens which stretch down from the northern
coast.

Vellano, who seemed singularly well informed, kept up a running fire of
comment all the way, most of his utterances being colored by a
resentment of existing conditions--for which he blamed the United
States--and containing a vague hint of some great change to come.

At Ciego de Avila, where a stay of a couple of hours was made, Stuart's
companion pointed out the famous _trocha_ or military barrier which had
been erected by the Spaniards as a protection against the movements of
Cuban insurgents, and which ran straight across the whole island.

This barrier was a clearing, half-a-mile wide; a narrow-gauge railway
ran along its entire length, as did also a high barbed-wire fence. Every
two-thirds of a mile, small stone forts had been built. Each of these
was twenty feet square, with a corrugated iron tower above, equipped
with a powerful searchlight. The forts themselves were pierced with
loopholes for rifle fire and the only entrance was by a door twelve feet
above ground, impossible of entrance after the ladder had been drawn up
from within. The forts were connected by a telephone line. They have all
fallen into ruins and are half swallowed up by the jungle, while the
half mile clearing is being turned into small sugar plantations.

Beyond Ciego, the train passed again through a zone of tropical forest
lands and then dropped into the level plains of Santa Clara, the center
of the sugar industry of Cuba. From there it bore northward toward
Matanzas, through a belt of bristling pineapple fields.

One station before arriving at Havana, Stuart's companion, who showed
signs of fatigue--which were not surprising since he had wakened at
every stop that the train had made during the night to see that the boy
did not get off--prepared to alight.

"You're not going on to Havana?" queried Stuart.

"I shall step off the train here after it has started," replied Vellano.
"There will be no opportunity for you to do the same until the train
stops at the capital. Senor Cecil said only that I was to see that you
did not get lost on the way. He said nothing about what you should do in
Havana. Possibly he has plans of his own."

The train began to move.

"Adios, Young Senor," quoth the supposed fisherman, and dropped off the
train.

During the long train trip, and especially when lying awake in his
berth, Stuart had plenty of time to recall the events of the four days
since he first met Manuel on the streets of Cap Haitien and had offered
himself as a guide to the Citadel of the Black Emperor. Much had passed
since then, and this period of inaction gave the boy time to view the
events in their proper perspective.

The more he thought of them, the more serious they appeared and the more
Stuart became convinced that the plot was directed against United States
authority in Haiti. Perhaps, also, it would attack American commercial
interests in Cuba. As the train approached Havana, Stuart worked himself
up into a fever of anxiety, and, the instant the train stopped, he
dashed out of the carriage and into the streets feeling that he, and he
alone, could save the United States from an international tragedy.

CHAPTER VII

A NOSE FOR NEWS

Through the maze of the older streets of Havana, with their two-story
houses plastered and colored in gay tints, Stuart rushed, regardlessly.
He knew Havana, but, even if he had not known it, the boy's whole soul
was set on getting the ear of the United States Consul. It was not until
he was almost at the door of the consulate that his promise to Cecil
recurred to him as a reminder that he must be watchful how he spoke.

At the door of the consulate, however, he found difficulty of admission.
This was to be expected. His appearance was unprepossessing. He was
still attired in the ragged clothes tied up with string, and the aged
boots he had got Leon to procure for him, to complete his disguise as a
Haitian boy. Moreover, while the soap-weed wash at the fisherman's hut
had whitened his skin, his face and hands still retained a smoky pallor
which would take some time to wear off.

In order to gain admission at all, Stuart was compelled to give some
hint as to his reasons for wishing to see the consul, and, as he did not
wish to divulge anything of importance to the clerk, his explanation
sounded as extravagant as it was vague. His father's name would have
helped him, but Stuart did not feel justified in using it. For all he
knew, his father might have reasons for not wishing to be known as
conducting any such investigations. This compulsion of reserve confused
the lad, and it was not surprising that the clerk went into the
vice-consul's office with the remark:

"There's a ragged boy out here, who passes for white, with some
wild-eyed story he says he has to tell you."

"I suppose I've got to see him," said the harassed official. "Send him
in!"

This introduction naturally prejudiced the vice-consul against his
visitor, and Stuart's appearance did not call for confidence. Moreover,
the boy's manner was against him. He was excited and resentful over his
brusque treatment by the clerk. Boy-like, he exaggerated his own
importance. He was bursting with his subject.

In his embarrassed eagerness to capture the vice-consul's attention and
to offset the unhappy first impression of his appearance, Stuart blurted
out an incoherent story about secret meetings, and buried treasure and
conspiracy, and plots in Haiti, all mixed together. His patriotic
utterances, though absolutely sincere, rang with a note of insincerity
to an official to whom the letters "U. S." were not the "open sesame" of
liberty, but endless repetitions of his daily routine.

"What wild-cat yarn is this!" came the interrupting remark.

Stuart stopped, hesitated and looked bewildered. It had not occurred to
him that the consular official would not be as excited as himself. He
spluttered exclamations.

"There's a Haitian, and a Cuban, and an Englishman in a conspiracy
against the United States! And they meet in a haunted citadel! And one
said I was to kill the other! And I got away in a parachute. And they're
going to do something, revolution, I believe, and----"

Undoubtedly, if the vice-consul had been willing to listen, and patient
enough to calm the boy's excitement and unravel the story, its value
would have been apparent. But his skeptical manner only threw Stuart
more off his balance. The vice-consul was, by temperament, a man of
routine, an efficient official but lacking in imagination. Besides, it
was almost the end of office hours, and the day had been hot and sultry.
He was only half-willing to listen.

"Tell your story, straight, from the beginning," he snapped.

Stuart tried to collect himself a little.

"It was the night of the Full Moon," he began, dramatically. "There was
a voodoo dance, and the tom-tom began to beat, and----"

This was too much!

"You've been seeing too many movies, or reading dime-novel trash," the
official flung back. "Besides, this isn't the place to come to. Go and
tell your troubles to the consul at Port-au-Prince."

He rang to have the boy shown out.

The next visitor to the vice-consul, who had been cooling his heels in
the outer office while Stuart was vainly endeavoring to tell his story,
was the Special Correspondent of a New York paper. It was his habit to
drop in from time to time to see the vice-consul and to get the latest
official news to be cabled to his paper.

"I wish you'd been here half-an-hour ago, Dinville, and saved me from
having to listen to a blood-and-thunder yarn about pirates and plots and
revolutions and the deuce knows what!" the official exclaimed
petulantly.

"From that kid who just went out?" queried the newspaper man casually,
nosing a story, but not wanting to seem too eager.

"Yes, the little idiot! You'd think, from the way he talked, that the
West Indies was just about ready to blow up!"

His bile thus temporarily relieved, the official turned to the matter in
hand, and proceeded to give out such items of happenings at the
consulate as would be of interest to the general public.

The newspaper man made his stay as brief as he decently could. He wanted
to trace that boy. Finding out from the clerk that the boy had come in
from the east by train, and, having noted for himself that the lad was
in rags, the Special Correspondent--an old-time New York reporter--felt
sure that the holder of the story must be hungry and that he did not
have much money. Accordingly, he searched the nearest two or three cheap
restaurants, and, sure enough, found Stuart in the third one he entered.

Ordering a cup of coffee and some pastry, the reporter seated himself at
Stuart's table and deftly got into conversation with him. Inventing, for
the moment, a piece of news which would turn the topic to Haiti,
Dinville succeeding in making the boy tell him, as though by accident,
that he had recently been in Haiti.

"So!" exclaimed the reporter. "Well, you seem to be a pretty keen
observer. What did you think of things in Haiti when you left?"

Stuart was flattered--as what boy would not have been--by this
suggestion that his political opinions were of importance, and he gave
himself all the airs of a grown-up, as he voiced his ideas. Many of them
were of real value, for, unconsciously, Stuart was quoting from the
material he had found in his father's papers, when he had rescued them
from Hippolyte.

Dinville led him on, cautiously, tickling his vanity the while, and,
before the meal was over, Stuart felt that he had found a friend. He
accepted an invitation to go up to the news office, so that his recently
made acquaintance might take some notes of his ideas.

The news-gatherer had not been a reporter for nothing, and, before ten
minutes had passed Stuart suddenly realized that he was on the verge of
telling the entire story, even to those things which he knew must be
held back. Cecil's warning recurred to him, and he pulled up short.

"I guess I hadn't better say any more," he declared, suddenly, and
wondered how much he had betrayed himself into telling.

Persuasion and further flattery failed, and the newspaper man saw that
he must change his tactics.

"You were willing enough to talk to the vice-consul," he suggested.

"Yes, but I wasn't going to tell him everything, either," the boy
retorted.

"You're not afraid to?"

Stuart's square chin protruded in its aggressive fashion.

"Afraid!" he declared contemptuously. Then he paused, and continued,
more slowly, "Well, in a way, maybe I am afraid. I don't know all I've
got hold of. Why--it might sure enough bring on War!"

Once on his guard, Stuart was as unyielding as granite. He feared he had
said too much already. The reporter, shrewdly, suggested that some of
Stuart's political ideas might be saleable newspaper material, handed
him a pencil and some copy-paper.

The boy, again flattered by this subtle suggestion that he was a
natural-born writer, covered sheet after sheet of the paper. Dinville
read it, corrected a few minor mistakes here and there, counted the
words, and taking some money from his pocket, counted out a couple of
bills and pushed them over to the boy.

"What's this for?" asked Stuart.

"For the story!" answered the reporter in well-simulated surprise.
"Regular space rates, six dollars a column. I'm not allowed to give
more, if that's what you mean."

"Oh, no!" was the surprised reply. "I just meant--I was ready to do that
for nothing."

"What for?" replied his new friend. "Why shouldn't you be paid for it,
just as well as anyone else? Come in tomorrow, maybe we can dope out
some other story together."

A little more urging satisfied the rest of Stuart's scruples and he
walked out from the office into the streets of Havana tingling with
pleasure to his very toes. This was the first money he had ever earned
and it fired him with enthusiasm to become a writer.

As soon as he had left, the reporter looked over the sheets of
copy-paper, covered with writing in a boyish hand.

"Not so bad," he mused. "The kid may be able to write some day,"
and--dropped the sheets into the waste-paper basket.

Why had he paid for them, then? Dinville knew what he was about.

He reached for a sheet of copy-paper and wrote the following dispatch--

     WHALE - OF - BIG - STORY. - INFORMANT - A - KID. - WORTH - SENDING
     - KID - NEW - YORK - PAPER'S - EXPENSE - IF - AUTHORIZED. -
                                                               DINVILLE.

He filed it in the cable office without delay.

Before midnight he got a reply.

     IF - KID - HAS - THE - GOODS - SEND - NEW - YORK - AT - ONCE.

"Here," said Dinville aloud, as he read the cablegram, "is where Little
Willie was a wise guy in buying that kid's story. He'll land in here
tomorrow like a bear going to a honey-tree."

His diagnosis was correct to the letter. Early the next morning Stuart
came bursting in, full of importance. He had spruced up a little, though
the four dollars he had got from Dinville the night before was not
sufficient for new clothes.

"Say," he said, the minute he entered the office, "Mr. Dinville, I've
got a corker!"

"So?" queried the reporter, lighting a cigar and putting his feet on the
desk in comfortable attitude for listening. "Fire away!"

With avid enthusiasm, Stuart plunged into a wild and woolly yarn which
would have been looked upon with suspicion by the editor of a
blood-and-thunder twenty-five-cent series.

The reporter cut him off abruptly.

"Kid," he said dryly, "the newspaper game is on the level. I don't say
that you don't have to give a twist to a story, every once in a while,
so that it'll be interesting, but it's got to be news.

"Get this into your skull if you're ever going to be a newspaper man:
Every story you write has got to have happened, actually happened, to
somebody, somewhere, at some place, at a certain time, for some reason.
If it hasn't, it isn't a newspaper story. What's more, it must be either
unusual or important, or it hasn't any value. Again, it must have
happened recently, or it isn't news. And there's another rule. One big
story is worth more than a lot of small ones.

"Now, look here. You've got a big story, a real news story, up your
sleeve. It happened to you. It occurred at an unusual place. It has only
just happened. It's of big importance. And the why seems to be a
mystery. If you were a A Number One newspaper man, it would be your job
to get on the trail of that story and run it down."

And then the reporter conceived the idea of playing on Stuart's sense of
patriotism.

"That way," he went on, "it happens that there's no class of people that
does more for its country than the newspaper men. They show up the
crooks, and they can point out praise when public praise is due. They
expose the grafters and help to elect the right man to office. They root
out public evils and push reform measures through. They're Democracy, in
type."

The words fanned the fire of Stuart's enthusiasm for a newspaper
career.

