36
THE
DESTRUCTION
OF
ST.
PIERRE,
MARTINIQUE.
I jumped in it, and just as I did so I saw him run down toward me. But he was too late, and I heard him scream as the stream first touched and then swallowed him. I cut the rope that held the boat and went to an old cave about a quarter of a mile away, where we girls used to play pirates, but before I got there I looked back and the whole side of the mountain which was near the town seemed to open and boil down on the screaming thousands. I was burned a good deal by stones and ashes that came flying about the boat, but I got into the cave. A GREAT TIDAL WAVE.
“ I remember hearing an awful hiss as the boiling stuff struck the sea ; and the cave, which was generally dry, filled up to the top with water, and I do not remember any more until they picked me up two miles at sea and I found myself on the big steamer.” The officers of the Suchet say the girl was found unconscious in the sailing boat, which was badly charred and drifting helplessly, the mast and sail having been snapped off. It is thought the boat was too light to be swamped by the tidal wave. The twenty-nine others who were saved by the Suchet tell much the same story, but they did not see the first signs of the explosion. With one exception all the survivors were working close to the sea when the eruption began and had two full minutes to get away from the shore before, as the girl said, ‘‘the mountain opened its side and boiled down” upon the town. The awful calamity that destroyed St. Pierre staggers the imagination. The mind fails to grasp the full meaning of the fact that a city of 35,000 people was wiped ont of existence with the awful suddenness of a lightning stroke. The ruin was as complete as it was sudden. The disaster reminds one, in its completeness, of the fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It takes rank in awful destruction of life with the greatest calamities of modem times. OTHER PLACES LOST.
Besides St. Pierre the towns of Le Precheur, three and a half miles northwest, and Manceau were entirely destroyed. Le Precheur had a population of between 3,500 and 4,000. Manceau was smaller.