Part 22 (2/2)

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 ma.s.s 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 debris 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sing negro.

”Go down to the pier, Pierre, get a boat, any boat, and take this pa.s.senger. 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 pa.s.senger should come aboard.

Stuart had counted on being able to enrich his account of the hurricane with personal stories from the pa.s.sengers on the steamer, all of whom had been through the disaster, some on board s.h.i.+p and some ash.o.r.e. There was no chance of this. Although a glorious day, not a soul among the pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers, 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:

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