CHITA: A Memory of Last Island

by

Lafcadio Hearn

"But Nature whistled with all herwinds, Did as she pleased, and went herway." Emerson

To my friend Dr. Rodolfo Matas ofNew Orleans

Contents

The Legend of L'Ile Derniere Out ofthe Sea's Strength The Shadow of theTide

The Legend of L'Ile Derniere

I.

Travelling south from New Orleans tothe Islands, you pass through a strangeland into a strange sea, by variouswinding waterways. You can journey tothe Gulf by lugger if you please; but

the trip may be made much morerapidly and agreeably on some one ofthose light, narrow steamers, builtespecially for bayou-travel, whichusually receive passengers at a point notfar from the foot of old Saint-LouisStreet, hard by the sugar-landing, wherethere is ever a pushing and flocking ofsteam craft all striving for place to resttheir white breasts against the levee,side by side, like great weary swans. Butthe miniature steamboat on which youengage passage to the Gulf neverlingers long in the Mississippi: shecrosses the river, slips into some canal-mouth, labors along the artificialchannel awhile, and then leaves it witha scream of joy, to puff her free way

down many a league of heavilyshadowed bayou. Perhaps thereaftershe may bear you through the immensesilence of drenched rice-fields, wherethe yellow-green level is broken at longintervals by the black silhouette ofsome irrigating machine; but,whichever of the five different routesbe pursued, you will find yourselfmore than once floating throughsombre mazes of swamp-forest, pastassemblages of cypresses all hoary withthe parasitic tillandsia, and grotesque asgatherings of fetich-gods. Ever fromriver or from lakelet the steamer glidesagain into canal or bayou, from bayouor canal once more into lake or bay;and sometimes the swamp-forest

visibly thins away from these shoresinto wastes of reedy morass where,even of breathless nights, the quaggysoil trembles to a sound like thunderof breakers on a coast: the storm-roarof billions of reptile voices chanting incadence, rhythmically surging instupendous crescendo anddiminuendo, a monstrous andappalling chorus of frogs! ....

Panting, screaming, scraping herbottom over the sand-bars, all day thelittle steamer strives to reach the grandblaze of blue open water below themarsh-lands; and perhaps she may befortunate enough to enter the Gulfabout the time of sunset. For the sake

of passengers, she travels by day only;but there are other vessels which makethe journey also by night threading thebayou-labyrinths winter and summer:sometimes steering by the North Star,sometimes feeling the way with poles inthe white season of fogs, sometimes,again, steering by that Star of Eveningwhich in our sky glows like anothermoon, and drops over the silent lakesas she passes a quivering trail of silverfire.

Shadows lengthen; and at last thewoods dwindle away behind you intothin bluish lines; land and water aliketake more luminous color; bayous openinto broad passes; lakes link themselves

with sea-bays; and the ocean-windbursts upon you, keen, cool, and fullof light. For the first time the vesselbegins to swing, rocking to the greatliving pulse of the tides. And gazingfrom the deck around you, with noforest walls to break the view, it willseem to you that the low land musthave once been rent asunder by the sea,and strewn about the Gulf in fantastictatters....

Sometimes above a waste of wind-blown prairie-cane you see an oasisemerging, a ridge or hillock heavilyumbraged with the rounded foliage ofevergreen oaks: a cheniere. And fromthe shining flood also kindred green

knolls arise, pretty islets, each with itsbeach-girdle of dazzling sand andshells, yellow-white, and all radiant withsemi-tropical foliage, myrtle andpalmetto, orange and magnolia. Undertheir emerald shadows curious littlevillages of palmetto huts are drowsing,where dwell a swarthy population ofOrientals, Malay fishermen, who speakthe Spanish-Creole of the Philippinesas well as their own Tagal, andperpetuate in Louisiana the Catholictraditions of the Indies. There are girlsin those unfamiliar villages worthy toinspire any statuary, beautiful with thebeauty of ruddy bronze, gracile as thepalmettoes that sway above them....Further seaward you may also pass a

Chinese settlement: some queer campof wooden dwellings clustering arounda vast platform that stands above thewater upon a thousand piles; over theminiature wharf you can scarcely fail toobserve a white sign-board paintedwith crimson ideographs. The greatplatform is used for drying fish in thesun; and the fantastic characters of thesign, literally translated, mean: "HeapShrimp Plenty." ... And finally all theland melts down into desolations ofsea-marsh, whose stillness is seldombroken, except by the melancholy cryof long-legged birds, and in wildseasons by that sound which shakes allshores when the weird Musician of theSea touches the bass keys of his mighty

organ....