"Yes," he said, excitedly, "yes, I can see that!"

"Take this story of yours--this plot that you speak about and are afraid
to tell. You think it's planned against the United States'?"

"I'm sure it is!"

"Well, how are you going to run it down? How are you going to get all
the facts in the case? Who can you trust to help you in this? Where are
you going to get all the money that it will take? Why, Kid, if these
conspirators you talk of have anything big up their sleeve, they could
buy people right and left to put you off the track and you'd never get
anywhere! On your own showing, they've just plumped you down here in
Havana, where there's nothing doing."

"They sure have," admitted Stuart ruefully.

"Of course they have. Now, if you had one of the big American newspapers
backing you up, one that you could put confidence in, it would be just
as if you had the United States back of you, and you'd be part and
parcel of that big power which is the trumpet-voice of Democracy from
the Atlantic to the Pacific--the Press!"

The boy's eyes began to glisten with eagerness. Every word was striking
home.

"But how could I do that?"

"You don't have to. It's already done!"

Stuart stared at his friend, in bewilderment.

"See here," he said, and he threw the cablegram on the table. "That
paper is willing to pay any price for a big story, if it can be proved
authentic. Proved, mind you, documents and all the rest of it. I cabled
them to know if they wanted to see you, and, if they found what you had
was the real goods, whether they would stake you. They cabled back,
right away, that you were to go up there."

"Up where?"

"N'York."

"But I haven't money enough to go to New York!" protested Stuart.

"Who said anything about money? That's up to the paper. Your expenses
both ways, and your expenses while you're in N'York, will all be paid."

"Are you sure?"

"Seeing that I'll pay your trip up there myself, and charge it up on my
own expense account, of course I'm sure. There's a boat going tomorrow."

"But you couldn't get a berth for tomorrow," protested Stuart, though he
was weakening. He had never been to New York, and the idea of a voyage
there, with his fare and all his expenses paid, tempted him. Besides, as
the reporter had suggested, it would be almost impossible for him to
continue the quest of Manuel, Leborge and Cecil alone. More than that,
the boy felt that, if he could get a big metropolitan paper to back him,
he would be in a position to find and rescue his father.

"Can't get a berth? Watch me!" said the reporter, who was anxious to
impress upon the lad the importance of the press. And, sure enough, he
came back an hour later, with a berth arranged for Stuart in the
morrow's steamer. He also advanced money enough to the boy for a
complete outfit of clothes. An afternoon spent in a Turkish bath
restored to the erstwhile disguised lad his formerly white skin.

One sea-voyage is very much like another. Stuart made several
acquaintances on board, one of them a Jamaican, and from his traveling
companion, Stuart learned indirectly that Great Britain's plan of
welding her West India possessions into a single colony was still a live
issue. The boy, himself, remembering how easily he had been pumped by
Dinville, was careful not to say a word about the purpose of his trip.

Thanks to Dinville's exact instructions, Stuart found the newspaper
office without difficulty. The minute he stepped out of the elevator and
on the floor, a driving expectancy possessed him. The disorderliness,
the sense of tension, the combination of patient waiting and driving
speed, the distant and yet perceptible smell of type metal and printers'
ink, in short, the atmosphere of a newspaper, struck him with a sense of
desire.

Although Stuart's instructions were to see the Managing Editor, the
young fellow who came out to see what he wanted, brought him up to the
City Editor's desk. The latter looked up quickly.

"Are you the boy Dinville cabled about?"

"Yes, sir," the boy answered. Here, though the City Editor was ten
times more commanding a personality than the vice-consul, the boy felt
more at ease.

"Ever do any reporting?"

"No, sir."

"What's this story? Just the main facts!"

"Are you Mr. ----" the boy mentioned the name of the Managing Editor.

"I'll act for him," said the City Editor promptly.

Stuart's square chin went out.

"I came up to see him personally," he answered.

The City Editor knew men.

"That's the way to get an interview, my son," he said. "All right, I'll
take you in to the Chief. If things don't go your way, come and see me
before you go. I might try you on space, just to see how you shape.
Dinville generally knows what he's talking about."

Stuart thanked him, and very gratefully, for he realized that the curt
manner was merely that of an excessively busy man with a thousand things
on his mind. A moment later, he found himself in the shut-in office of
the Managing Editor.

"You are a youngster," he said with a cordial smile, emphasizing the
verb, and shaking hands with the boy. "Well, that's the time to begin.
Now, Lad, I've time enough to hear all that you've got to say that is
important, and I haven't a second to listen to any frills. Tell
everything that you think you have a right to tell and begin at the
beginning."

During the voyage from Havana, Stuart had rehearsed this scene. He did
not want to make the same mistake that he had made with the vice-consul,
and he told his story as clearly as he could, bearing in mind the "Who,"
"What," "Why," "When" and "Where" of Dinville's advice.

The Managing Editor nodded approvingly.

"I think," he said reflectively, "you may develop the news sense. Of
course, you've told a good deal of stuff which is quite immaterial, and,
likely enough, some of the good bits you've left out. That's to be
expected. It takes a great many years of training to make a first-class
reporter.

"Now, let me see if I can guess a little nearer to the truth of this
plot than you did.

"You say that the only three phrases you can be sure that you heard were
'Mole St. Nicholas,' 'naval base' and 'Panama.' That isn't much. Yet I
think it is fairly clear, at that. The Mole St. Nicholas is a harbor in
the north of Haiti which would make a wonderful naval base--in fact,
there has already been some underground talk about it--and such a naval
base would be mighty close to the Panama Canal. Suppose we start with
the theory that this is what your conspirator chaps have in mind.

"Now, my boy, we have to find out some explanation for the meeting in so
remote a place as the Citadel. Those three men wouldn't have gone to
all that trouble and risked all that chance of being discovered and
exposed unless there were some astonishingly important reasons. What can
these be? Well, if we are right in thinking that a naval base is what
these fellows are after, it is sure that they would need a hinterland of
country behind it. The Mole St. Nicholas, as I remember, is at the end
of a peninsula formed by a range of mountains, the key to which is La
Ferrière. So, to make themselves safe, they would need to control both
at the same time. Hence the necessity of knowing exactly the defensive
position of the Citadel. How does that sound to you?"

"I'd never thought of it, sir," said Stuart, "but the way you put it,
just must be right. I was an idiot not to think of it myself."

"Age and experience count for something, Youngster," said the Managing
Editor, smiling. "Don't start off by thinking that you ought to know as
much as trained men."

Stuart flushed at the rebuke, for he saw that it was just.

"Now," continued the Editor, pursuing his train of thought, "we have to
consider the personalities of the conspirators. You'll find, Stuart, if
you go into newspaper work, that one of the first things to do in any
big story, is to estimate, as closely as you can, the character of the
men or women who are acting in it. Newspaper work doesn't deal with cold
facts, like science, but with humanity, and humans act in queer ways,
sometimes. A good reporter has got to be a bit of a detective and a good
deal of a psychologist. He's got to have an idea how the cat is going to
jump, in order to catch him on the jump.

"Now, so far, we know that the conspirators are at least three in
number. There may be more, but we know of three. One is a Haitian negro
politician. One is a Cuban, who, from your description, seems to be a
large-scale crook. One is an Englishman, and, in your judgment, he is of
a different type from the other two. Yet the fact that he seems to
possess an agent on the eastern shore of Cuba--which, don't forget,
faces the Mole St. Nicholas--seems to suggest that he's deep in the
plot."

He puffed his pipe for a moment or two, and then continued,

"Now, there are two powerful forces working underground in the West
Indies. One is the Spanish and negro combination, which desires to shake
off all the British, French and Dutch possessions, and to create a
Creole Empire of the Islands. The other is an English plan, to weld all
the British islands in the West Indies into a single Confederation and
to buy as many of the smaller isles from France and Holland as may seem
possible. Both are hostile to the extension of American power in the
Gulf of Mexico. Possibly, some European power is back of this plot. A
foreign naval base in the Mole St. Nicholas would be a menace to us,
and one on which Washington would not look very kindly.

"So you see, Youngster, if such a thing as this were possible, it would
be a big story, and one that ought to be followed up very closely."

"That's what Dinville seemed to think, sir," interposed the boy, "and I
told him I didn't have the money."

"Nor have you the experience," added the Editor, dryly. "Money isn't any
good, if you don't know how to use it."

He pondered for a moment.

"I can't buy the information from you," he said, "because, so far, the
story isn't in shape to use, and I don't know when I will be able to use
it. Yet I do want to have an option on the first scoop on the story. You
know what a scoop is?"

"No, sir."

"A 'scoop' or a 'beat' means that one paper gets hold of a big story
before any other paper has it. It is like a journalistic triumph, if you
like, and a paper which gets 'scoops,' by that very fact, shows itself
more wide awake than its competitors.

"Now, see here, Stuart. Suppose I agree to pay you a thousand dollars
for the exclusive rights to all that you find out about the story, at
what time it is ready for publication, and that I agree to put that
thousand dollars to your account for you to draw on for expenses. How
about that?"

Stuart was taken aback. He fairly stuttered,

"Why--sir, I--I----"

The Editor smiled at the boy's excited delight.

"You agree?"

"Oh, yes, sir!"

There was no mistaking the enthusiasm of the response.

"Very good. Then, in addition to that, I'll pass the word that you're to
be put on the list for correspondence stuff. I'm not playing any
favorites, you understand! Whatever you send in will be used or thrown
out, according to its merits. And you'll be paid at the regular space
rates, six dollars a column. All I promise is that you shall have a look
in."

"But that's--that's great!"

"It's just a chance to show what you can do. If there's any stuff in you
at all, here is an opportunity for you to become a high-grade newspaper
man."

"Then I'm really on the staff!" cried the boy, "I'm really and truly a
journalist?"

The Managing Editor nodded.

"Yes, if you like the word," he said, "make good, and you'll be really
and truly a journalist."

CHAPTER VIII

THE POISON TREES

For a couple of days, Stuart wandered about New York, partly
sight-seeing and partly on assignments in company with some of the
reporters of the paper. The City Editor wanted to determine whether the
boy had any natural aptitude for newspaper work. So Stuart chased around
one day with the man on the "police court run," another day he did
"hotels" and scored by securing an interview with a noted visitor for
whom the regular reporter had not time to wait. The boy was too young,
of course, to be sent on any assignments by himself, but one of the
older men took a fancy to the lad and took him along a couple of times,
when on a big story.

Just a week later, on coming in to the office, Stuart was told that the
Managing Editor wanted to see him. As this was the summons for which he
had been waiting, Stuart obeyed with alacrity. The Managing Editor did
not motion him to a a chair, as before, so the boy stood.

"First of all, Garfield----" and the boy noticed the use of the
surname--"I want to tell you that your father is safe. We've been
keeping the wires hot to Port-au-Prince and have found out that some
one resembling the description you gave me of your father commandeered a
sailing skiff at a small place near Jacamel and set off westward. Two
days afterward, he landed at Guantanamo and registered at a hotel as
'James Garfield.' He stayed there two days and then took the train for
Havana. So you don't need to worry over that, any more."

"Thank you, sir," answered the boy, relieved, "I'm mighty glad to know."

"Now," continued the Editor, "let us return to this question for which
we brought you here. According to your story, you heard the conspirators
say that their plans would be ready for fulfillment next spring."

"Yes, sir," the boy agreed, "Leborge said that."

"Good. Then there is no immediate need of pressing the case too closely.
It will be better to let the plans mature a little. A mere plot doesn't
mean much. News value comes in action. When something actually happens,
then, knowing what lies behind it, the story becomes big.

"What we really want to find out is whether this plot--as it seems to
be--is just a matter between two or three men, or if it is widely spread
over all the islands of the West Indies. You're too young, as yet, for
anything like regular newspaper work, but the fact that you're not much
more than a youngster might be turned to advantage. No one would
suspect that you were in quest of political information.

"So I'm going to suggest that you make a fairly complete tour of the
islands, this fall and early winter, just as if you were idling around,
apparently, but, at the same time, keeping your ears and your eyes open.
In order to give color to your roamings, you can write us some articles
on 'Social Life and the Color Line in the West Indies' as you happen to
see it. First-hand impressions are always valuable, and, perhaps, the
fact that you see them through a boy's eyes may give them a certain
novelty and freshness. Of course, the articles will probably have to be
rewritten in the office. By keeping a copy of the stuff you send, and
comparing it with the way the articles appear in the paper, you'll get a
fair training.

"We'll probably handle these in the Sunday Edition, and I'm going to
turn you over to the Sunday Editor, to whom you'll report, in future."

He nodded pleasantly to the boy in token of dismissal.

