Photo by David Billings on Unsplash

The Madness of Pelée

1

Travis had barely stepped from his ship when he heard the screams. Hundreds of people were running, falling over one another as they crushed through the narrow streets, shaking their clothes and waving their arms in the air as though fighting off swarms of invisible insects.

“What is it?” Travis caught the arm of one man who held a small broom in his hand like a sword. “What is wrong with everyone?”

“It is the Fool,” the man panted. “He has put a curse on us; on the whole city. We must get to the temple and give an offering to the Goddess. Only the Great Pelée can save us now.” And then he was gone, sweeping at the ground with his broom and brushing his arms and legs as he ran.

It had been many years since Travis had left the sleepy little island of Pelée to see the world and seek his fortune. Now, with his return, it seemed everything had changed. The island was in chaos. The people rushed frantically through the cobbled streets. They were frightened, but of what? The Goddess Pelée who lived in their mountain had always protected them. With the mountain at their back and the sea to the south, their harbor was calm and smooth. Merchants brought in their ships to trade. The fields, full of rich black earth, grew anything you planted and the people of Pelée flourished on their small island in the sun.

Especially now, in early summer, the city held a grand festival celebrating their prosperity and giving thanks to their protector, the mighty Mount Pelée. It was a golden, magical time of year and the main reason Travis had decided to return. He missed his country more and more, and as the festival day drew closer, it seemed as though Pelée herself were calling him home. His traveling companions had laughed at him. They no longer believed in gods of trees and rock and mountaintop and searched instead for the science behind the stones, but Travis was young and loved his island home despite the old-world superstitions.

“Travis! Travis, it’s you. Thank the gods, my boy, you’ve returned.” It was Travis’ uncle stumbling towards him across the emptying street. He had wrapped his arms and legs in leather, the way the berry pickers did to protect themselves from thorns, but this was not berry season.

“Uncle, tell me what has happened here. Why is everyone so frightened? It’s as if you’ve all gone mad!”

“It is madness,” he struggled to catch his breath. “But the madness of one man, if you can call him that. He has discovered dark secrets from living so close to Pelée all these years and now he takes his revenge on us.”

Travis motioned his uncle to sit against the low sea wall that ran the length of the harbor front. “Sit and calm yourself, Uncle. Tell me slowly and from the beginning, what has happened?”

“No!” His uncle jumped back as though bitten. “I dare not sit against those warm stones. Haven’t you seen the snakes? They are everywhere, flooding the town with their poison. Snakes have invaded every house, every crevice, and every street. Children have died, Travis. We have beaten them off with sticks and covered ourselves from head to foot, and still they come. Two days ago it was spiders, and before that all the animals tried to run into the sea. Please, come with me to the temple. It is not safe here.” Just as he grabbed Travis’ arm to go, a low rumbling shook the earth and he fell to the ground covering his face with his hands.

The Fool up in a tree

“Run for your lives. Run, run!” shrieked a voice so close to Travis’ ear that he jumped, landing lightly with his sword drawn almost a meter from where his uncle lay.

It was only the Fool. Travis had known him a long time. He lived in the hills and caves near the mountain. He knew the ways of animals better than anyone and could make tonics to cure a snakebite or fever. He sometimes came into the town and did crazy dances for the children. Or, as he did now, hung from the branches of trees and chattered nonsense at whoever would listen. They said he had caught the madness as a punishment from Pelée. One night, when he was barely old enough to wear long pants, he had crept up the mountain to the great caldera at the top, and peering down into the depths, had seen the blazing eyes of the goddess. Pelée had sent up her poisonous breath to fester in the child’s mind. Now, forever a Fool, he lived trapped between two worlds. The people had always tolerated him. He was harmless and had even proved useful over the years. It was true, he was quite mad, but if you looked closely, there were warm smiles hiding in the corners of his eyes.

“Tsk, tsk. My boy, where have you been? What wonders have you almost seen? Look, look. Shook, shook. Make no mistake. Run for your lives. Run or shake!” The Fool squealed and fell from the branches of the tree as one demented, rolling and lurching across the dusty street with jerky movements.

“What do you mean?” Travis cried, running after him. “What is happening here, Fool? Do you know? What do you mean, run or shake?”

“Travis,” his uncle pleaded looking up from the ground through shaking fingers. “He’s a madman. Can’t you see? He’s possessed. Keep your distance, Travis. Don’t listen to him.”

“It is the fool who does not listen,” screeched the Fool and skittered across the emptying street and around the corner out of sight.