II.

Beyond the sea-marshes a curiousarchipelago lies. If you travel bysteamer to the sea-islands to-day, youare tolerably certain to enter the Gulfby Grande Pass skirting Grande Terre,the most familiar island of all, not somuch because of its proximity asbecause of its great crumbling fort andits graceful pharos: the stationaryWhite-Light of Barataria. Otherwise theplace is bleakly uninteresting: awilderness of wind-swept grasses andsinewy weeds waving away from a thinbeach ever speckled with drift and

decaying things, worm-riddled timbers,dead porpoises.

Eastward the russet level is broken bythe columnar silhouette of the lighthouse, and again, beyond it, by somepuny scrub timber, above which risesthe angular ruddy mass of the old brickfort, whose ditches swarm with crabs,and whose sluiceways are half chokedby obsolete cannon-shot, now thicklycovered with incrustation of oystershells.... Around all the gray circling ofa shark-haunted sea...

Sometimes of autumn evenings there,when the hollow of heaven flames likethe interior of a chalice, and waves and

clouds are flying in one wild rout ofbroken gold, you may see the tawnygrasses all covered with something likehusks, wheat-colored husks, large, flat,and disposed evenly along the lee-sideof each swaying stalk, so as to presentonly their edges to the wind. But, ifyou approach, those pale husks allbreak open to display strange splendorsof scarlet and seal-brown, witharabesque mottlings in white and black:they change into wondrous livingblossoms, which detach themselvesbefore your eyes and rise in air, andflutter away by thousands to settledown farther off, and turn into wheat-colored husks once more ... a whirlingflower-drift of sleepy butterflies!

Southwest, across the pass, gleamsbeautiful Grande Isle: primitively awilderness of palmetto (latanier); thendrained, diked, and cultivated bySpanish sugar-planters; and nowfamiliar chiefly as a bathing-resort.Since the war the ocean reclaimed itsown; the cane-fields have degeneratedinto sandy plains, over which tramwayswind to the smooth beach; theplantation-residences have beenconverted into rustic hotels, and thenegro-quarters remodelled into villagesof cozy cottages for the reception ofguests. But with its imposing groves ofoak, its golden wealth of orange-trees,its odorous lanes of oleander.

its broad grazing-meadows yellow-starred with wild camomile, GrandeIsle remains the prettiest island of theGulf; and its loveliness is exceptional.For the bleakness of Grand Terre isreiterated by most of the other islands,Caillou, Cassetete, Calumet, WineIsland, the twin Timbaliers, Gull Island,and the many islets haunted by the graypelican, all of which are little more thansand-bars covered with wiry grasses,prairie-cane, and scrub-timber. LastIsland (L'Ile Derniere), well worthy along visit in other years, in spite of itsremoteness, is now a ghastly desolationtwenty-five miles long. Lying nearlyforty miles west of Grande Isle, it was

nevertheless far more populated ageneration ago: it was not only themost celebrated island of the group,but also the most fashionable watering-place of the aristocratic South; to-day itis visited by fishermen only, at longintervals. Its admirable beach in manyrespects resembled that of Grande Isleto-day; the accommodations also weremuch similar, although finer: acharming village of cottages facing theGulf near the western end. The hotelitself was a massive two-storyconstruction of timber, containingmany apartments, together with a largedining-room and dancing-hall. In rearof the hotel was a bayou, wherepassengers landed "Village Bayou" it is

still called by seamen; but the deepchannel which now cuts the island intwo a little eastwardly did not existwhile the village remained. The sea toreit out in one night the same night whentrees, fields, dwellings, all vanished intothe Gulf, leaving no vestige of formerhuman habitation except a few of thosestrong brick props and foundationsupon which the frame houses andcisterns had been raised. One livingcreature was found there after thecataclysm a cow! But how that solitarycow survived the fury of a storm-floodthat actually rent the island in twain hasever remained a mystery ...

III.

On the Gulf side of these islands youmay observe that the trees when thereare any trees all bend away from the sea;and, even of bright, hot days when thewind sleeps, there is somethinggrotesquely pathetic in their look ofagonized terror. A group of oaks atGrande Isle I remember as especiallysuggestive: five stooping silhouettes inline against the horizon, like fleeingwomen with streaming garments andwind-blown hair, bowing grievouslyand thrusting out arms desperatelynorthward as to save themselves fromfalling. And they are being pursuedindeed; for the sea is devouring theland. Many and many a mile of ground

has yielded to the tireless charging ofOcean's cavalry: far out you can see,through a good glass, the porpoises atplay where of old the sugar-cane shookout its million bannerets; and shark-finsnow seam deep water above a sitewhere pigeons used to coo. Men builddikes; but the besieging tides bring uptheir battering-rams whole forests ofdrift huge trunks of water-oak andweighty cypress. Forever the yellowMississippi strives to build; forever thesea struggles to destroy; and amid theireternal strife the islands and thepromontories change shape, moreslowly, but not less fantastically, thanthe clouds of heaven.