"I wish you luck on your trip," he said, "and see that you send us in
the right kind of stuff!"

Stuart thanked him heartily for his kindness, and went out, sorry that
he was not going to deal with the Chief himself.

The Sunday Editor's office was a welter of confusion. As Stuart was to
find out, in the years to come when he should really be a newspaper
man, the Sunday Editor's job is a hard one. It is much sought, since it
is day work rather than night work, but it is a wearing task. The Sunday
Editor must have all the qualities of a magazine man and a newspaper man
at the same time. He must also have the creative faculty.

In such departments of a modern newspaper as the City, Telegraph,
Sporting, Financial, etc., the work of the reporters and editors is to
chronicle and present the actual news. If nothing of vital interest has
happened during the day, that is not their fault. Their work is done
when the news is as well covered and as graphically told as possible.

There are no such limits in the Sunday Editor's office. He must create
interest, provoke sensation, and build the various extra sections of the
Sunday issue into a paper of such vital importance that every different
kind of reader will find something to hold his attention. He has all the
world to choose from, but he has also all the world to please. The work,
too, must be done at high pressure, for the columns of a Sunday issue to
be filled are scores in number, and the Sunday staff of any paper--even
the biggest--is but small.

Fergus, the Sunday Editor, was a rollicking Irishman, with red hair and
a tongue hung in the middle. He talked, as his ancestors fought, all in
a hurry. He was a whirlwind for praise, but a tornado for blame. His
organizing capacity was marvelous, and his men liked and respected him,
for they knew well that he could write rings around any one of them, in
a pinch. He began as the boy entered the door,

"Ye're Stuart Garfield, eh? Ye don't look more'n about a half-pint of a
man. Does the Chief think I'm startin' a kindergarten? Not that I give a
hang whether ye're two or eighty-two so long as ye can write. Ye'll go
first to Barbados. Steamer sails tomorrow at eight in the morning.
Here's your berth. Here's a note to the cashier. Letter of instructions
following. Wait at the Crown Hotel, Bridgetown, till you get it. Don't
write if ye haven't anything to say. Get a story across by every
mail-boat. If ye send me rot, I'll skin ye. Good luck!"

And he turned to glance over his shoulder at a copy-boy who had come in
with a handful of slips, proofs and the thousand matters of the editor's
daily grind.

Stuart waited two or three minutes, expecting Fergus to continue, but
the Sunday Editor seemed to have forgotten his existence.

"Well, then, good-by, Mr. Fergus," said the boy, hesitatingly.

"Oh, eh? Are ye there still? Sure. Good-by, boy, good-by an' good luck
to ye!"

And plunged back into his work.

There seemed nothing else for Stuart to do but to go out of the office.
In the hall outside, he paused and wondered. He held in his hand the two
slips of paper that Fergus had given him, and he stared down at these
with bewilderment. Fergus' volley of speech, had taken him clean off
his balance.

There was no doubt about the reality of these two slips of paper. One
was the ticket for his berth and the other had the figures "$250"
scrawled across a printed form made out to the Cashier, and it was
signed "Rick Fergus."

In his uncertainty what he ought to do, Stuart went into the City Room
and hunted up his friend the reporter. To him he put the causes of his
confusion. The old newspaper man smiled.

"That's Rick Fergus, all over," he said. "Good thing you didn't ask him
any questions! He'd have taken your head off at one bite. He's right,
after all. If a reporter's any good at all, he knows himself what to do.
A New York paper isn't fooling around with amateurs, generally. But,
under the circumstances, I think Rick might have told you something.
Let's see. How about your passport?"

"I've got one," said Stuart, "I had to have one, coming up from Cuba."

"If you're going to Barbados, you'll have to have it viséed by the
British Consul."

"But that will take a week, maybe, and I've got to sail tomorrow!"

"Is that all your trouble?"

He stepped to the telephone.

"Consulate? Yes? _New York Planet_ speaking. One of our men's got to
chase down to Barbados on a story. Sending him round this afternoon.
Will you be so good as to visé him through? Ever so much obliged;
thanks!"

He put up the receiver and turned to the boy.

"Easy as easy, you see," he said. "The name of a big paper like this one
will take you anywhere, if you use it right. Now, let's see. You'll want
to go and see the Cashier. Come on down, I'll introduce you."

A word or two at the Cashier's window, and the bills for $250 were
shoved across to Stuart, who pocketed them nervously. He had never seen
so much money before.

"Next," said the reporter, "you'd better get hold of some copy-paper, a
bunch of letter-heads and envelopes. Also some Expense Account blanks.
Stop in at one of these small printing shops and have some cards printed
with your name and that of the paper--here, like mine!" And he pulled
out a card from his card case and gave it to the boy for a model.

Stuart was doing his best to keep up with this rapid change in his
fortunes, but, despite himself, his eyes looked a bit wild. His friend
the reporter saw it, and tapped him on the back.

"You haven't got any time to lose," he said. "Oh, yes, there's another
thing, too. Can you handle a typewriter?"

"No," answered the boy, "at least, I never tried."

"Then you take my tip and spend some of that $250 on a portable machine
and learn to handle it, on the way down to Barbados. You'll have to
send all your stuff typewritten, you know. Imagine Fergus getting a
screed from a staff man in longhand!"

The reporter chuckled at the thought.

"Why, I believe the old red-head would take a trip down to the West
Indies just to have a chance of saying what he thought. Or, if he
couldn't go, he'd blow up, and we'd be out a mighty good Sunday Editor.
No, son, you've got to learn to tickle a typewriter!"

They had not been wasting time during this talk, for the reporter had
taken out of his own desk the paper, letter-heads, expense account
blanks and the rest and handed them over to the boy, explaining that he
could easily replenish his own supply.

"Now," he suggested, "make tracks for the consulate. Stop at a printer's
on your way and order some cards. Then chase back and buy yourself a
portable typewriter. And, if I were you, I'd start learning it, right
tonight. Then, hey! Off for the West Indies again, eh?"

"But don't I go and say good-by to the City Editor, or the Managing
Editor, or anyone?"

"What for? You've got your berth, you've got your money, you're going to
get your passport, and you've got your assignment. Nothing more for you
to do, Son, except to get down there and deliver the goods."

He led the way out of the office and to the elevator. On reaching the
street, he turned to the boy.

"There's one thing," he said, "that may help you, seeing that you're new
to the work. When you get down to Barbados, drop into the office of the
biggest paper there. Chum up with the boys. They'll see that you're a
youngster, and they'll help you all they can. You'll find newspaper men
pretty clannish, the world over. Well, good-bye, Garfield, I won't be
likely to see you again before you go. I've got that Traction Swindle to
cover and there's going to be a night hearing."

The boy shook hands with real emotion.

"You've been mighty good to me," he said, "it's made all the difference
to my stay in New York."

"Oh! That's all right!" came the hearty reply. "Well--good luck!"

He turned down the busy street and, in a moment, was lost in the crowd.

For a moment Stuart felt a twinge of loneliness, but the afternoon was
short, and he had a great deal to do. It was only by hurrying that he
was able to get done all the various things that had been suggested.
Despite his rush, however, the boy took time to send a cable to his
father, telling of his own safety, for he had no means of knowing
whether or not his father might be worrying over him also. He worked
until midnight learning the principles of the typewriter and, in a poky
sort of way, trying to hammer out the guide sentences given him in the
Instruction Book. Next day found him again at sea.

In contrast with the riotous vegetation of the jungles of Haiti and the
tropical forests of Eastern Cuba, Stuart found the country around
Bridgetown, the sole harbor of Barbados, surprisingly unattractive. The
city itself was active and bustling, but dirty, dusty and mean. On the
other hand, the suburbs, with villas occupied by the white residents,
were remarkable for their marvelous gardens.

On the outskirts of the town, and all over the island, in rows or
straggling clumps which seemed to have been dropped down anywhere,
Stuart saw the closely clustered huts of the negroes. These were tiny
huts of pewter-gray wood, raised from the ground on a few rough stones
and covered by a roof of dark shingles. They were as simple as the
houses a child draws on his slate--things of two rooms, with two windows
and one door. The windows had sun shutters in place of glass and there
were no chimneys, for the negro housewives do their cooking out of doors
in the cool of the evening. The boy noticed that, by dark, all these
windows and doors were closed tightly, for the Barbadian negro sleeps in
an air-tight room. He does this, ostensibly, to keep out ten-inch-long
centipedes, and bats, but, in reality, to keep out "jumbies" and ghosts,
of which he is much more afraid.

[Illustration: HIS VISION DISTORTED BY THE VENOM-VAPOR OF THE POISON
TREES, THE LAND-CRABS SEEMED OF ENORMOUS SIZE AND THE NEGRO WHO CAME TO
RESCUE HIM APPEARED AS AN OGRE.]

The greater part of the island seemed, to the boy, utterly unlike any
place he had seen in the tropics. Around Bridgetown, and over two-thirds
of the island of Barbados, there is hardly a tree. The ground rises in
slow undulations, marked, like a checker-board, with sugar-cane fields.
No place could seem more lacking in opportunity for adventures, yet
Stuart was to learn to the contrary before long.

Acting upon the advice given him by his friend the reporter, in New
York, just before leaving, Stuart seized the first opportunity to make
himself known to the newspaper men of Bridgetown. He was warmly
received, even welcomed, and was amazed at the ready hospitality shown
him. Moreover, when he stated that he was there to do some article on
"Social Life and the Color Question" for the _New York Planet_, he found
that he had struck a subject on which anyone and everyone he met was
willing to talk--as the Managing Editor no doubt had anticipated when he
suggested the series to the boy.

In one respect--as almost everyone he interviewed pointed out--Barbados
differs from every other of the West India Islands. It is densely
populated, so densely, indeed, that there is not a piece of land
suitable for cultivation which is not employed. The great ambition of
the Barbadian is to own land. The spirit of loyalty to the island is
incredibly strong.

This dense population and intensive cultivation has made the struggle
for existence keen in Barbados. A job is a prize. This has made the
Barbadian negro a race apart, hardworking and frugal. Until the building
of the Panama Canal, few negroes left their island home. With the help
of his newspaper friends, Stuart was able to send to his paper a fairly
well-written article on the Barbadian negro. The boy was wise enough to
take advice from his new friends how best to write the screed.

Moreover, he learned that there was also, on the island, a very unusual
and most interesting colony of "poor whites," the descendants of English
convicts who had been brought to the island in the seventeenth century.
These were not criminals, but political prisoners who had fought in
Monmouth's Rebellion. Pitied by the planters, despised even by the negro
slaves, this small colony held itself aloof, starved, and married none
but members of their own colony. They are now mere shadows of men, with
puny bodies and witless minds, living in brush or wooden hovels and
eating nothing but a little wild fruit and fish.

Their story made another good article for Stuart's paper, and he spent
almost an entire day holding such conversation with them as he could,
though their English language had so far degenerated that the boy found
it hard to understand.

The colony is not far from the little village of Bathsheba, which Stuart
had reached by the tramway that crosses the island. The returning tram
was not due to start for a couple of hours, and so, idly, Stuart
strolled southward along the beach, which, at that point, is fringed
with curiously shaped rocks, forming curving bays shaded with thickets
of trees which curve down to the shore. Some of these were
modest-looking trees, something like apple-trees but with a longer,
thinner leaf. They bore a fruit like a green apple.

The boy, tired from his walk along the soft white sand, threw himself
down negligently beneath the trees, in the shade, and, finding one of
the fruits fallen, close to his hand, picked it up and half decided to
eat it. An inner warning bade him pause.

The day had been hot and the shade was inviting. A sour and yet not
unpleasant odor was in the air. It made him sleepy, or, to speak more
correctly, it made his limbs heavy, while a certain exhilaration of
spirits lulled him into a false content. Soon, under these trees, on the
beach near Bathsheba, Stuart passed into a languorous waking dream.

And the red land-crabs, on their stilt-like legs, crept nearer and
nearer.

An hour later, one of the Barbadian negroes, coming home from his work,
was met at the door of his cabin by his wife, her eyes wide with alarm.

"White pickney go along Terror Cove. No come um back."

"Fo' de sake!" came the astonished exclamation. "Best hop along, see!"

The burly negro, well-built like all his fellows, struck out along the
beach. He talked to himself and shook his frizzled head as he went. His
pace, which was distinctly that of hurry, betokened his disturbed mind.

"Pickney go alone here, by golly!" he declared as he traced the prints
of a booted foot on the white sand and saw that they led only in one
direction. "No come back! Dem debbil-trees, get um!"

He turned the corner and paused a minute at the extraordinary sight
presented.

