THE SKETCHER. THE SOLE SURVIVOR'S STORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2527, 20 August 1902, Page 65

THE SKETCHER. THE SOLE SURVIVOR'S STORY.

DESTRUCTION OF ST. PIERRE

Haoul Sartout, sometimes calkd Pe'.ino, yviH live in history as ihe sole human being to escape from St. Pierre when the Martinique city was obliterated from the face of the island by the shower of death from Mont Pelee.

Beautiful women, sweet children, brave 6oldiers, and the honoured fathers of the city, leaders in trade and the professions, perished. Not one of these was saved, but a coarse negro, jet black and stupid, with little more mind than an animal, was strangely preseired to continue a worthless life.

The very fact that Sartout was unfit to be at brge among the people was Ins sahation, for the poisonous gasses and lcd-hot rocks and ashes did not penetrate to the far depths of the dungeon in wh:ch lit; was a prisoner (says the New York World*. Sartout has told, slowly, by degrees, as a little child might tell, of his four hori lble dnys and nighte in the dungeon, with th? silence of death above bun : a stillness that terrified his untaught mind and that his instinct rather than his intelligence led him to feel was the result of some terrible happening. The negro's sufferings were like those of a dumb animal, and it is doubtful if he could have lived through the frightful ordeal had he been of finer fibre.

As it was his brute strength was proof against foul air and the burns he received ■when he tried to escape from his tomb, and the same element in his nature, stubborn and fiercely contending for life, sustained him until the rescuers came.

The real story "of the destruction of St. Pierre will never be ioM All that is known of the awful affair, except as it was seen through smoke and dust from a distance, is 'the story tod by the faces and positions of the dead, and by the character of the debris into which the whole city had been turned.

There were no eye-witnesses, none who escaped from the cycloae of gas and flame to tell of the horrors of the moment.

Sartout's privilege in this respect is greater than that of any other person, for if he could not see he could hear. Thousands died and an entire city was destroyed just a few feet above where he stood wondering what had happened-

If he had been a man of even average intelligence, he might have made for history one of its most wondrons chapters ; nevertheless, despite his darkened mind, hiR experience, as told to the World's staff correspondent, crudely related and with-ont-one touch of imagination, thrills with, the terrible tragedy it pictures and stirs with pity for the miserable black.

Sartout was weak mentally and ignorant and vicious. He had been arrested for a trivial offence the week previous to the eruption of Mont Pelee, and was serving out a short gaol sentence on the day of the disaster.

He behaved so badly in gaol that to Bubdue him be was placed m a dungeon underneath the gaol and located almost beneath the sidewalk There were gratings looking into the cellar from the s.dewalk for purposes of ventilation, but the dungeon was so placed for disciplinary pui poses that Sartout was m daikaess. The grating ■was one cell removed from liim.

Old Mont Pelee. so long regarded With benignant disapprob.it ion by the people of Martinique, much as a family might regard a pet dog that did a great deal of barking, but that could not be induced to bite, had been rumbling and growling for some time. Sartout could plainly hear, he says, the noises made by the mountain early on the morning of the disaster, and he felt the trembling of the earth.

He was not frightened in the least, for he feit, like many other natives of the place, that no harm could possibly come from Mont Pelee 3 upon which he had looked every day since he was a little child The tall, eharply-cut mountain had stood as long as memory, and longer, like a guard over the city. It was like an old friend Suddenly, as he sat alone in his dark cell, there" were noises, terrific crashes and fcuch quakings of the earth as he had never known before.

He at once realised that something extraordinary was happening. He conld not see anything, but the thick stone walls of his prison could not prevent him from hearing the deep rumble and cyclonic tearing of the cyclone of death

through the city hi which he had lived all his life.

He was panic stricken and beat with his hands against the walls. He succeeded in getting open a dooT leading to a cell a little larger than hi* own, over which was the iron grating looking up through the sidewalk. He stumbled into this apartment, to find it half filled with a sifting mass of hot ashes and dtiSt.

It burned him seierely, and he was not slow to retreat to the Inner cell fiom which he had just escaped. Then came the awful silence that seemed lo paralyse him with fear more than the fust roar th?t had awakened the keenest sense cf danger in his eimple, untaught soul. He 3>?.s since said that be lay on the floor of his dark cell for hours, scarcely daring to bieathe. oppressed by the terrifying silence. He does not know how many hours he lav there.

Finally he summed up courage enough to open the cell door and look into the other apartments. He v.\<s met by a wave of dust that chok~d his mouth and nostrils and half-blinded him.

Tt had cooled, and he was able to wade through the soft, fiaky-like mass- toward the ii on gratings, through which descended a constant volume of smoke and almost invisible dust.

He cried aloud again and again,' and at every echo his voice secined to increase the shower through the grating.

He went to the door which shut off his escape to the stairs leading to the floor alcove and pounded at it untu hi> fists were biuised and torn. He waited for a response ; none came. He struggled through the mass of ashed to the grating again to shriek aad cry out for help. Hunger and thirst overcame him and he crept back into his dungeon to. sleep, but he could not. He says he did not close his eyes from the moment he heard the terrifying roar of the volcano ball until Monday morning, four days later, when his shrieks to invade the stricken city.