And worthy of study are those wanbattle-grounds where the woods madetheir last brave stand against theirresistible invasion, usually at somelong point of sea-marsh, widely fringedwith billowing sand. Just where thewaves curl beyond such a point youmay discern a multitude of blackened,snaggy shapes protruding above thewater, some high enough to resembleruined chimneys, others bearing astartling likeness to enormous skeleton-feet and skeleton-hands, withcrustaceous white growths clinging tothem here and there like remnants ofintegument. These are bodies and limbsof drowned oaks, so long drownedthat the shell-scurf is inch-thick upon

parts of them. Farther in upon thebeach immense trunks lie overthrown.Some look like vast broken columns;some suggest colossal torsos imbedded,and seem to reach out mutilatedstumps in despair from their deepeninggraves; and beside these are otherswhich have kept their feet withastounding obstinacy, although thebarbarian tides have been chargingthem for twenty years, and graduallytorn away the soil above and beneaththeir roots. The sand around, softbeneath and thinly crusted upon thesurface, is everywhere pierced withholes made by a beautifully mottledand semi-diaphanous crab, with hairylegs, big staring eyes, and milk-white

claws; while in the green sedges beyondthere is a perpetual rustling, as of somestrong wind beating among reeds: amarvellous creeping of "fiddlers,"which the inexperienced visitor mightat first mistake for so many peculiarbeetles, as they run about sideways,each with his huge single claw foldedupon his body like a wing-case. Year byyear that rustling strip of green landgrows narrower; the sand spreads andsinks, shuddering and wrinkling like aliving brown skin; and the last standingcorpses of the oaks, ever clinging withnaked, dead feet to the sliding beach,lean more and more out of theperpendicular. As the sands subside,the stumps appear to creep; their

intertwisted masses of snakish rootsseem to crawl, to writhe, like thereaching arms of cephalopods....

... Grande Terre is going: the sea minesher fort, and will before many yearscarry the ramparts by storm. GrandeIsle is going, slowly but surely: theGulf has eaten three miles into hermeadowed land. Last Island has gone!How it went I first heard from the lipsof a veteran pilot, while we sat oneevening together on the trunk of adrifted cypress which some high tidehad pressed deeply into the Grande Islebeach. The day had been tropicallywarm; we had sought the shore for abreath of living air. Sunset came, and

with it the ponderous heat lifted, asudden breeze blew, lightnings flickeredin the darkening horizon, wind andwater began to strive together, and soonall the low coast boomed. Then mycompanion began his story; perhapsthe coming of the storm inspired himto speak! And as I listened to him,listening also to the clamoring of thecoast, there flashed back to merecollection of a singular Breton fancy:that the Voice of the Sea is never onevoice, but a tumult of many voicesvoices of drowned men, the mutteringof multitudinous dead, the moaning ofinnumerable ghosts, all rising, to rageagainst the living, at the great Witch callof storms....

IV.

The charm of a single summer day onthese island shores is somethingimpossible to express, never to beforgotten. Rarely, in the paler zones, doearth and heaven take such luminosity:those will best understand me whohave seen the splendor of a WestIndian sky. And yet there is atenderness of tint, a caress of color, inthese Gulf-days which is not of theAntilles, a spirituality, as of eternaltropical spring. It must have been toeven such a sky that Xenophanes liftedup his eyes of old when he vowed theInfinite Blue was God; it was indeed

under such a sky that De Soto namedthe vastest and grandest of Southernhavens Espiritu Santo, the Bay of theHoly Ghost. There is a somethingunutterable in this bright Gulf-air thatcompels awe, something vital,something holy, something pantheistic:and reverentially the mind asks itself ifwhat the eye beholds is not the Pneumaindeed, the Infinite Breath, the DivineGhost, the great Blue Soul of theUnknown. All, all is blue in the calm,save the low land under your feet,which you almost forget, since it seemsonly as a tiny green flake afloat in theliquid eternity of day. Then slowly,caressingly, irresistibly, the witchery ofthe Infinite grows upon you: out of

Time and Space you begin to dreamwith open eyes, to drift into deliciousoblivion of facts, to forget the past, thepresent, the substantial, to comprehendnothing but the existence of thatinfinite Blue Ghost as something intowhich you would wish to melt utterlyaway forever....

