Eight bells had just sounded when the great thunder rocked over the gray-black harbor, and the molten vitals of the Monster, wrapped in a black cloud, filled the heavens, gathered and plunged down upon the city and the sea. As for the ship, eight miles from the shore and twelve miles from the craters, she seemed to have fallen from a habitable planet into the firemist of an unfinished world. She heeled over like a biscuit-tin, dipping her bridge and gunwales. She was deluged by blasts of steam and molten stone. Her anchor-chain gave way, and, burning in a dozen places, she was sucked inshore. Laird was on the bridge. Plass, the second officer, on his way to the bridge, to relieve or assist Laird as the bell struck, was felled at the door of the chart-room. A sailor trying to drag the body of Plass to shelter, was overpowered by the blizzard of steam, gas, and molten stone, falling across the body of his officer. The ship was rolling like a runaway-buoy. Peter Stock had been hurled across the cabin, but clutched the chair in which the priest was sitting, and clung to an arm of it, pinning the other to his seat. Several moments may have passed before he regained his feet. Though badly burned, he felt pain only in his throat and lungs, from that awful, outer breath as he regained the cabin. Firebrands still screamed into the sea outside, but the _Saragossa_ was steadying a trifle, and vague day returned. Stock was first to reach the deck, the woodwork of which was burning everywhere. He tried to shout, but his throat was closed by the hot dust. The body of a man was hanging over the railing of the bridge. It was Laird, with his face burned away. There were others fallen. The shock of his burns and the terrible outer heat was beginning to overpower the commander when Pugh, the third officer, untouched by fire, appeared from below. In a horrid, tongueless way, Stock fired the other to act, and staggered back into the cabin. Pugh shrieked up the hands, and set to the fires and the ship's course. Out of two officers and three sailors on deck when Pelée struck, none had lived. Peter Stock owed his life to the mute and momentary appearance of Father Fontanel. The screaming of the native-women reached his ears from the hold. Father Fontanel stared at him with the most pitiful eyes ever seen in child or woman. Black clouds were rolling out to sea. Deep thunder of a righteous source answered Pelée's lamentations. The sailors were fighting fire and carrying the dead. The thin shaken voice of Pugh came from the bridge. The engines were throbbing. Macready, Stock's personal servant, entered with a blast of heat. "Thank God, you're alive, sir!" he said, with the little roll of Ireland on his tongue. "I was below, where better men were not.... Eight miles at sea--the long-armed divil av a mountain--what must the infightin' have been!"