Monsieur, what would you? It pleased God that I should be born
here, that my children should be taken away from me here; and, maybe,
that I should die here, too."

"You are not afraid that Mont Pelee will begin again?"

The negro shrugged his shoulders.

"It is my home, Monsieur," he said simply. "Better a home which is sad
than the place of a stranger which is gay. But we hope, Monsieur, that
some day the government of Martinique will accept a parole of good
conduct from the Great Eater of Lives"--he pointed to Mont Pelee--"and
give us back our town again."

Next morning, studying the life of the little town, Stuart found that
many others shared the view of the crippled negro. The little
market-place on the Place Bertin, though lacking any shelter from
pouring rain or blazing sun, was crowded with three or four hundred
market women. Daily the little steamer takes a cargo from St. Pierre,
for the ash from the volcano has enriched the soil, and the planters are
growing wealthy. There are many more little houses and thatched huts
tucked into corners of the ruins than appear at first sight, and a hotel
has been built for the tourists who visit the strange spot.

The crater in Mont Pelee is silent now; the great vent which hurled
white-hot rocks, incandescent dust and mephitic gases, is now covered
with a thick green shrubbery, only here and there do small smoke-holes
emit a light sulphurous vapor; but the great mountain, treeless,
wrinkled, implacable, seemed to Stuart to throw a solemn shadow of
threat upon the town. The secret of St. Pierre, as Stuart wrote to his
paper, "lies in the hope of its inhabitants, but its real future lies in
the parole of good conduct from the Great Eater of Human Lives, Mont
Pelee."

CHAPTER XII

A CORSAIR'S DEATH

There is not a corner of the world which is more full of historic
memories than is the West Indies. Dominica, the next island which Stuart
passed after he had left Martinique, besides being one of the scenic
glories of the world, described as "a tabernacle for the sun, a shrine
of a thousand spires, rising tier above tier, in one exquisite fabric of
green, purple and grey," has many claims to fame. Here, the cannibal
Caribs were so fierce that for 255 years they defied the successive
fleets of Spaniards, French and English who tried to take possession of
the island. Some three hundred Caribs still dwell upon the island upon a
reservation provided by the governmen