And this day-magic of azure enduressometimes for months together.Cloudlessly the dawn reddens upthrough a violet east:

there is no speck upon the blossomingof its Mystical Rose, unless it be thesilhouette of some passing gull,whirling his sickle-wings against the

crimsoning. Ever, as the sun floatshigher, the flood shifts its color.Sometimes smooth and gray, yetflickering with the morning gold, it isthe vision of John, the apocalyptic Seaof Glass mixed with fire; again, withthe growing breeze, it takes thatincredible purple tint familiar mostly topainters of West Indian scenery; oncemore, under the blaze of noon, itchanges to a waste of broken emerald.With evening, the horizon assumestints of inexpressible sweetness, pearl-lights, opaline colors of milk and fire;and in the west are topaz-glowings andwondrous flushings as of nacre. Then,if the sea sleeps, it dreams of all these,faintly, weirdly, shadowing them even to

the verge of heaven.

Beautiful, too, are those whitephantasmagoria which, at the approachof equinoctial days, mark the comingof the winds. Over the rim of the sea abright cloud gently pushes up its head.It rises; and others rise with it, to rightand left slowly at first; then moreswiftly. All are brilliantly white andflocculent, like loose new cotton.Gradually they mount in enormous linehigh above the Gulf, rolling andwreathing into an arch that expandsand advances, bending from horizon tohorizon.

A clear, cold breath accompanies its

coming. Reaching the zenith, it seemsthere to hang poised awhile, a ghostlybridge arching the empyrean,upreaching its measureless span fromeither underside of the world. Then thecolossal phantom begins to turn, as ona pivot of air, always preserving itscurvilinear symmetry, but moving itsunseen ends beyond and below thesky-circle. And at last it floats awayunbroken beyond the blue sweep ofthe world, with a wind following after.Day after day, almost at the same hour,the white arc rises, wheels, and passes...

... Never a glimpse of rock on these lowshores; only long sloping beaches andbars of smooth tawny sand. Sand and

sea teem with vitality; over all the dunesthere is a constant susurration, ablattering and swarming of crustacea;through all the sea there is a ceaselessplay of silver lightning, flashing ofmyriad fish. Sometimes the shallows arethickened with minute, transparent,crab-like organisms, all colorless asgelatine. There are days also whencountless medusae drift in beautifulveined creatures that throb like hearts,with perpetual systole and diastole oftheir diaphanous envelops: some, oftranslucent azure or rose, seem in theflood the shadows or ghosts of hugecampanulate flowers; others have thesemblance of strange living vegetables,great milky tubers, just beginning to

sprout. But woe to the human skingrazed by those shadowy sproutingsand spectral stamens! the touch ofglowing iron is not more painful...Within an hour or two after theirappearance all these tremulous jelliesvanish mysteriously as they came.

Perhaps, if a bold swimmer, you mayventure out alone a long way once! Nottwice! even in company. As the waterdeepens beneath you, and you feelthose ascending wave-currents ofcoldness arising which bespeakprofundity, you will also begin to feelinnumerable touches, as of gropingfingers touches of the bodies of fish,innumerable fish, fleeing towards

shore. The farther you advance, themore thickly you will feel them come;and above you and around you, to rightand left, others will leap and fall soswiftly as to daze the sight, likeintercrossing fountain-jets of fluidsilver. The gulls fly lower about you,circling with sinister squeaking cries;perhaps for an instant your feet touchin the deep something heavy, swift,lithe, that rushes past with a swirlingshock. Then the fear of the Abyss, thevast and voiceless Nightmare of theSea, will come upon you; the silentpanic of all those opaline millions thatflee glimmering by will enter into youalso...

From what do they flee thusperpetually Is it from the giant sawfishor the ravening shark from the herds ofthe porpoises, or from the grande-ecaille, that splendid monster whom nonet may hold, all helmed and armoredin argent plate-mail or from thehideous devilfish of the Gulf, gigantic,flat-bodied, black, with immense side-fins ever outspread like the pinions ofa bat, the terror of luggermen, theuprooter of anchors From all these,perhaps, and from other monsterslikewise goblin shapes evolved byNature as destroyers, as equilibrists, ascounterchecks to that prodigiousfecundity, which, unhindered, wouldthicken the deep into one measureless

and waveless ferment of being... Butwhen there are many bathers theseperils are forgotten, numbers givecourage, one can abandon one's self,without fear of the invisible, to thelong, quivering, electrical caresses ofthe sea ...

V.