2

By nightfall, things were quiet again. The people had offered up baskets of fruit and bundles of fine Oriental cloth to the goddess, praying and chanting and singing songs to soothe Pelee and bring her attention to the plight of her children. By morning, the snakes had disappeared again as mysteriously as they had come. The sea was calm, the sky was clear, with no sign of the Fool anywhere.

“Pelée has heard us,” Travis’ mother said with a small sideways nod of her head as if to say — you see? I knew she would.

Travis’ mother had been happy to see her son, and now, safe at home, she pressed a hot mug of steaming milk into his hands as they sat and watched the sun rise over the ocean. But she had not been pleased the night before when her son spoke outside the temple, saying they should not be so quick to blame the Fool for their misfortunes.

“He has never given us cause to mistrust him before.” Travis had said quietly.

“He’s been biding his time,” a neighbor answered in a threatening tone.

“We have never harmed him. Why should he want revenge now? How can you think he has the power to do these things?” Travis stood looking into the flickering candles beside the doorway.

“Why do you defend him?” growled the man Travis had known all his life. “Do you know something about this evil business, Travis? Speak it, then.”

“I have only just returned.” Travis said. “I am as concerned as you, Garth. I cannot help feeling that things are not what they seem. Perhaps we should consider leaving Pelée for a while.”

“What! Are you mad? It is two days to the Summer Festival. We will not be driven from our city.”

So Travis held his tongue when, next day, humming softly to herself, his mother prepared the garlands they would wear in the parade that afternoon. They could not know that the peace would not last. Terror would find its way into their hearts again before long.

Festival on St. Martinique

3

That afternoon, the parade was glorious. Yellow and white silk streamers hung from the windows of the houses, drifting on the gentle sea breezes. Children laughed and skipped to the beat of the drums and the intoxicating jingle-jangle of the tambourines while flute players filed by four abreast, filling the air with sweet melodies. Everyone was smiling as they danced through the streets. The colorful parade snaked through the city marking the Eve of the Summer Festival as the whole island gathered at the foot of the mountain to feast beneath the evening sky.

Only Travis was not smiling. He could not shake the feeling that something was not right. The voice of the Fool was shrieking over and over in his mind. Run or shake, run, run.

Travis remembered something his friends had told him while on their travels. It was something about a great smoking mountain that devoured villages. They had not thought it magical at all; they had used the word ‘volcano’. What if Mount Pelée were such a mountain? What if the goddess herself was trying to warn her people? What if Travis’ friends were right when they said the old gods had fled the world, afraid of man’s new science? In some countries where Travis and his companions had been, the kings and governors were imprisoning philosophers and poets who tried to teach the people about science and reason. Sometimes they were even put to death for their belief in one god; one truth; one ultimate good. Many people didn’t like change and became frightened when the old ways were threatened. People, like all other animals, were most dangerous when frightened.

The happy gathering had finally reached the foot of the mountain, and the people began to fan out quietly around the platform that had been erected in a small clearing. Each summer at Festival time, many stories and songs were performed in honor of Pelée. Blankets were thrown out in the cool grass. Families sat in small groups eager for the performance.

Suddenly, out of nowhere the Fool appeared. He must have been hiding below the platform and jumped up so quickly, it seemed like he leapt out of thin air.

“Look at your mountain. Look. Look,” he chanted, hopping from foot to another and waving his arms like an excited monkey. “Pelée is leaving. Pelée is flying. People are screaming. People are dying.”

“Be gone, Fool!” a voice cried out from the crowd. “Go back to the demons that spawned you!”

A stone sailed through the air over their heads and struck the old Fool on the shoulder. He staggered back for a moment, and then gaining his feet, shrieked out again. “Run for your lives. Run, run. Run for your lives. Today is done.”

But his words were drowned away as stone after stone began to fly. The crowd, like dumb beasts suddenly free of the rope, engulfed him with their demented fury. Travis stood still. He suddenly felt strangely alone. The screams of the enraged mob sounded distant and muffled; small sounds of little consequence it seemed to him; just the petty squabbling that men sometimes make when murdering each other. Travis stood transfixed by the terrible sight of Mount Pelée.

Blinded by ignorance, no one had bothered to actually look up at the mountain for days. They had all been too busy with their precious festival to notice anything else; too busy chasing reptiles to listen to what the Fool was trying to say.

“Look at the mountain,” Travis said now. “Look at the mountain!” He did not remember speaking loudly. In fact his voice seemed barely a whisper, but suddenly, everyone was quiet and all eyes looked at Mount Pelée.

