Suddenly the steward rushed by shouting, “Close the cabin door, the volcano is coming!” Mrs. Stokes slammed the door just before a terrific explosion came which nearly burst the ear drums. The vessel was lifted high and sank down, and all were thrown off their feet by the shock, and huddled crouching in one corner of the little cabin. Scalding moist ashes poured in through a broken skylight in inky darkness. Next came suffocation, relieved by the door bursting open and air rushing in. When a little daylight came back, Mrs. Stokes and the little boy were plastered black with hot mud, the baby girl was dying, and the nurse and Rita were in great agony. A heap of scorching mud had collected on one corner of the floor, and as the young girl put her hand down to raise herself, her arm plunged to the elbow in scalding sand. They were all taken out to the deck where mother, boy, and baby died. The ship was on fire, and the nearby city was a mass of roaring flames. More ashes fell and scalded the victims. Curiously, third degree burns were left on flesh, through underclothing not burned at all. Clara said that the mountain appeared gray with smoke rolling west, that the weather was very calm, and that the dust smelled like gunpowder. She saw no flames during the blast and did not know what set fire to the steamer. The fires probably came from the city. Ashes came in sputtering splashes like “moist marl.” No rocks fell and the grit in cabin and on burns was wet sand. Before the blast there had been falling dust but, according to Clara, no difficulty in breathing. The sun was brownish red. The bow of the ship was pointed seaward, and the vessel heeled over left, then right. The stern, toward the conflagration, caught fire first, the bow later. There was no rumbling, only shock and rattling thunder all at once, no noise before or after. The only people Clara King saw toward the shore were some men on a raft. I wrote President Eliot and the American Relief Committee about the case of Rita Stokes, half American and the only white woman saved in St. Pierre. And I rejoiced to learn from her guardian and uncle, J. E. Croney of Barbados, that she was provided for. The sum of $450 was sent to the committee, and $6,000 in trust was set aside for her. She was never separated from her devoted nurse, Clara King. Apart from the experiences of the wounded, I found much to contemplate in the findings of numerous geologists; in the accounts of doctors, sailors, naval officers, resident government men, the local newspapers, and photographers; in the specimens we collected; and in the work of great newspaper and magazine correspondents.