Thirty years ago, Last Island lay steepedin the enormous light of even suchmagical days. July was dying; for weeksno fleck of cloud had broken theheaven's blue dream of eternity; windsheld their breath; slow wavelesscaressed the bland brown beach with asound as of kisses and whispers. To

one who found himself alone, beyondthe limits of the village and beyond thehearing of its voices, the vast silence,the vast light, seemed full of weirdness.And these hushes, these transparencies,do not always inspire a causelessapprehension: they are omenssometimes omens of coming tempest.Nature, incomprehensible Sphinx!before her mightiest bursts of rage, everputs forth her divinest witchery, makesmore manifest her awful beauty ...

But in that forgotten summer thewitchery lasted many long days, daysborn in rose-light, buried in gold. Itwas the height of the season. The longmyrtle-shadowed village was thronged

with its summer population; the bighotel could hardly accommodate all itsguests; the bathing-houses were toofew for the crowds who flocked to thewater morning and evening. There werediversions for all, hunting and fishingparties, yachting excursions, rides,music, games, promenades. Carriagewheels whirled flickering along thebeach, seaming its smoothnessnoiselessly, as if muffled. Love wroteits dreams upon the sand...

... Then one great noon, when the blueabyss of day seemed to yawn over theworld more deeply than ever before, asudden change touched the quicksilversmoothness of the waters the swaying

shadow of a vast motion. First thewhole sea-circle appeared to rise upbodily at the sky; the horizon-curvelifted to a straight line; the linedarkened and approached, a monstrouswrinkle, an immeasurable fold of greenwater, moving swift as a cloud-shadowpursued by sunlight. But it had lookedformidable only by startling contrastwith the previous placidity of the open:it was scarcely two feet high; it curledslowly as it neared the beach, andcombed itself out in sheets of woollyfoam with a low, rich roll of whisperedthunder. Swift in pursuit anotherfollowed a third a feebler fourth; thenthe sea only swayed a little, and stilledagain. Minutes passed, and the

immeasurable heaving recommencedone, two, three, four ... seven longswells this time; and the Gulfsmoothed itself once more. Irregularlythe phenomenon continued to repeatitself, each time with heavier billowingand briefer intervals of quiet until atlast the whole sea grew restless andshifted color and flickered green; theswells became shorter and changedform. Then from horizon to shore ranone uninterrupted heaving one vastgreen swarming of snaky shapes,rolling in to hiss and flatten upon thesand. Yet no single cirrus-speckrevealed itself through all the violetheights: there was no wind! you mighthave fancied the sea had been upheaved

from beneath ...

And indeed the fancy of a seismicorigin for a windless surge would notappear in these latitudes to be utterlywithout foundation. On the fairest daysa southeast breeze may bear you anodor singular enough to startle youfrom sleep, a strong, sharp smell as offish-oil; and gazing at the sea you mightbe still more startled at the suddenapparition of great oleaginous patchesspreading over the water, sheeting overthe swells. That is, if you had neverheard of the mysterious submarine oil-wells, the volcanic fountains,unexplored, that well up with theeternal pulsing of the Gulf-Stream ...

But the pleasure-seekers of Last Islandknew there must have been a "greatblow" somewhere that day. Still the seaswelled; and a splendid surf made theevening bath delightful. Then, just atsundown, a beautiful cloud-bridgegrew up and arched the sky with asingle span of cottony pink vapor, thatchanged and deepened color with thedying of the iridescent day. And thecloud-bridge approached, stretched,strained, and swung round at last tomake way for the coming of the gale,even as the light bridges that traversethe dreamy Teche swing open whenluggermen sound through their conch-shells the long, bellowing signal of

approach.

Then the wind began to blow, with thepassing of July. It blew from thenortheast, clear, cool. It blew inenormous sighs, dying away at regularintervals, as if pausing to draw breath.All night it blew; and in each pausecould be heard the answering moan ofthe rising surf, as if the rhythm of thesea moulded itself after the rhythm ofthe air, as if the waving of the waterresponded precisely to the waving ofthe wind, a billow for every puff, asurge for every sigh.

The August morning broke in a brightsky; the breeze still came cool and clear

from the northeast. The waves wererunning now at a sharp angle to theshore: they began to carry fleeces, aninnumerable flock of vague greenshapes, wind-driven to be despoiled oftheir ghostly wool. Far as the eye couldfollow the line of the beach, all theslope was white with the great shearingof them. Clouds came, flew as in apanic against the face of the sun, andpassed. All that day and through thenight and into the morning again thebreeze continued from the north. east,blowing like an equinoctial gale ...