Jutting up and out of the crater at the top of the mountain, dark against the darkening sky stood a great shaft of rock twenty meters high, like the jagged spine of an ancient monster pushed out by some great force from the gut of the mountain. It towered above them like the hideous finger of an angry god. Mount Pelée was grotesque, deformed, and silent.

volcanic spine

“The Fool is right,” Travis screamed then. “Listen to me. The Fool is right! Look at the mountain!”

Sometimes people cannot hear the truth. Sometimes reason is out of reach especially when people are joined against a common enemy. The villagers were not in the mood to listen that day, nor to forestall their festivities in the face of what they could not understand. With one voice they turned with a roar against Travis, pushing past his bewildered mother and the few anxious faces that turned towards the frightening spine of Pelée. Laying hold of Travis they dragged him back into the city and threw him into a dark, damp cell. Bruised and alone, Travis shrank against the cold walls. There were no windows and only one small door. No light, no air came in from the outside, but instead of dying there, Travis was in the one place that could save his life.

Artists rendition of Mt Pelée when it erupted in 1902

Volcanic eruption as seen from other islands

4

The sailors heard the low thundering explosion from their ships at sea. In the small hours of the morning a huge fireball lit up the small island city of Pelée. It rested against the horizon for a second, like a great burning eye, and then it was gone.

Two days later the first boats reached what used to be the harbor. Ships were still burning at anchor. The harbor front had all but disappeared. Only a few buildings were left standing in the town itself. Most of the houses had been either incinerated instantly or blown down by the blast. Only the temple and the guardhouse remained standing: strangely clean and whole amid the devastation.

Harbor devastated by volcanic blast

“Were there any survivors at all?” asked one sea captain, who, having just arrived, joined a rescue team already on site.

“Only one,” the team leader replied. “A prisoner. His name is Travis. Somehow, the explosion missed the guardhouse completely. It doesn’t make sense. The buildings right beside it are completely gone.”

“Does he know what happened here?”

“No. He’s a lunatic. Crazy as they come. That’s probably why they locked him up. Keeps saying over and over again, run or shake, run or shake.”

“It’s terrible,” the captain said softly. “All the people, dead.”

“I know,” the team leader replied. “They didn’t have a chance. There was no warning.”

Martinique after eruption that left only two survivors

About Volcanoes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1902_eruption_of_Mount_Pel%C3%A9e

This story was loosely based on the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee on the island of Martinique in the West Indies that killed 28,000 residents of the nearby town of St. Pierre in a matter of minutes. Only two survived.

Mt. Pelée is a subduction volcano. Subduction volcanoes are the most notorious in the world and include Mt. Vesuvius in Italy, Krakatau in Indonesia, and Mount St. Helens in the US.

People often settle near active volcanoes because the rich, black volcanic soil at the foot of most volcanoes is good for farming. Several hundred years may pass between eruptions of active volcanoes. In geological terms this is not very long, but in human history this time span represents generations. After an eruption people often return and resettle the area.

In 1902, the people of St. Pierre witnessed the growth of a volcanic spine from the throat of Mt. Pelée before it erupted. Volcanic spines are caused when magma and hot gasses build intense pressure inside a volcano. The volcanic spine is squeezed from the inner shaft like toothpaste from a tube. The rigid columns of rock are made of solidified lava from previous eruptions and may rise many meters high.

We know that earth tremors preceded the eruption of Mt. Pelée for several days. Earth tremors and quakes are felt when pressure builds inside the volcano just before an eruption. Many eruptions are preceded by small tremors or even larger quakes that shake windows and knock down chimneys.

Although we will never know for sure if the animals on the island of Martinique acted strangely, we do know that rumors of strange animal behavior preceding volcanic eruptions and earthquakes have been reported for centuries. Before an earthquake, people have described pets or barnyard animals acting peculiarly, rabbits hopping wildly, deep-sea fish swimming close to the surface, catfish jumping out of the water, bees evacuating their hives, and reptiles leaving their hiding places. Although odd animal behavior has been widely reported throughout the world, it has never been scientifically proven.

During the eruption of Mt. Pelée, pyroclastic flows of super-heated volcanic gas, ash, pumice, and rock rushed down the slopes as fast as 100 km/hour or more. The temperature within these pyroclastic flows may have reached greater than 500° C, hot enough to burn and carbonize wood. Pyroclastic flows can completely incinerate one area while an adjacent area is left untouched. In some instances, rescue teams have found bowls of fresh fruit in one house while the house next to it is flattened and burned.

Pele is also the name of the Hawaiian goddess of earth and fire. In a rage, Pele sent Kamapuaa, god of water, out of her crater of fire and into the sea by chasing him with streams of lava. People of ancient times have often thought volcanoes were the homes of gods and that cataclysmic events, like volcanic eruptions, were a punishment against the people.