In the curve of the cove, dancing about with high, measured steps, like
that of a trained carriage-horse, was the boy, his hands clutching a
stout stick with which he was beating the air around him as though
fighting some imaginary foe, in desperation for his life. The sand
around his feet was spotted, as though with gouts of blood, by the ruddy
land-crabs, and, from every direction, these repulsive carrion eaters
were hastening to their prey.

They formed a horrible alliance--the "debbil-trees" and the blood-red
land-crabs!

The negro broke into a run. The old instinct of the black to serve the
white rose in him strongly, though his own blood ran cold as he came
near the "debbil-trees."

The crabs were swarming all about the boy. Some of the most daring were
clawing their way up his trousers, but Stuart seemed to have no eyes for
them. With jerky strokes, as though his arms were worked by a string,
he struck and slashed at the air at some imaginary enemy about the
height of his waist.

As his rescuer came nearer, he could hear the boy screaming, a harsh,
inhuman scream of rage and fear and madness combined. Jerky words amid
the screams told of his terrors,

"They're eating me! Their claws are all around! Their eyes! Their eyes!"

But still the strokes were directed wildly at the air, and never a blow
fell on the little red horrors at his feet.

"Ol' Doc, he say debbil-tree make um act that way," muttered the negro,
as he ran, "pickney he think um crabs big as a mule!"

Stuart, fighting for his life with what his tortured imagination
conceived to be gigantic monsters, saw, coming along the beach, the
semblance of an ogre. The pupils of his eyes, contracted by the poison
to mere pin-pricks, magnified enormously, and the negro took on the
proportions of a giant.

But Stuart was a fighter. He would not run. He turned upon his new foe.

The negro, reckoning nothing of one smart blow from the stick, threw his
muscular arms about the boy, held him as in a vice, and picking him up,
carried him off as if he were a baby. The boy struggled and screamed but
it availed him nothing.

"Pickney, he mad um sartain," announced the negro, as he strode by his
own hut, "get him Ol' Doc good'n quick!"

Half walking and half running, but carrying his burden with ease, the
negro hurried to a well-built house, on a height of land half a mile
back from the coast. The house was surrounded by a well-kept garden, but
the negro kicked the gate open without ceremony, and, still running,
rushed into the house, calling,

"Mister Ol' Doc! Mister Ol' Doc!"

At his cries, one of the doors into the hall opened, and a keen-eyed
man, much withered, and with a scraggly gray beard, came out. The negro
did not wait for him to speak.

"Mister Ol' Doc," he said, "this pickney down by de debbil-trees, they
got um sartain. You potion um quick!"

The doctor stepped aside from the door.

"Put him in there, Mark!" he directed. "Hold him, I'll be back in a
minute!"

The negro threw Stuart on a cot and held him down, an easy task, now,
for the boy's strength was ebbing fast.

The doctor was back in a moment, with a small phial. He dropped a few
drops into the boy's mouth, then, stripping him, put an open box of
ointment between himself and the negro.

"Now, Mark," he said, "rub that stuff into his body. Don't be afraid of
it. Go after him as if you were grooming a horse. Put some elbow-grease
into it. The ointment has got to soak in, and the skin has got to be
kept warm. See, he's getting cold, now!"

The negro suited the action to the word. He rubbed with all his
strength, and the ointment, concocted from some pungent herb, reddened
the skin where it went in. But, a moment or two after, the redness
disappeared and the bluish look of cold returned.

"Faster and harder!" cried the old doctor.

Sweat poured down from the negro's face. He ripped off jacket and shirt,
and, bare to the waist, scrubbed at the boy's skin. And, if ever he
stopped a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, the doctor cried,

"Faster and harder!"

Little by little, the reddening of the skin lasted longer, little by
little the bluish tints began to go, little by little the stiffening
which had begun, relaxed.

"He's coming round," cried the doctor. "Harder, now! Put your back into
it, Mark!"

Nearly an hour had passed when the negro, exhausted and trembling from
his exertions, sank into a chair. The doctor eyed him keenly, gave him a
stiff dose from a medicine glass, and returned to his patient.

"He'll do now," he said. "In half an hour he'll feel as well as ever,
and by tomorrow he'll be terribly ill."

"For de sake, Mister Ol' Doc, I got to rub um tomorrow?" pleaded the
negro.

"No, not tomorrow. From now on, I've got to 'potion um,' as you put it."

He put his hand in his pocket.

"Here, Mark," he said, "is half a sovereign. That isn't for saving the
boy's life, you understand, for you'd have done that any way, but for
working on him as you have."

The negro pocketed the coin with a wide smile, but lingered.

"I want to see um come 'round," he explained.

As the doctor had forecast, in half an hour's time, the color flowed
back into Stuart's cheeks, his breathing became normal, and, presently,
he stirred and looked around.

"What--What----" he began, bewildered.

"You went to sleep under the shade of some poison-trees, manchineel
trees, we call them here," the doctor explained. "Did you eat any of the
fruit?"

"I--I don't know," replied Stuart, trying to remember. "I--I sort of
went to sleep, that is, my body seemed to and my head didn't. And then I
saw crabs coming. At first they were only small ones, then bigger ones
came, and bigger, and bigger----"

He shivered and hid his face at the remembrance.

"There was nothing there except the regular red land-crabs," said the
doctor, "maybe eighteen inches across, but with a body the size of your
hand. Their exaggeration of size was a delirium due to poisoning."

"And the big, black ogre?"

"Was our friend Mark, here," explained the doctor, "who rescued you,
first, and has saved your life by working over you, here."

Stuart held out his hand, feebly.

"I didn't know there were any trees which hurt you unless you touched
them," he said.

"Plenty of them," answered the scientist. "There are over a hundred
plants which give off smells or vapors which are injurious either to man
or animals. Some are used by savages for arrow poisons, others for fish
poisons, and some we use for medicinal drugs. Dixon records a 'gas-tree'
in Africa, the essential oil of which contains chlorine and the smell of
which is like the poison-gas used in the World War. And poison-ivy, in
the United States, will poison some people even if they only pass close
to it."

"Jes' how does a tree make a smell, Mister Ol' Doc?" queried Mark.

"That's hard to explain to you," answered the scientist, turning to the
negro. "But every plant has some kind of a smell, that is, all of them
have essential oils which volatilize in the air. Some, like the bay,
have these oil-sacs in the leaves, some, like cinnamon, in the bark, and
so on. The smell of flowers comes the same way."

"An' there is mo' kinds of debbil-trees 'an them on Terror Cove?"

"Plenty more kinds," was the answer, "though few of them are as deadly.
These are famous. Lord Nelson, when a young man here in Barbados, was
made very ill by drinking from a pool into which some branches of the
manchineel had been thrown. In fact, he never really got over it."

"How about me, Doctor?" enquired Stuart. His face was flushing and its
was evident that the semi-paralysis of the first infection was passing
into a fever stage.

"It all depends whether you ate any of the fruit or not," the doctor
answered. "If you didn't, you're safe. But you seem to have spent an
hour in that poison-tree grove, and that gives the 'devil-trees,' as
Mark calls them, plenty of time to get in their deadly work. You'll come
out of it, all right, but you'll have to fight for it!"

CHAPTER IX

THE HURRICANE

For many days Stuart lay in an alternation of fever and stupor,
tormented by dreams in which visions of the red land-crabs played a
terrible part, but youth and clean living were on his side, and he
passed the crisis. Thereafter, in the equable climate of Barbados--one
of the most healthful of the West Indies Islands--his strength began to
return.

The "Ol' Doc," as he was universally known in the neighborhood, was an
eccentric scientist who had spent his life in studying the plants of the
West Indies. He had lived in the Antilles for over forty years and knew
as much about the people as he did about the plant life.

Kindly-natured, the old botanist became greatly interested in his young
patient, and, that he should not weary in enforced idleness, sent to
Bridgetown for Stuart's trunk and his portable typewriter. Day by day
the boy practised, and then turned his hand to writing a story of his
experiences with the "debbil-trees" which story, by the way, he had to
rewrite three times before his host would let him send it.

"Writing," he would say, "is like everything else in the world. You can
do it quickly and well, after years of experience, but, at the
beginning, you must never let a sentence pass until you are sure that
you cannot phrase it better."

Moreover, as it turned out, the Ol' Doc was to be Stuart's guide in more
senses than one, for when the boy casually mentioned Guy Cecil's name,
the botanist twisted his head sidewise sharply.

"Eh, what? Who's that?" he asked. "What does he look like?"

Stuart gave a description, as exact as he could.

"Do you suppose he knows anything about flowers?"

"He seemed to know a lot about Jamaica orchids," the boy replied.

The botanist tapped the arm of his chair with definite, meditative taps.

"That man," he said, "has always been a mystery to me. How old would you
take him to be?"

"Oh, forty or so," the boy answered.

"He has looked that age for twenty years, to my knowledge. If I didn't
know better, I should believe him to have found the Fountain of
Perpetual Youth which Ponce de Leon and so many other of the early
Spanish adventurers sailed to the Spanish Main to find."

"But what is he?" asked Stuart, sitting forward and eager in attention.

"Who knows? He is the friend, the personal friend, of nearly every
important man in the Caribbean, whether that official be British, French
or Dutch; he is also regarded as a witch-master by half the black
population. I have met him in the jungles, botanizing--and he is a good
botanist--I have seen him suddenly appear as the owner of a sugar
plantation, as a seeker for mining concessions, as a merchant, and as a
hotel proprietor. I have seen him the owner of a luxurious yacht; I have
met him, half-ragged, looking for a job, with every appearance of
poverty and misery."

"But," cried the lad in surprise, "what can that all imply? Do you
suppose he's just some sort of a conspirator, or swindler, sometimes
rich and sometimes poor, according to the hauls he has made?"

"Well," said the botanist, "sometimes I have thought he is the sort of
man who would have been a privateer in the old days, a 'gentleman
buccaneer.' Maybe he is still, but in a different way. Sometimes, I have
thought that he was attached to the Secret Service of some government."

"English?"

"Probably not," the scientist answered, "because he is too English for
that. No, he is so English that I thought he must be for some other
government and was just playing the English part to throw off
suspicion."

"German?"

"It's not unlikely."

Whereupon Stuart remembered the guarded way in which the Managing Editor
had spoken of "European Powers," and this thought of Cecil threw him
back upon his quest.

"I'll soon have to be going on to Trinidad," he suggested a day or two
later. "I think I'm strong enough to travel, now."

"Yes," the old botanist answered, "you're strong enough to travel, but
you'd better not go just now."

"Why not?"

"Well----" the old West Indian resident cast a look at the sky, "there
are a good many reasons. Unless I'm much mistaken, there's wind about,
big wind, hurricane wind, maybe. I've been feeling uneasy, ever since
noon yesterday. Do you see those three mares'-tail high-cirrus clouds?"

"You mean those that look like feathers, with the quills so much thicker
than usual?"

"Yes, those. And you notice that those quills, as you call them, are not
parallel, but all point in the same direction, like the sticks of a fan?
That means a big atmospheric disturbance in that direction, and it
means, too, that it must be a gyrating one. That type of cirrus clouds
isn't proof of a coming hurricane, not by a good deal, but it's one of
the signs. And, if it comes, the center of it is now just about where
those mares'-tails are pointing."

"You're really afraid of a hurricane!" exclaimed Stuart, a little
alarmed at the seriousness of the old man's manner.

"There are few things in the world of which one ought more to be
afraid!" declared the old scientist dryly. "A hurricane is worse, far
worse, than an earthquake, sometimes."

Stuart sat silent for a moment, then,

"Are there any more signs?" he asked.

"Yes," was the quiet answer. "Nearly all the hurricane signs are
beginning to show. Look at the sea! If you'll notice, the surface is
fairly glassy, showing that there is not much surface wind. Yet, in
spite of that, there is a heavy, choppy, yet rolling swell coming up on
the beach."

"I had noticed the roar," Stuart agreed, "one can hear it plainly from
here."

"Exactly. But, if you watch for a few minutes, you'll see that the
swells are not long and unbroken, as after a steady period of strong
wind from any quarter, but irregular, some of the swells long, some
short. That suggests that they have received their initial impulse from
a hurricane, with a whirling center, the waves being whipped by gusts
that change their direction constantly.

"Notice, too, how hollow our voices sound, as if there were a queer
resonance in the air, rather as if we were talking inside a drum.

"You were complaining of the heat this morning, and, now, there is
hardly any wind. What does that mean?

"It means that the trade wind, which keeps this island cool even in the
hottest summer, has been dying down, since yesterday. Now, since the
trade winds blow constantly, and are a part of the unchanging movements
of the atmosphere, you can see for yourself that any disturbance of the
atmosphere which is violent enough to overcome the constant current of
the trade winds must be of vast size and of tremendous force.

