Torsade Literary Space Catastrophe (part fifty)
Jean Hess
La Catastrophe de la Martinique
(part fifty)
On the 9th, we resumed the rescue.
At 11:30, we were moored before the cove of Belleville, 200 meters from land. A movement underwater occurred. Bubbles, swirls, turbulence. The boat carried three times around its anchor. Pods of frightened porpoises veering off as well.
On the 10th, rescue work again.
On the 11th, clouds of very thick ash. We made slowly ahead of the Suchet.
On the 12th, we brought aboard more victims.
We had a good view of the eruption, on the 20th. At 6:00 in the morning, we observed the same phenomena as on the 8th, with this difference, that we did not see the two flashes. And, that there was less ash and more odor of sulphur. In the sea, a quantity of wreckage, six miles long. We saw two corpses afloat along the shore.
With many pains taken, we reached our cable, to raise and repair it, to replace the ends damaged by the underwater tremors. One hundred meters had been stripped of their sheathing, twisted, tangled, and disordered like a skein of yarn teased from the paws of a cat.
The officers of the Pouyer-Quertier, with whom I breakfasted while taking these notes, conducted me to the bow, to show me the ends of the broken cable. I saw a thing most difficult to comprehend. An underwater cable is a solid line of spun steel, rolled into a rope 5 centimeters in diameter and cased in gummed hemp. At 2620 meters of depth, there is pressure. One end of the cable was literally twisted into a corkscrew. The other, crusted with shells, had embedded itself around a log 8 centimeters wide by 1.50 meters long.
Explain this, who will or can, how this log of wood found itself at 2620 meters below the sea, just at the moment the cable broke, just at the moment to get tied up in a ribbon of steel?
What unknown power…?
The officers of the Pouyer-Quertier have told me only facts. They state; they do not explain.
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They really had no luck with this cable, which, repaired on the 20th, was broken again the 23rd, at 1:30 p.m., in exactly the same place.
The Pouyer-Quertier is commanded by M. Thirion, one of those exemplifying presence of mind in these sad days.
I’d been told at Fort-de-France of incidents between the commander of the Pouyer-Quertier and the authorities: the public prosecutor, the governor, the senator—
I asked him, regarding this:
“It’s true. The Prosecutor of the Republic, a little gentleman… What do you call him…toilette water…ah! Yes, Lubin! [Lubin is a brand name in perfumes. M. Thirion is taking advantage of the insult at hand.—Editor] M. Lubin, then, made the mistake of taking us for clients of his, and trying to treat us accordingly. On the 8th, we arrived at Carbet. We were mooring. At once came aboard this meagre fellow, poorly turned out, who demanded of us, ‘if we had come there to spectate’.
‘But, who are you?’
‘The Prosecutor of the Republic, monsieur…’ And the little man tries to grow larger. ‘Are you, yes or no, at my disposal?’
‘I have a requisition. Tell me if you have something of use to ask me. And I will judge.’
‘I don’t need your help. The population of Saint-Pierre is gone. The governor is dead. I am leaving myself…’
And he rattled down the ladder. It was high time he did.”
“And the governor?”
“Oh, nothing… Only, on the 9th, they’d sent him letters from the people of Prêcheur, and the Grande-Rivière, asking that they be rescued. And we were not dispatched until the 11th. We would have gone sooner. So, I have perhaps said that before occupying themselves with the search for strongboxes among the dead, it might be more humane to relieve the living of their distress.”
“And this put you at odds with Senator Knight?”
“Of him, if you will allow, we will not speak.”
That the reader, I pray, does not think these lines superfluous and spiteful gossip…
I document everything in the nature of establishing the psychology, which in tragic circumstances must be noted, and repeated. It is the record of the human state, and to our benefit.
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Bonus: The World of 1902
Two views of era fashions.
La Catastrophe de la Martinique
Catastrophe part one
(1902, Jean Hess, La Catastrophe de la Martinique; 2019, translation, Stephanie Foster)