Then day by day the vast breathfreshened steadily, and the watersheightened. A week later sea-bathing

had become perilous: colossal breakerswere herding in, like moving leviathan-backs, twice the height of a man. Stillthe gale grew, and the billowing waxedmightier, and faster and faster overheadflew the tatters of torn cloud. The graymorning of the 9th wanly lighted asurf that appalled the best swimmers:the sea was one wild agony of foam,the gale was rending off the heads ofthe waves and veiling the horizon witha fog of salt spray. Shadowless and graythe day remained; there were madbursts of lashing rain. Evening broughtwith it a sinister apparition, loomingthrough a cloud-rent in the west ascarlet sun in a green sky. His sanguinedisk, enormously magnified, seemed

barred like the body of a belted planet.A moment, and the crimson spectrevanished; and the moonless night came.

Then the Wind grew weird. It ceasedbeing a breath; it became a Voicemoaning across the world, hooting,uttering nightmare sounds, Whoo!whoo! whoo! and with eachstupendous owl-cry the mooing of thewaters seemed to deepen, more andmore abysmally, through all the hoursof darkness. From the northwest thebreakers of the bay began to roll highover the sandy slope, into the salines;the village bayou broadened to abellowing flood ... So the tumultswelled and the turmoil heightened

until morning, a morning of graygloom and whistling rain. Rain ofbursting clouds and rain of wind-blown brine from the great spumingagony of the sea.

The steamer Star was due from St.Mary's that fearful morning. Could shecome No one really believed it, no one.And nevertheless men struggled to theroaring beach to look for her, becausehope is stronger than reason ...

Even today, in these Creole islands, theadvent of the steamer is the great eventof the week. There are no telegraphlines, no telephones: the mail-packet isthe only trustworthy medium of

communication with the outer world,bringing friends, news, letters. Themagic of steam has placed NewOrleans nearer to New York than to theTimbaliers, nearer to Washington thanto Wine Island, nearer to Chicago thanto Barataria Bay. And even during thedeepest sleep of waves and winds therewill come betimes to sojourners in thisunfamiliar archipelago a feeling oflonesomeness that is a fear, a feeling ofisolation from the world of men, totallyunlike that sense of solitude whichhaunts one in the silence of mountain-heights, or amid the eternal tumult oflofty granitic coasts: a sense of helplessinsecurity.

The land seems but an undulation ofthe sea-bed: its highest ridges do notrise more than the height of a manabove the salines on either side; thesalines themselves lie almost level withthe level of the flood-tides; the tidesare variable, treacherous, mysterious.But when all around and above theseever-changing shores the twinvastnesses of heaven and sea begin toutter the tremendous revelation ofthemselves as infinite forces incontention, then indeed this sense ofseparation from humanity appalls ...Perhaps it was such a feeling whichforced men, on the tenth day ofAugust, eighteen hundred and fifty-six,to hope against hope for the coming of

the Star, and to strain their eyes towardsfar-off Terrebonne. "It was a wind youcould lie down on," said my friend thepilot.

... "Great God!" shrieked a voice abovethe shouting of the storm, "she iscoming!" ... It was true. Down theAtchafalaya, and thence throughstrange mazes of bayou, lakelet, andpass, by a rear route familiar only to thebest of pilots, the frail river-craft hadtoiled into Caillou Bay, running close tothe main shore; and now she washeading right for the island, with thewind aft, over the monstrous sea. Onshe came, swaying, rocking, plunging,with a great whiteness wrapping her

about like a cloud, and moving withher moving, a tempest-whirl of spray;ghost-white and like a ghost she came,for her smoke-stacks exhaled no visiblesmoke the wind devoured it! Theexcitement on shore became wild; menshouted themselves hoarse; womenlaughed and cried. Every telescope andopera-glass was directed upon thecoming apparition; all wondered howthe pilot kept his feet; all marvelled atthe madness of the captain.

But Captain Abraham Smith was notmad. A veteran American sailor, he hadlearned to know the great Gulf asscholars know deep books by heart: heknew the birthplace of its tempests, the

mystery of its tides, the omens of itshurricanes. While lying at Brashear Cityhe felt the storm had not yet reached itshighest, vaguely foresaw a mighty peril,and resolved to wait no longer for alull. "Boys," he said, "we've got to takeher out in spite of Hell!" And they"took her out." Through all the peril,his men stayed by him and obeyed him.By midmorning the wind had deepenedto a roar, lowering sometimes to arumble, sometimes bursting upon theears like a measureless and deafeningcrash. Then the captain knew the Starwas running a race with Death. "She'llwin it," he muttered; "she'll stand it ...Perhaps they'll have need of me to-night."