"What can such a disturbance be? The only answer is--a hurricane.

"Then there's another reason for feeling heat. That would be if the air
were unusually hazy and moist. Now, if you'll observe, during this
morning and the early part of the afternoon, the air has been clear,
then hazy, then clear again, and is once more hazy. That shows a rapid
and violent change in the upper air.

"So far, so good. Now, in addition to observations of the clouds, the
sea and the air at the surface, it helps--more, it is all-important--to
check these observations by some scientific instrument which cannot lie.
For this, we must use the barometer, which, as you probably know, is
merely an instrument for weighing the air. When the air is heavier the
barometer rises, when the air grows lighter, the barometer falls.

"Yesterday, the barometer rose very high, much higher than it would in
ordinary weather. This morning, it was jumpy, showing--as the changes in
the haziness of the air showed--irregular and violent movements in the
upper atmosphere. It is now beginning to go down steadily, a little
faster every hour. This is an almost sure sign that there is a hurricane
in action somewhere, and, probably, within a few hundred miles of here.

"But tell me, Stuart, since we have been talking, have you noticed any
change in the atmosphere, or in the sky."

"Well," answered the boy, hesitating, for he did not wish to seem
alarmist, "it did seem to me as if there were a sort of reddish color in
the sky, as if the blue were turning rusty."

"Watch it!" said the botanist, with a note of awe in his voice, "and you
will see what you never have seen before!"

For a few moments he kept silence.

The rusty color gradually rose in intensity to a ruby hue and then to an
angry crimson, deepening as the sun sank.

Over the sky, covered with a milky veil, which reflected this glowing
color, there began to rise, in the south-west, an arch of shredded
cirrus cloud, its denser surface having greater reflecting powers,
seeming to give it a sharp outline against the veiled sky.

The scientist rose, consulted the barometer, and returned, looking very
grave.

"It looks bad," he said. "There is not much doubt that it will strike
the island."

"Take to the hurricane wing, then!" suggested Stuart, a little
jestingly. In common with many Barbados houses, the botanist's dwelling
was provided with a hurricane wing, a structure of heavy masonry, with
only one or two narrow slits to let in air, and with a roof like a gun
casemate.

There was no jest in the Old Doctor's tone, as he answered,

"I have already ordered that provisions be sent there, and that the
servants be prepared to go."

This statement brought Stuart up with a jerk. In common with many
people, it seemed impossible to him that he would pass through one of
the great convulsions of nature. Human optimism always expects to escape
a danger.

"But this is the beginning of October!" the boy protested. "I always
thought hurricanes came in the summer months."

"No; August, September and October are the three worst months. That is
natural, for a hurricane could not happen in the winter and even the
early summer ones are not especially dangerous. But the signs of this
one are troubling. Look!"

He pointed to the sea.

The rolling swell was losing its character. The water, usually either a
turquoise-blue or a jade-green, was now an opaque olive-black. The waves
were choppy, and threw up small heads of foam like the swirl of
cross-currents in a tide-rip.

Stuart began to feel a little frightened.

"Do you really think it will come here?"

"Yes," said the botanist gravely, "I do. In fact I am sure of it.
Barbados is full in the hurricane track, you know."

"But why?" queried the boy. "I've always heard of West Indian
hurricanes. Do they only happen here? I don't see why they should come
here more than any other place."

"Do you know why they come at all?"

Stuart thought for a moment.

"No," he answered, "I don't know that I do. I never thought anything
about it. I always figured that storms just happened, somehow."

"Nothing 'just happens,'" was the stern rebuke. "Hark!"

He held up his finger for silence.

A low rumbling, sounding something like the pounding of heavy surf on a
beach heard at a distance, and closely akin to the sound made by Niagara
Falls, seemed to fill the air. And, across the sound, came cracks like
distant pistol shots heard on a clear day.

The white arch rose slowly and just underneath it appeared an arch of
darker cloud, almost black.

At the same moment, came a puff of the cool wind from the north.

"We will have it in less than two hours," said the scientist. "It is a
good thing that all afternoon I have had the men and women on the place
nailing the shutters tight and fastening everything that can be
fastened. We may only get the edge of the hurricane, we may get the
center. There is no telling. An island is not like a ship, which can
direct its course so as to escape the terrible vortex of the center.
We've got to stay and take it."

"But has every hurricane a center?" queried the boy, a little relieved
by the thought that the storm would not come for two hours. In that
time, he foolishly thought, it might have spent its force. He did not
know that hurricanes possess a life of their own which endures not less
than a week, and in one or two cases, as long as a month.

"You wouldn't ask whether every hurricane has a center," the scientist
replied, "if you knew a little more about them. As there is nothing for
us to do but wait, and as it is foolish to go to the hurricane wing
until the time of danger, I might as well explain to you what a
hurricane really is. Then, if you live through it----" Stuart jumped at
the sudden idea of the imminent danger--"you'll be able to write to your
paper about it, intelligently."

"I'd really like to know," declared Stuart, leaning forward eagerly.

"Well," said his informant, "I'll make it as simple as I can, though, I
warn you, a hurricane isn't a subject that can be explained in a
sentence or two.

"You know that summer and winter weather are different. You ought to be
able to see that summer and winter winds are different. The difference
in seasons is caused by the respective positions of the northern and
southern hemispheres to the sun. The greater the heat, the greater the
atmospheric changes. Hurricanes are great whirls caused by violent
changes of the air. Therefore hurricanes come only in the summer."

"That's clear and easy!" declared the boy, delighted that he was able to
follow the explanation.

"Now, as to why hurricanes strike here and nowhere else. I'll try and
explain that, too. There is a belt of ocean, just north of and on the
equator, known as the 'doldrums,' where it is nearly always calm, and
very hot. There is also a belt of air running from Southern Europe to
the West Indies where the north-east trade winds blow all the year
round. Between this perpetual calm of the doldrums and the perpetual
wind of the trades is a region of atmospheric instability.

"Now, consider conditions to the west of us. The Caribbean Sea and the
Gulf of Mexico, together, form what is almost a great inland sea with
the West Indian Islands as its eastern shore. The trade winds do not
reach it. The Pacific winds do not reach it, for they are diverted by
the high ranges of Central America. The winds from North America do not
reach it, because these always turn northwards on reaching the
Mississippi Valley and leave the United States by the St. Lawrence
Valley.

"So, Stuart, you can see that the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico
have over them, in summer, a region of air, little disturbed by wind,
not far from the Equator and which, therefore, becomes steadily heated
and steadily saturated by the evaporation from the body of water
below."

"Yes," agreed the boy, "I can see that."

"Very good. Now, such a steady heating of one section of air is bound to
disturb the balance of the atmosphere. This disturbance, moreover, must
be acted upon by the rotation of the earth. Just as all the weather in
the United States comes from the west and travels eastwards, so the
track of hurricane origins travels eastwards during the course of a
summer.

"For this reason, West Indian hurricanes in June generally have their
origin west of Jamaica, July hurricanes east of Jamaica, August
hurricanes in the eastern Caribbean, September hurricanes in the
Atlantic east and south of the West Indies, and October hurricanes far
out to sea, perhaps even as far as half-way to the Cape Verde Islands on
the shores of Africa. This hurricane which is approaching, is from the
direction of East-South-East, judging from the barometer and other
conditions, and probably had its cradle a thousand or more miles away."

"And it hasn't blown itself out?"

"Far from it. It is only gathering strength and violence. Not until it
twists off on its track will it begin to diminish. For hurricanes follow
a regular track, an invisible trail marked out for them in the sky."

"They do!"

"Yes, all of them. This track is shaped like a rounded cone, or, more
often, like a boomerang, with a short arm running north-westwards to
its place of turning and a long arm running northeastwards until its
force is spent. The point of turning is always in the West Indies zone.
As the storm is at its worst at the point of turning, it is always in
the West Indies that the hurricane is most destructive.

"No matter where they start, West Indian hurricanes always sweep
north-westward until they have crossed the line of the West Indies and
then wheel around sharply to the north-east, skirting the United States
coast. Some strike Florida. A good many run along the coast and hit
Hatteras. Some never actually touch the continent at all, and only a few
ever strike inland. But some part of the West Indies is hit by every one
of them."

"Are they so frequent?"

"There's never a year without one or more. There have been years with
five or six. Of course, some hurricanes are much more violent than
others. Their destructive character depends a good deal, too, on the
place where their center passes. Thus if, at the moment of its greatest
fury, the full ferocity of the whirl is expended on the ocean, not much
harm is done. But if it should chance to descend upon a busy and
thriving city, the loss of life will be appalling.

"Of these disastrous hurricanes, it would be fair to state that at least
once in every four years, some part of the West Indies is going to
suffer a disaster, and once in every twenty years there is a hurricane
of such violence as to be reckoned a world calamity."

The botanist rose, took another look at the barometer, and called one of
the older servants.

"Send every one into the hurricane wing," he said. "See that the storm
lantern is there, filled and lighted. Tell the cook to pour a pail of
water on the kitchen fire before she leaves. See, yourself, that every
place is securely fastened. The rain will be here in ten minutes."

The negro, who was gray with fright, flashed a quick look of relief at
the orders to seek the hurricane wing, and ran off at full speed.

"The first rain-squalls will not be bad," continued the "Old Doc," "and
I like to stay out as long as I can, to watch its coming. It will be
nearly dark when this one strikes us, though, and there won't be much to
see."

"But what starts them, sir?" queried the boy, who had become intensely
interested, since the grim phantasmagoria was unfolding itself on sea
and sky before his eyes.

"As I have told you, it is the creation of a super-heated and saturated
mass of air, only possible in a calm region, such as the Caribbean west
of the West Indies, or the doldrum region southeast of them. Let me show
you how it happens.

"A region of air, over a tropical sea, little moved by wind-currents,
becomes warmer than the surrounding region of air; the air over this
region becomes lighter; the lighter air rises and flows over the colder
layers of surrounding air, increasing the pressure on that ring and
increasing the inward flow to the warm central area where the air
pressure has been diminished by the overflow aloft. The overflowing air
reaches a point on the outside of the cold air area, when it again
descends, and once more flows inward to the center, making a complete
circuit. Do you understand so far?"

Stuart knitted his brows in perplexity.

"I--I think so, but I'm not sure," he said. "Then the barometer rose,
yesterday, because we were in the cold air area, which became heavier
because there was a layer of warm air on the top of it. The storm has
moved westward. The cold air section has passed. The barometer is
falling now because we're in the region of warm air, which is steadily
rising and is therefore lighter. That shows we're nearer to the center.
Is that it?"

The scientist tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair in pleased
appreciation.

"Very good," he said, "you are exactly right. And, from now on, the
barometer will drop suddenly, for the whirl of the wind will make a
partial vacuum in the very center of the hurricane."

"But I don't see what makes it whirl," protested the boy. "If it goes up
in the middle, flows over at the top and comes down at the outside and
then flows into the middle again, why could it not keep on doing that
all the time, until the balance was put straight again?"

"It would," the scientist agreed, "but for one thing you have
forgotten."

"And what's that?"

"The rotation of the earth."

A single drop of rain fell, then another, making a splash as large as a
twenty-five cent piece.

"Now see it come!" said the scientist.

As though his words had summoned it, a liquid opacity, like a piece of
clouded glass, thrust itself between their eyes and the landscape. So
suddenly it came that Stuart actually did not realize that this was
falling rain, until, looking at the ground, he saw the earth dissolve
into mud before his eyes and saw the garden turn into what seemed like
the bed of a shallow river. The wind whistled with a vicious note. The
squall lasted scarcely a minute, and was gone.

"That's the first," remarked the boy's informant. "We'd better get under
shelter, they'll come fast and furious soon."

Passing through a low passage connecting the house with the hurricane
wing, Stuart noticed that, beside the massiveness of the structure, it
was braced from within.

"In case the house should fall on it," the scientist observed, noting
Stuart's glances. "I've no wish to be buried alive. In any case, I keep
crowbars in the wing, so that, in case of any unforeseen disaster, a
breach could be made in the walls and we could get out that way."

They entered the hurricane wing. It was not as dark as Stuart had
expected. The scientist, anxious to observe the storms when they should
come, had built into the wall two double dead-eye windows, such as are
used in the lower decks of liners and which can resist the impact of the
heaviest waves.

The crimson light had gone. The vivid sunset reflections, now thrown
back from the black arch, yet gave a reddish smokiness to the livid and
sickly green which showed, from time to time, beneath the underhanging
masses of inky black. The sky to the north and to the south had a
tortured appearance, as though some demon of a size beyond imagining
were twisting the furies of the tempest in his clutch.