His cries were feeble this tim=. and he were heard by the fiist party of searchers Lad almost despaired of hbeiation

Finally a marine from the French cruiser Puchet heard Sartout's wail and. tracing ii. rescued the one living creature iti the city.

The bars of the grating hud to be prised open, and Sartout wa« chugged cut, more dead .than alive He was found to be not only fin the veige of death fiom staivation find th.rst. but saiffczina; fjom t-errible burns about his leg.s aud the lower part of his bodr.

Sai lout i= now in the hospital at Fort de France, and will soon again be on the streets, none the woise for one of rhe niosfc remarkable esCapos from death in the history of the w orld.

So recently a despicable negro prisoner, representing the \ery lowest element on the lovely is';u>d. Sari out has. through his. m.irtyidom, b^coi'ie a sort of hero : at anyrate. a cuiiosity to be regarded with interest for years.

It is quite possible that Ssrtout will be snapped up by some American showman, a«d lh;ti before he is fairly well over his burns he will sit stolidly on a platfrrm for the edification of those who would look i.pon the only one of more than 30.000 persons to be saved from a historical du aster.

Francois Nautia, of the Triton, a boat that traversed the waterway between St. Pierre and Fuit de France, saw from the sva the savage deluge of the city, and his stoiy of the fiery, poisonous, deluge makes the escape of Sartout. who was in the centre of it. seem almost incred.ble.

Nautra. like Snrtont. ToM his thrilling story to the World's, staff coire.-pondent. H.s 80-ton schooner was beating down the wind around the western point He was just at the apex of tills point, so that he commanded a view of both the water in fiout of St Pierre on the north and further away to the south the contour of Port Royal B.vy. in the bosom of w Inch sits Fort de France

Nautra expla.ns his departure from his anchorage at St Pierre, where he had berthed the night before, by admitting his fear «»£ the noises that eaaie from P«-!ee.

All the way down the coast he fastened his eyes on the great crater. He heard the rumblings as from a distance, not so loud oi distinct as Mi C'aie, but he trembled at the e'-hoes of them He agrees with Mr Clare"-* stateui -nt that a gieat ball of what petnitd to him black s-üb'-t.mcp appeared on the top of the vii'cano. He describes the same noise and movement as Mr Clare, tliouzh not so vividly or minutely, as- he was then about six mile* at sea.

He and h;» mate, Anato'e Burger, differ from Mr C'laie in that they bay the ball broke the instant it left the lip of the ciater. but it is probabe that their view was obstructed by the configuration of the mountain.

There is no uncertainty, however, in their description of what occurred to the ships in the haibour and the men. on them Withir. less than a minute, accoiding to Xnutra. the great ball b;.d swept down the four miles fiom the lip of the crater to the sea and had caused d'stmbances in the water that rocked his distant little boat like an eggshell, although it was close to the shore and out of range of the wave that that great mass sent leaping and shrieking with the ciesceiido 01 a shrili steam siren.

He saw the waters racing upwaid and out. higher than the- tallest masts of any of the sLips : saw the ships thiown oiei on their sides, and far out at sea saw the waves disappear westward aud northward in great white caps toward Dominica and Guadeloupe. Dominica folk say that the water raced up the faces of the peipendicu'.ar cliff*, and the simple people of Roseau. Knghsb and regroes, thought the £nd of th<_- woild hdd ccme.

Natitra s- ;i yv the great wave passed far out at sea, before lie could count ten breaths, his way of measuring seconds. He says, 100, that it came hack thundering with greater force and higher in volume, shrieking louder than before. He says he saw two ships, both steamers, on fire. He thinks — he Uoejs not make the

declaration positively — lhat three or fomof the boats, including one steamer — he does not know which — survived the fir^t *hock, but were beaten down against the chalky bottom of the St Pierre roadstead and submerged. He and his crew of two h'jnx. all their energies to get out of the lange of danger. The water mounting in wave* as high as the rail of his deck, forced his frail craft ahead at greater speed than she bad evtr shown before — and in the ;ight direction. He- lecdlls seems a vessel a mile or so to

the westv anl of himself, or at least a part of the vps&ei, with a single spar sticking out of the watc-i. and pair of what looked to him to be the boom, stripped clean of cauvas and washed by the waves.

The sea had not calmed dottm before Natuia steerud his boat into the haibour at Foit ac France He came ashore as pale as a man** of his complexion can become, but it took him half a day to recover sufficiently to describe, with diiything like an intelligent understanding, the horrois he had w itnes>ed.

He adds a det«l now that he did not lecall at rim. TRat is that when the first greit wave went out at sea it left ihe shore for hilf a mile beyond the end of the beach ban en of water

He saw a tumbled mays of living things — ftsh, sharks, and other creatuies of the sea. Then back came the water again, to tumble against the beach and thunder far up into the streets of the city, buried in ashes

These moving things that he saw in that brief second were the onh living creatures to be seen flora the time he looked backward at the scenes of ir,du«try on the ships in the hatbour betore they went to destruction.