She won! With a sonorous steam-chantof triumph the brave little vessel rodeat last into the bayou, and anchoredhard by her accustomed resting-place,in full view of the hotel, though notnear enough to shore to lower hergang-plank.... But she had sung herswan-song. Gathering in from thenortheast, the waters of the bay werealready marbling over the salines andhalf across the island; and still the windincreased its paroxysmal power.

Cottages began to rock. Some slid awayfrom the solid props upon which theyrested. A chimney fumbled. Shutterswere wrenched off; verandas

demolished. Light roofs lifted, droppedagain, and flapped into ruin. Trees benttheir heads to the earth. And still thestorm grew louder and blacker withevery passing hour.

The Star rose with the rising of thewaters, dragging her anchor.

Two more anchors were put out, andstill she dragged dragged in with theflood, twisting, shuddering, careeningin her agony. Evening fell; the sandbegan to move with the wind, stingingfaces like a continuous fire of fine shot;and frenzied blasts came to buffet thesteamer forward, sideward. Then oneof her hog-chains parted with a clang

like the boom of a big bell. Thenanother! ... Then the captain bade hismen to cut away all her upper works,clean to the deck. Overboard into theseething went her stacks, her pilot-house, her cabins, and whirled away.And the naked hull of the Star, stilldragging her three anchors, labored onthrough the darkness, nearer and nearerto the immense silhouette of the hotel,whose hundred windows were now allaflame. The vast timber buildingseemed to defy the storm. The wind,roaring round its broad verandas,hissing through every crevice with thesound and force of steam, appeared towaste its rage. And in the half-lullbetween two terrible gusts there came

to the captain's ears a sound thatseemed strange in that night ofmultitudinous terrors ... a sound ofmusic!

VI.

... Almost every evening throughout theseason there had been dancing in thegreat hall; there was dancing that nightalso. The population of the hotel hadbeen augmented by the advent offamilies from other parts of the island,who found their summer cottagesinsecure places of shelter: there werenearly four hundred guests assembled.Perhaps it was for this reason that theentertainment had been prepared upon

a grander plan than usual, that itassumed the form of a fashionable ball.And all those pleasure seekers,representing the wealth and beauty ofthe Creole parishes, whether fromAscension or Assumption, St. Mary's orSt. Landry's, Iberville or Terrebonne,whether inhabitants of the multi-colored and many-balconied Creolequarter of the quaint metropolis, ordwellers in the dreamy paradises of theTeche, mingled joyously, knowing eachother, feeling in some sort akin whetheraffiliated by blood, connaturalized bycaste, or simply interassociated bytraditional sympathies of classsentiment and class interest. Perhaps inthe more than ordinary merriment of

that evening something of nervousexaltation might have been discerned,something like a feverish resolve tooppose apprehension with gayety, tocombat uneasiness by diversion. Butthe hours passed in mirthfulness; thefirst general feeling of depressionbegan to weigh less and less upon theguests; they had found reason toconfide in the solidity of the massivebuilding; there were no positive terrors,no outspoken fears; and the newconviction of all had found expressionin the words of the host himself, "Il n'ya rien de mieux a faire que de s'amuser!"Of what avail to lament the prospectivedevastation of cane-fields, to discussthe possible ruin of crops Better to

seek solace in choregraphic harmonies,in the rhythm of gracious motion andof perfect melody, than hearken to thediscords of the wild orchestra ofstorms; wiser to admire the grace ofParisian toilets, the eddy of trailingrobes with its fairy-foam of lace, theivorine loveliness of glossy shouldersand jewelled throats, the glimmering ofsatin-slippered feet, than to watch theraging of the flood without, or theflying of the wrack ...

So the music and the mirth went on:they made joy for themselves thoseelegant guests; they jested and sippedrich wines; they pledged, and hoped,and loved, and promised, with never a

thought of the morrow, on the nightof the tenth of August, eighteenhundred and fifty-six. Observantparents were there, planning for thefuture bliss of their nearest and dearest;mothers and fathers of handsome lads,lithe and elegant as young pines, andfresh from the polish of foreignuniversity training; mothers and fathersof splendid girls whose simplestattitudes were witcheries. Young cheeksflushed, young hearts fluttered with anemotion more puissant than theexcitement of the dance; young eyesbetrayed the happy secret discreeter lipswould have preserved. Slave-servantscircled through the aristocratic press,bearing dainties and wines, praying

permission to pass in terms at oncehumble and officious, always in theexcellent French which well-trainedhouse-servants were taught to use onsuch occasions.