"You asked," said the scientist, speaking in the hurricane wing, as
quietly as he had on the verandah, and paying absolutely no heed to the
moaning and praying of the negroes huddled in the darkest corner, "what
makes a hurricane whirl. Yet, in the heavens, you can see the skies
a-twist!"

A second rain-squall struck. Thick as were the walls, they could not
keep out the wailing shriek of the wind, nor the hissing of the rain,
which flashed like a continuous cutting blade of steel past the windows.
The hurricane wing could not rock, it was too low and solidly planted
for that, but it trembled in the impact.

After a couple of minutes came a lull, and Stuart's ears were filled
with the cries and howling of the frightened negroes, not a sound of
which had been audible during the squall. The scientist continued his
talk in an even voice, as peacefully as though he were in his study.

"You asked what could set the skies a-twist. I told you, the earth's
rotation. For, Stuart, you must remember that a hurricane is not a small
thing. This heated region of the air of which we have been speaking,
with its outer belt of cooler air, and the descending warm air beyond,
is a region certainly not less than five hundred miles in diameter and
may be a great deal more.

"Now, the air, as you know, is held to the earth's surface by
gravitation, but, being gaseous, it is not held as closely as if it were
in a solid state. Also, there is centrifugal force to be considered.
Also the fact that the earth is not round, but flattened at the poles.
Also the important fact that air at the equator is more heated than at
the Polar regions. All these things together keep the air in a constant
commotion. The combined effect of these, in the northern hemisphere, is
that air moving along the surface of the earth is deflected to the
right. Thus in the case we are considering, the lower currents,
approaching the heated center, do not come in equally from all
directions, but are compelled to approach in spirals. This spiral action
once begun increases, of itself, in power and velocity. This is a
hurricane in its baby stage."

Another squall struck.

Speech again became impossible. As before, sheets of water--which bore
no relation to rain, but seemed rather as though the earth were at the
foot of a waterfall from which a river was leaping from on high--were
hurled over the land. The shrieking of the wind had a wild and maniacal
sound, the sound which Jamaicans have christened "the hell-cackle of a
hurricane." This squall lasted longer, five minutes or more, and when it
passed, the wind dropped somewhat, but did not die down. It raged
furiously, its shriek dropped to a sullen and menacing roar.

"Such a hurricane as this," the "Ol' Doc" continued, "has taken many
days to brew. Day after day the air has remained in its ominous quietude
over the surface of the ocean, becoming warmer and warmer, gathering
strength for its devastating career. The water vapor has risen higher
and higher. Dense cumulus clouds have formed, the upper surfaces of
which have caught all the sun's heat, intensifying the unstable
equilibrium of the air. The powers of the tempest have grown steadily in
all evil majesty of destructiveness. Day by day, then hour by hour, then
minute by minute, the awful force has been generated, as steam is
generated by fierce furnace fires under a ship's boilers.

"Why, Stuart, it has been figured that the air in a hurricane a hundred
miles in diameter and a mile high, weighs as much as half-a-million
Atlantic liners, and this incredibly huge mass is driven at twice the
speed of the fastest ship afloat. In these gusts, which come with the
rain squalls, the wind will rise to a velocity of a hundred and twenty
miles an hour. It strikes!"

A crack of thunder deafened all, and green and violet lightning winked
and flickered continuously. The hiss of the rain, the shrieking of the
wind and the snapping crackle of the thunder defied speech. The heat in
the hurricane wing was terrific, but Stuart shivered with cold. It was
the cold of terror, the cold of helplessness, the cold of being
powerless in such an awful evidence of the occasional malignity of
Nature.

Between the approach of night and the closing in of the clouds, an inky
darkness prevailed, though in the intervals between the outbursts of
lightning, the sky had a mottled copper and green coloration, the copper
being the edges of low raincloud-masses, and the green, the flying scud
above.

Squall followed squall in ever-closer succession, the uproar changing
constantly from the shriek of the hundred-mile wind in the squall to the
dull roar of the fifty-mile wind in between. The thunder crackled,
without any after-rumble, and the trembling of the ground could be felt
from the pounding of the terrific waves half a mile away. Then, in a
long-drawn-out descending wail, like the howl of a calling coyote, the
hurricane died down to absolute stillness.

"Whew!" exclaimed Stuart, in relief. "I'm glad that's over."

"Over!" the scientist exclaimed. "The worst is to come! We're in the eye
of the hurricane. Look!"

Overhead the sky was almost clear, so clear that the stars could be
seen, but the whirl of air, high overhead, made them twinkle so that
they seemed to be dancing in their places. To seaward, a violet glow,
throbbing and pulsating, showed where the lightning was playing.

"I'm going out to see if all's safe," said the scientist. "Do you want
to come?"

Stuart would have rather not. But he dared not refuse. They had hardly
left the hurricane wing and got to the outside, when "Ol' Doc" sniffed.

"No," he said, "we'll go back. We're not full in the center. The edge
will catch us again."

He pointed.

Not slowly this time, but with a swiftness that made it seem unreal, a
shape like a large hand rose out of the night and blotted out the stars.
A distant clamor could be heard, at first faintly, and then with a
growing speed, like the oncoming of an express train.

"In with you, in!" cried the scientist.

They rushed through the low passage and bolted the heavy door.

Then with a crash which seemed enough to tear a world from its moorings,
the opposite side of the hurricane struck, all the worse in that it came
without even a preparatory breeze. The noise, the tumult, the sense of
the elements unchained in all their fury was so terrible that the boy
lost all sense of the passage of time. The negroes no longer moaned or
prayed. A stupor of paralysis seized them.

So passed the night.

Towards morning, the painful rarefaction of the air diminished. The
squalls of rain and all-devouring gusts of wind abated, and became less
and less frequent.

The sky turned gray. Upon the far horizon rose again the cirrus arc, but
with the dark above and the light below. Majestically it rose and
spanned the sky, and, under its rim of destruction, came the sunrise in
its most peaceful colors of rose and pearl-gray, sunrise upon a ravaged
island.

Over three hundred persons had been killed that night, and many millions
of dollars of damage done. Yet everyone in Barbados breathed relief.

The hurricane had passed.

CHAPTER X

THE LAKE OF PITCH

Still weak from his illness after the manchineel poisoning, and
exhausted as he was after a sleepless night in the grip of a hurricane,
yet Stuart's first thought on leaving the hurricane wing was to get a
news story to his paper. The spell of journalism was on him.

Around the "Ol' Doc's" place, the hurricane seemed to have done little
damage. Not a building had fallen. Trees were stripped bare of their
leaves, cane-fields laid low, but when the boy commented on this escape,
the old scientist shook his head.

"I built these structures with hurricanes in view," he said. "This old
place will stand like a lighthouse. But you'll find it different in the
negro quarters. Alas! You will find mourning, everywhere."

At the boy's urgency the botanist agreed to lend him a horse and light
carriage and bade one of the negroes drive the lad to Bridgetown. A
hasty breakfast was swallowed, and, before six in the morning, Stuart
was on his way back across the island, his faithful typewriter beside
him.

They had not gone far before the real tragedy of the hurricane began to
show itself. Here was a house in splinters, and a group of people,
crying, with bowed heads, told that death had been there. The fields
were stripped bare. Near Corrington, a sugar factory showed a piece of
broken wall as all that remained. The road had been washed away by the
torrential floods.

In a small settlement, some negroes were working in a frenzy around a
mass of ruined cottages, from beneath which sounded dolorous cries. The
carriage stopped and both Stuart and the driver leaped out to aid. Ten
minutes' work unearthed three sufferers, two but slightly hurt, the
third with his leg broken. Alas! Others were not so fortunate.

Rising smoke, here and there, showed where fire had followed the
hurricane. Instead of the songs of labor in the fields, nothing was to
be heard but cries of distress. As the country grew more thickly
settled, on the way to Bridgetown, so was the suffering more intense and
the death-roll heavier. The drive, not more than twelve miles in all,
took over four hours, so littered was the road with fallen trees and the
débris of houses.

In the ruins of Bridgetown, Stuart met one of his newspaper friends, the
news instinct still inspiring him to secure every detail of the
catastrophe, though there was no newspaper office, the building being in
ruins and the presses buried under an avalanche of brick.

"The wires are down, too," said this newspaper man, "if I were you, I'd
chase right over to Trinidad. The mail steamer, which should have gone
last night, hasn't left yet, or, at least, I don't think she has. She
couldn't leave till the hurricane passed and the sea calmed down a bit.
At present, we are cut off from the world. It'll take two or three days,
a week, maybe, before the shore ends of the submarine cables are
recovered. If you can catch that steamer, you'll be in Trinidad this
evening."

"But suppose the cables are broken there, too?" suggested Stuart.

"They're not likely to be," his friend replied, "we just caught the
southern end of the hurricane here--lucky we didn't get the middle!--and
so Trinidad is likely to have escaped entirely. But you'll have to hurry
to catch that steamer. I'll get in touch with Ol' Doc, the best way I
can, and send your trunk on to you down there. Got your typewriter?
That's all right, then. Write your story on the boat. Now, hurry up!
Here!"

He shouted to a passing negro.

"Go down to the pier, Pierre, get a boat, any boat, and take this
passenger. He's got to catch the steamer."

"Me catch um!"

And he did, though it was by the narrowest margin, for the mail steamer
had steam up, and only waited until this last passenger should come
aboard.

Stuart had counted on being able to enrich his account of the hurricane
with personal stories from the passengers on the steamer, all of whom
had been through the disaster, some on board ship and some ashore. There
was no chance of this. Although a glorious day, not a soul among the
passengers was on deck. All were sleeping, for all, alike, had waked and
watched.

Stuart was dropping with weariness and sleep, but he remembered what the
Managing Editor had said to him about a "scoop" and he thought that this
might be the great opportunity of his life to make a reputation for
himself on his first trip out. A well-placed half-sovereign with the
deck steward brought him a cup of strong coffee every two hours, and
though his mind was fogged with weariness, so vivid had been his
impressions that they could not help but be thrilling.

Though one of the most richly verdant of all the West India islands,
Trinidad had little beauty to Stuart, on his first sight of it. He saw
it through a haze of weariness, his eyes red-rimmed through lack of
sleep. The harbor is shallow, and Stuart, like other passengers, landed
in a launch, but he had eyes only for one thing--the cable office. Since
his only luggage consisted of a portable typewriter--his trunk having
been left behind at "Ol' Doc's"--the customs' examination was brief.

At the Cable Office, Stuart learned, to his delight, that not a message
had either reached the office or gone out about the Barbados hurricane.
He had a scoop. He put his story on the wires, staggered across the
street to the nearest hotel, threw off coat and boots and dropped upon
the bed in an exhausted slumber. And, as an undercurrent to his dreams,
rang the triumph song of the journalist:

"A Scoop!"

Stuart slept the clock round. It was evening again when he awoke. A wash
to take the sleep out of his eyes, and down he went to see how big a
dinner he could put away. But the doorman at the hotel, an East Indian,
came forward to him with a telegram on a salver. The boy tore it open,
and read:

     "GOOD--STUFF--SEND--SOME MORE--FERGUS."

And if Stuart had been offered the Governor Generalship of all the West
Indian Islands put together, he could not have been more proud.

He spent the evening interviewing some of the passengers who had come on
the mail steamer the day before and who had stayed in Port of Spain and,
before midnight, filed at the cable office a good "second-day story."
Remembering what his friend the reporter had told him, Stuart realized
that though he was still sending this matter to Fergus, as it was
straight news stuff, it probably was being handled by the Night
Telegraph staff. That would not help to fill Fergus' columns in the
Sunday issue, and the boy realized that, no matter what live day stuff
he got hold of, he must not fall behind in his series of articles on the
Color Question in the West Indies.

This question--which takes on the proportions of a problem in everyone
of the West Indian Islands--was very different in Trinidad than in
Barbados. The peoples and languages of Trinidad are strangely mixed.
Though it is an English colony, yet the language of the best families is
Spanish, and the general language of the negro population is Creole
French, a subvariant of that of Haiti. The boy found, too, on his first
long walks in the neighborhood of Port-of-Spain, that there was a large
outer settlement of East Indian coolies, and quite a number of Chinese.
The English, in Trinidad, were few in number.

In his quest for interviews about the hurricane, one of the chattiest of
Stuart's informants had been a Mr. James, a resident of Barbados, but
whose commercial interests were mainly in Trinidad. Since, then, this
gentleman evidently knew the life in both islands, his comparisons would
be of value, and the following day Stuart asked him for a second
interview.

"I'm starting out to my place on the Nariva Cocal," the planter replied,
"going in about an hour. Very glad to have you as my guest, if you wish,
and the trip will give you a good view of the island. Then we can chat
on the way."

Stuart jumped at the opportunity. This was exactly what he was after,
for the Nariva Cocal, with its thirteen-mile long coco-nut grove on the
shore of the ocean, is famous. The boy knew, too, that this section was
very difficult of access, the Nariva River forming a mixture of river,
tidal creek, lagoon, mangrove swamp and marsh, hard to cross.

For some little distance out of Port-of-Spain the train passed through
true tropical forests of a verdure not to be outrivaled in any part of
the New World. "Here," says Treves, "is a very revel of green, a hoard,
a pyramid, a piled-up cairn of green, rising aloft from an iris-blue
sea. Here are the dull green of wet moss, the clear green of the
parrot's wing, the green tints of old copper, of malachite, of the wild
apple, the bronze-green of the beetle's back, the dead green of the
autumn Nile." And these are expressed, not in plants, but in trees. The
moss is waist-high, the ferns wave twenty feet overhead, the bamboo
drapes a feathery fringe by every stream, the cocoa trees grow right up
to the road or railroad which sweeps along as on an avenue between them,
while at every crossing the white roadway is lined by the majestic
sentinels of plantain, coco-nut palm and breadfruit tree.

Beyond St. Joseph, the ground became a low plain, level and monotonous,
and given over to sugar-cane. Near d'Abadie, this crop gave place to
cocoa, the staple of the center of the island, and this extended through
Arima to Sangre Grande, the terminus of the railroad. During the trip
Stuart's host had enlightened him by an exact and painstaking
description of the growing of these various crops and the methods of
their preparation for market.

At Sangre Grande, the railroad ended and a two-wheeled buggy was
waiting. The planter ordered the East Indian driver to follow in the
motor-bus which conveys passengers to Manzanilla, and took the reins
himself, so as to give a place to Stuart. The road had left the level,
and passed over low hills and valleys all given over to cocoa trees.

"See those bottles!" commented Mr. James, pointing to bottles daubed
with paint, bunches of white feathers and similar objects hung on trees
at various points of the road.

"Yes," answered Stuart, "what are they for?"

"Those are our police!" the planter explained. "This colony is well
governed, but planters have had a good deal of trouble keeping the
negroes from stealing. We used to engage a number of watchmen, and the
police force in this part of the island was increased. It didn't do any
good, you know! Stealing went on just the same.

"So my partner, down here, went and got hold of the chief Obeah-man or
witch-doctor of the island--paid him a good stiff price, too--and asked
him to put a charm on the plantation. He did it, and those bottles and
feathers are some of the charms. We pay for having them renewed every
year. It costs a tidy bit, but less than the watchmen and police did."

"And have the thefts stopped?"

"Absolutely. There hasn't been a shilling's worth of stuff touched since
the obeah-man was here."

"But obeah wouldn't have any effect on East Indian coolies," objected
Stuart.

"Coolies don't steal," was the terse reply, "those that are Mohammedans
don't, any way. Trinidad negroes do. They're different from the
Barbadian negroes, quite different. Obeah seems to be about the only
thing they care about."

"I ran up against some Obeah in Haiti," remarked Stuart, "though Voodoo
is stronger there."

"I never heard of much real Voodoo stuff here in the Windward Islands,"
the planter rejoined, "but Obeah plays a big part in negro life. And, as
I was just telling you, the whites aren't above using it, sometimes."

"In Haiti," responded Stuart, "Father and I once found an Obeah sign in
the road. Father, who knows a lot about those things, read it as a charm
to prevent any white man going that way. I thought it was silly to pay
any attention, but Father made a long detour around it. A week or so
after I heard that a white trader had been driving along that road, and
he drove right over the sign. Half a mile on, his horse took fright,
threw him out of the buggy and he was killed."

The planter shrugged his shoulders.

"I know," he said. "It's all right to call it coincidence, but down in
these islands that kind of coincidence happens a bit too often. For me,
I'll throw a shilling to an Obeah-man any time I see one, and I won't
play any tricks with charms if I know enough about them to keep away."

The buggy jogged along at a smart pace until the shore was reached, and
then set down the beach over the hard wet sand. On the one side heaved
the long rollers of the Atlantic, on the other was the continuous grove
of coco-nut palms, thirteen miles long, one of the finest unbroken
stretches in the entire world.

A hospitable welcome was extended to Stuart at the house of the Nariva
Cocal, and, after dinner, the planter took him to the shores of the
Nariva River, not more than twenty or thirty yards from the house,
which, at this place, had a bank free of marsh for a distance of perhaps
a couple of hundred yards.

"It was just at a place like this, but a little higher up-stream," said
the planter, "that the snake story happened which Kingsley described in
'At Last.' Four girls were bathing in this river, because the surf is
too heavy for sea-bathing, and one of them, who had gone into the water
partly dressed, felt something clutch at her dress.

"It was a huge anaconda.

"The other three girls, with a good deal of pluck, I think, rushed into
the shallow water and grabbed hold of their comrade. The snake did not
let go, but the dress was torn from her body by the wrestle between the
strength of the reptile and that of the four girls. I know one of the
sisters quite well. She's an old woman, now, but she lives in Sangre
Grande, still."

Turning from the river, Stuart and the planter strolled some distance
down the knife-like sandy ridge between the ocean and the swamp. This
narrow ridge, at no point a hundred yards wide and averaging less than
half that, contains over 300,000 palms, and this plantation alone helps
to make Trinidad one of the greatest coco-nut markets of the world.

"I notice," said Stuart, anxious to get material for his articles, "that
nearly all your laborers here are East Indian coolies. Are they better
than negroes?"

"They come here under different conditions," explained the planter. "The
negro is free to work or not, as he chooses, but the coolie is
indentured. He has to work. He earns less than the negro, but, by the
time we pay his voyage and all the various obligations that we have to
undertake for an indentured laborer, the coolie isn't much cheaper to us
than the negro. But, while the negro can do more work in a day than the
coolie, he won't. Moreover, if he feels, after a few days' work, that he
has had enough of it, he just goes away. A Trinidad negro with a pound
or two in his pocket won't do a tap of work until the last penny be
spent. The coolie will work quietly, steadily, continuously. What is
more, he saves his money. That's bringing about a deuced curious
situation in Trinidad, you know.

"One of the queer things about the West Indies, as you know yourself,
having lived in Cuba, is that there is really no middle class. Here, in
Trinidad, there are the wealthy Spanish families and the English
officials and planters. The blacks are the laborers. For many decades
there has been no class between. Now, the East Indians, who came here as
coolies, are beginning to follow the commercial instinct of the east,
and to open small shops or to buy land. Hence the negro, who used to
despise and look down on the coolie because he worked for even less
money, is now finding himself subordinate to an East Indian class which
has risen to be his superior. Then the East Indians have commenced
rice-growing, and now are employing negroes, oversetting the old social
basis.

"There's one thing, son, which few people realize in this color question
in the West Indies. That is that the negro has not got the instincts of
a shopkeeper. He doesn't take to trade, ever. If he gets educated, he
wants at once to be a doctor, a lawyer, or, still more, a preacher. But
this is a commercial age, and any race which shows itself unfitted for
commerce is bound to stay the under dog, you know. Trinidad shows that,
given equal conditions, the East Indian coolie will rise, the negro
will not."

The following morning, Mr. James having gone over the books of the
plantation with his manager, the two started back for Port-of-Spain.

"Why don't you live here, Mr. James?" asked the boy. "It's a lovely
spot, in that coco-nut grove, with the sea right at your doors."

"Climate, my boy," was the answer. "I told you, on the way over here,
that Trinidad is reckoned one of the most prosperous islands of the West
Indies--though it really belongs more to the coast of South America than
it does to the Antilles--but, if you stop to think for a moment, you'll
see that the prosperity of Trinidad is due to the fact that it has a
warm, moist, even climate all the year round. That's fine for cocoa and
coco-nuts, but it's not good for humans. The warm moist air of Trinidad
is deuced enervating. No, let me go back to Barbados. It may not be as
beautiful--I'll admit that it isn't--but at least there is a north-east
breeze nearly all the year round to keep me jolly cool."

The two travelers talked of various subjects, but, once more aboard the
train at Sangre Grande, the question of Trinidad's wealth recurred to
Stuart, and he sought further information.

"You spoke of the island as being prosperous, Mr. James," he said. "Has
the Pitch Lake, discovered so many centuries ago by Sir Walter Raleigh,
had anything to do with it?"

"Directly, not such a great deal, though, of course, it is a steady
source of income, especially to the Crown. Asphalt is less than a
twentieth part of the value of the exports of the island, so, you see,
Trinidad would have been rich without that. Indirectly, of course, the
Pitch Lake has been the means of attracting attention to the island,
especially in earlier times. The facts that Trinidad is out of the
hurricane track and off the earthquake belt have had a good deal to do
with its prosperity, too, you know. My friend Cecil always declares that
Trinidad and Jamaica together, the two richest of the West Indian
islands, ought to run the whole cluster of Caribbean islands, just as
little England runs the whole British Empire."

"Who was it said that?" asked Stuart curiously, though his heart was
thumping with excitement.

"A chap I know, Cecil, Guy Cecil, sort of a globe-trotter. One of the
biggest shareholders in this Pitch Lake. Funny sort of Johnny. Know
him?"

"I--I think I've met him," answered the boy. "Tall, eyes a very light
blue, almost colorless, speaks very correct English, fussy about his
clothes and doesn't talk about himself much."

"That's the very man!" cried the planter, "I couldn't have described him
better myself. Where did you meet him?"

Stuart answered non-committally and steered the subject into other
channels, determining within himself that he would certainly go out to
the Pitch Lake, if only with the hope of finding out something more
about this mysterious Guy Cecil, whose name seemed to be cropping up
everywhere.

The following day, having seen his friend the planter off on the
homeward bound mail steamer, Stuart prepared for his visit to the famous
Pitch Lake, though the planter had warned him that he would be
disappointed.

Going by railway to Fernando, Stuart took a small steamer to La Brea,
the shipping point for the asphalt, a town, which, by reason of its
association with pitch, has a strange and unnatural air. The beach is
covered with pieces of pitch, encrusted with sand and stones, worn by
the water into the most grotesque shapes and forming so many
resting-places for hundreds of pelicans. Some of these blocks of
hardened asphalt had been polished by the sea until they shone like
jewels of jet as large as a table, others, fringed with green seaweed,
gave the shore an uncanny appearance of a sea-beach not of this earth.
Unlike the universally white towns of the West Indies, La Brea is black.
The impress of pitch is everywhere. The pier is caked with the pitch,
the pavements are pitch, and, on the only street in the town as Stuart
passed, he saw a black child, sitting on a black boulder of pitch, and
playing with a black doll made of pitch.

Taking a negro boy as a guide, Stuart started for the famous deposit of
asphalt, about one mile inland. The countryside leading thither was not
absolutely barren, but it was scrawny and dismal. A coarse sand
alternated with chunks of black asphalt. A few trees managed to find a
foothold here and there, and there was sparse vegetation in patches.

There was nothing exciting, nothing momentous in the approach to the
lake. Nor was there anything startling in the sight of the lake itself.

Although previously warned, Stuart could not repress an exclamation of
disappointed surprise at his first view of this famous lake, the
greatest deposit of natural asphalt in the world.

A circular depression, so slight that it was hard for the boy to realize
that it was a depression at all, had, toward its center, a smaller flat,
115 acres in extent. There were no flames, no sulphurous steam, no
smoke, no bubbling whirls of viscid matter, nothing exciting whatever.
The stretch before him resembled nothing so much as mud-flat with the
tide out. The dried-up bed of a large park pond, with a small island or
two of green shrubbery, and some very scrawny palms around the edge
would exactly represent the famous Pitch Lake of Trinidad.

Arriving at the edge, Stuart stepped on the lake with the utmost
precaution, for he had read that the lake was both warm and liquid. Both
were true. But the warmth was only slight, and the liquidity was so
dense that, when a piece of pitch was taken out, it took several hours
for the slow-moving mass to fill up the hole.

"The sensation that walking upon this substance gave," writes Treves,
"was no other than that of treading upon the flank of some immense
beast, some Titanic mammoth lying prostrate in a swamp. The surface was
black, it was dry and minutely wrinkled like an elephant's skin, it was
blood-warm, it was soft and yielded to the tread precisely as one would
suppose that an acre of solid flesh would yield. The general impression
was heightened by certain surface creases, where the hide seemed to be
turned in as in the folds behind an elephant's ears. These skin furrows
were filled with water, as if the collapsed animal was perspiring.

"The heat of the air was great, the light was almost blinding, while the
shimmer upon the baked surface, added to the swaying of one's feet in
soft places, gave rise to the idea that the mighty beast was still
breathing, and that its many-acred flank actually moved."

The task of taking the pitch out of this lake, Stuart found to be as
prosaic as the lake itself. Laborers, with picks, broke off large
pieces--which showed a dull blue cleavage--while other laborers lifted
the pieces on their heads--the material is light--and carried them to
trucks, running on a little railroad on the surface of the lake, and
pulled by a cable line.

The tracks sink into the lake, little by little, and have to be pried
up and moved to a new spot every three days, but as they are specially
constructed for this, the labor is trifling. The laborers work right
beside the railroad trucks. It makes no difference where the ditch is
dug, from which the asphalt is taken, as the hole left the night before
is filled again by the following morning.

It has been estimated that this deposit alone contains over 9,000,000
tons of asphalt. It is 135 feet deep, and though enormous quantities of
the stuff have been taken out, the level has not fallen more than ten
feet.

In the lake are certain small islands, which move around from place to
place, apparently following some little-known currents in the lower
layers of the pitch.

Stuart went on to the factory, hoping to get some further information
about Guy Cecil, but met with a sudden and unexpected rebuff. Not only
did no one about the place seem to know the name, but they refused to
admit that they recognized the description, and seemed to resent the
questions.

Trying to change the subject, Stuart commenced to ask questions about
where the asphalt came from, and the manager, who seemed to be a
Canadian, turned on the boy, sharply.

"See here," he said, "I don't know who you are, nor where you come from.
But I'll give a civil answer to a civil question. As for this Cecil, I
don't know anything about him. As for where this asphalt come from, I
don't know, and nobody knows. Some say it's inorganic, some say is from
vegetable deposits of a long time ago, some say it's fish. The chemists
are still scrapping about it. Nobody knows. Now, is there anything
more?"

The manner of the response was not one to lead Stuart to further
attempts. He shook his head, and with a curt farewell went back to La
Brea, Fernando and Port de Spain.

At the hotel he found a telegram.

     "GET--STORY--PRESENT--CONDITION--ST. PIERRE--MARTINIQUE--FERGUS."

Two days later Stuart boarded the steamer for Martinique, the Island of
the Volcano.

CHAPTER XI

THE MORNING OF DOOM

"Ay," said the first mate to Stuart, as they paced the bridge on the
little steamer which was taking the boy to Martinique, "yonder little
island is St. Lucia, maybe the most beautiful of the West Indies, though
it isn't safe for folks to wander around much there."

"Why?" asked Stuart in surprise, "are the negroes mutinous?"

"No, bless ye!" the mate gave a short laugh. "Mighty nice folks in St.
Lucia, though Castries, the capital, is a great fever town. It isn't the
folks that are dangerous. Snakes, my bully boy, snakes! It's the home of
the fer-de-lance."

"The Yellow Viper?" queried Stuart.

"The same. An' the name's a good one. It's more viperous than any other
snake of the viper bunch, an' its disposition is mean and yellow right
through. Ever see one?"

"No," said Stuart, "I haven't. I heard there were some in Trinidad, and
there have been a few reported in Cuba. But I guess they're rare there.
What do they look like?"

The mate spat freely over the side, while he gathered his powers for a
description.

"If ye can think of a fish that's been a long time dead," he suggested,
"an' has turned a sort of phosphorescent brown-yellow in decayin', ye'll
have a general idea of the color. The head, like all the vipers, is low,
flat an' triangle-shaped. The eye is a bright orange color, an' so
shinin' that flashes from it look like sparks of red-yellow fire. I've
never seen them at night, but folks who have, say that in the dark the
eyes look like glowin' charcoal.

"If I had to take a walk through the St. Lucia woods, I'd put on armor,
I would! Why, any minute, something you take for a branch, a knot of
liana, a clump of fruit, a hangin' air-plant, may take life an' strike.
An' that's all ye'll ever know in this world."

"There's no cure for it?"

"None. A little while after a fer-de-lance strikes, ye're as dead as if
you'd been dropped in mid-Atlantic, with a shot tied to your feet."

"Maybe I'm just as glad I'm not going to land there," said Stuart,
"though I guess it's one of the most famous fighting spots of the world.
I read once that for a hundred and fifty years there was never a year
without a battle on that island. Seven times it was held by the English
and seven times by the French."

"Like enough," replied the mate. "It's owned by the English now, but
Castries is a French town, through and through. But Castries sticks in
my memory for a reason which means more to a deep-water sailor than any
land fightin'. We were lyin' in the harbor at Castries when the _Roddam_
came in, ay, more'n twenty years ago."

"What was the _Roddam_?" queried Stuart, scenting a story.

"Have ye forgotten," answered the mate in a return query, "or didn't ye
ever know? Let me tell ye what the _Roddam_ was!"

"We were lyin' right over there, in Castries Harbor, dischargin'
coal--which was carried down by negro women in baskets on their
heads--when we saw creep round the headland of Vigie, where you can see
the old barracks from here, the shape of a steamer. She came slowly,
like some wounded an' crippled critter. Clear across the bay we could
hear her screw creakin,' an' her engines clankin' like they were all
poundin' to pieces. What a sight she was! We looked at her, struck still
ourselves an' unable to speak. They talk of a Phantom Ship, but if ever
anything looked like a Phantom Steamer, the _Roddam_ was that one.

"From funnel-rim to water-line she was grey an' ghost-like, lookin' like
a boat seen in an ugly dream. Every scrap o' paint had been burned from
her sides, or else was hangin' down from the bare iron like flaps o'
skin. She had been flayed alive, an' she showed it. Some of her derricks
were gone, the ropes charred an' the wires endin' in blobs o' melted
metal. The planks of her chart-house were blackened. Her ventilators had
crumpled into masses without any shape.

"Laborin' like a critter in pain, she managed to make shallow water, an'
a rattle o' chain told o' the droppin' o' the anchor. After that,
nothin'! There wasn't a sign o' life aboard.

"The harbor folks pulled out to take a look at the craft. As they came
near, the smell o' fire an' sulphur met them. A hush, like death, seemed
to hang over her. The colored boatmen quit rowin', but the harbor-master
forced them on. Her ladder was still down. The harbor-master climbed
aboard.

"On deck, nothin' moved. The harbor-master stepped down into grey ashes,
sinkin' above his knee. With a scream he drew back. The ashes were hot,
almost white-hot, below. The light surface ash flew up about him and
half-suffocated him. His boot half-burned from his foot and chokin', the
harbor-master staggered back to the rail for air.

"No life was to be seen, nothin' but piles o' grey ash, heaped in
mounds. Ash was everywhere. From it rose a quivering heat, smellin' o'
sulphur an' the Pit.

"Yet everyone couldn't be dead on this ghost-ship, for someone must ha'
steered her into the harbor, an' dropped the anchor. Makin' his way
along the rail, the harbor-master made his way to where he could reach
the iron ladder goin' to the bridge, an' climbed it. The bridge was
clear of ash, blown free by the mornin' breeze.

"The chart-house door was open. In it, lyin' across the steam steerin'
wheel, was Captain Freeman, unconscious. His face was so blistered that
his eyes were nearly shut. His hair was singed right down to the skull.
His hands were raw an' bleedin'. His clothes were scorched into
something that was black an' brittle. The harbor-master lifted him, an'
laid him on the chart-house bunk."

"What others were there?"

"Pickin' his way, he got to the bow an' found the deck hand who had let
down the anchor. He was blind an' his flesh was crisped and cracking.

"From below, crawled up four o' the engine-room crew. Most o' the others
aboard lay dead under those heaps o' hot ash on the deck."

"What had happened?"

"This had happened. The _Roddam_ had been through the eruption of Mont
Pelée, the only ship which escaped o' the eighteen that were in the
harbor. She got away only because she made port just fifty-two minutes
before the eruption, an' had been ordered to the quarantine station,
some distance off."

"Did you see anything of the eruption yourself?"

"We knew that somethin' had happened, even down here in St. Lucia. It
turned almost as black as night for a few minutes, an' our skipper, who
was ashore, said he had felt a slight earthquake. But we saw enough of
it, right after."

"How?" queried Stuart.

"We had a lot o' foodstuff in our cargo, some of which was billed for
Caracas. But, as soon as we heard the story, our captain told the
engineer to get up full steam an' make for Fort-de-France. He knew the
owners would have wanted him to go to the relief of the folks of
Martinique. We got there the next day an' saw sights! Sights I can't
ever forget!"

The eruption of Mont Pelée and the destruction of the town of St.
Pierre, in 1902, over 30,000 people being killed in the space of three
seconds, was one of the most tragic disasters of history, and the ruins
of St. Pierre are today the most astounding ruins that the world
contains of so vast and terrible a calamity, outrivaling those of
Pompeii.

The cataclysm did not come without warning. As early as March 23, a
scientist ascended the volcano and reported that a small crater was in
eruption. By the end of April, to quote from Heilprin, "vast columns of
steam and ash had been and were being blown out, boiling mud was flowing
from its sides and terrific rumblings came from its interior. Lurid
lights hung over the crown at night-time, and lightning flashed in
dazzling sheets through the cloud-world. What further warnings could any
volcano give?"

On April 25, a crater broke into a small eruption, throwing out showers
of rock-material, which, however, did not reach the town, distant a mile
from the foot of the volcano. On May 5, an avalanche of boiling mud,
many acres wide, tumbled down from the volcano, and went roaring along
the bed of the Rivière Blanche at the rate of a mile a minute. A large
sugar factory was engulfed and some 159 lives lost. On May 6 and 7, the
sulphur fumes were so strong in the streets that horses, and even
people, dropped from suffocation.

Again--what further warning could any volcano give?

There were other warnings. On April 30, light ashes had begun to fall.
On May 1 an excursion was announced for the summit of Mont Pelée for
those who wished to see a volcano in action, but that morning a deeper
coat of ashes blanched the streets. The Jardin des Plantes--one of the
richest tropical gardens of the West Indies--lay buried beneath a cap of
gray and white. The heights above the city seemed snow-clad. The country
roads were blocked and obliterated, and horses would neither work nor
travel. Birds fell in their noiseless flight, smothered by the ash that
surrounded them, or asphyxiated by poisonous vapors or gases that were
being poured into the atmosphere.

"The rain of ashes never ceases," the local paper wrote on May 3. "At
about half-past nine, the sun shone forth timidly. The passing of
carriages is no longer heard in the streets. The wheels are muffled.
Many business houses are closed to customers.... The excursion which
had been organized for tomorrow morning cannot take place, the crater
being absolutely inaccessible. Those who had planned to take part will
be informed on what date this excursion will become possible."

On May 4 the paper wrote: "The sea is covered in patches with dead
birds. Many lie asphyxiated on the roads. The cattle suffer greatly,
asphyxiated by the dust of ashes. The children of the planters wander
aimlessly about the courtyards, with their little donkeys, like human
wrecks. They are no longer black, but white, and look as if hoar frost
had formed upon them.... Desolation, aridity and eternal silence prevail
over the countryside."

Next day, May 5, was the day when the mud crater opened. It was followed
by an upsurging wave from the ocean, which added to the fear of the
people, but which receded slowly and with little damage. On the day
following, Pelée was shrouded in a heavy cloud, and ashes and cinders
fell over a wide stretch of country. The surface waters had disappeared.
Trees had been burned of their leaves. Yet a commission appointed to
investigate the condition of the volcano made light of it, saying "the
relative position of the craters and the valleys, leading towards the
sea, enables the statement that the safety of St. Pierre is complete."

Wednesday, May 7, opened one of the saddest and most terrorizing of the
many days that led up to the final eruption. Since four o'clock in the
morning, Mont Pelée had been hoarse with its roaring, and vivid
lightning flashed through its shattered clouds. Thunder rolled over its
head, and lurid glares played across the smoky column which towered
aloft. "Some say," says Heilprin, "that at this time it showed two fiery
crater-mouths, which shone out like fire-filled blast furnaces. The
volcano seemed prepared for a last effort.

"When daylight broke through the clouds and cast its softening rays over
the roadstead, another picture of horror rose to the eyes. The
shimmering waters of the open sea were loaded with wreckage of all
kinds--islands of débris from field and forest and floating fields of
pumice and jetsam. As far as the eye could reach, it saw but a field of
desolation." The river of Basse-Pointe overflowed with a torrent of
black water, which carried several houses away. Black rains fell.

Again, and for the last time--could a volcano give any further warning?

Yet the governor, a scientific commission, and the local paper joined in