... Night wore on: still the shining floorpalpitated to the feet of the dancers;still the piano-forte pealed, and still theviolins sang, and the sound of theirsinging shrilled through the darkness,in gasps of the gale, to the ears ofCaptain Smith, as he strove to keep hisfooting on the spray-drenched deck ofthe Star.

"Christ!" he muttered, "a dance! If thatwind whips round south, there'll be

another dance! ... But I guess the Starwill stay." ...

Half an hour might have passed; stillthe lights flamed calmly, and the violinstrilled, and the perfumed whirl went on... And suddenly the wind veered!

Again the Star reeled, and shuddered,and turned, and began to drag all heranchors. But she now dragged awayfrom the great building and its lights,away from the voluptuous thunder ofthe grand piano, even at that momentoutpouring the great joy of Weber'smelody orchestrated by Berlioz:l'Invitation a la Valse, with itsmarvellous musical swing!

"Waltzing!" cried the captain. "Godhelp them! God help us all now! ... TheWind waltzes to-night, with the Sea forhis partner!" ...

O the stupendous Valse-Tourbillon! Othe mighty Dancer! One two three!From northeast to east, from east tosoutheast, from southeast to south:then from the south he came, whirlingthe Sea in his arms ...

... Some one shrieked in the midst ofthe revels; some girl who found herpretty slippers wet. What could it beThin streams of water were spreadingover the level planking, curling about

the feet of the dancers ... What could itbe All the land had begun to quake,even as, but a moment before, thepolished floor was trembling to thepressure of circling steps; all thebuilding shook now; every beamuttered its groan. What could it be ...

There was a clamor, a panic, a rush tothe windy night. Infinite darknessabove and beyond; but the lantern-beams danced far out over anunbroken circle of heaving andswirling black water. Stealthily, swiftly,the measureless sea-flood was rising.

"Messieurs mesdames, ce n'est rien.Nothing serious, ladies, I assure you ...

Mais nous en avons vu bien souvent,les inondations comme celle-ci; ca passevite! The water will go down in a fewhours, ladies; it never rises higher thanthis; il n'y a pas le moindre danger, jevous dis! Allons! il n'y a My God! whatis that " ...

For a moment there was a ghastly hushof voices. And through that hush thereburst upon the ears of all a fearful andunfamiliar sound, as of a colossalcannonade rolling up from the south,with volleying lightnings. Vastly andswiftly, nearer and nearer it came, aponderous and unbroken thunder-roll,terrible as the long muttering of anearthquake.

The nearest mainland, across madCaillou Bay to the sea-marshes, laytwelve miles north; west, by the Gulf,the nearest solid ground was twentymiles distant. There were boats, yes! butthe stoutest swimmer might never reachthem now!

Then rose a frightful cry, the hoarse,hideous, indescribable cry of hopelessfear, the despairing animal-cry manutters when suddenly brought face toface with Nothingness, withoutpreparation, without consolation,without possibility of respite ... Sauvequi peut! Some wrenched down thedoors; some clung to the heavy

banquet-tables, to the sofas, to thebilliard-tables: during one terribleinstant, against fruitless heroisms,against futile generosities, raged all thefrenzy of selfishness, all the brutalitiesof panic. And then then came,thundering through the blackness, thegiant swells, boom on boom! ... Onecrash! the huge frame building rockslike a cradle, seesaws, crackles. What arehuman shrieks now the tornado isshrieking! Another! chandeliers splinter;lights are dashed out; a sweepingcataract hurls in: the immense hall rises,oscillates, twirls as upon a pivot,crepitates, crumbles into ruin. Crashagain! the swirling wreck dissolves intothe wallowing of another monster

billow; and a hundred cottagesoverturn, spin in sudden eddies, quiver,disjoint, and melt into the seething.

... So the hurricane passed, tearing offthe heads of the prodigious waves, tohurl them a hundred feet in air, heapingup the ocean against the land,upturning the woods. Bays and passeswere swollen to abysses; riversregorged; the sea-marshes were changedto raging wastes of water. Before NewOrleans the flood of the mile-broadMississippi rose six feet above highestwater-mark. One hundred and ten milesaway, Donaldsonville trembled at thetowering tide of the Lafourche. Lakesstrove to burst their boundaries. Far-

off river steamers tugged wildly at theircables, shivering like tethered creaturesthat hear by night the approachinghowl of destroyers. Smoke-stacks werehurled overboard, pilot-houses tornaway, cabins blown to fragments.

And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass, overthe agony of Caillou Bay, the billowingtide rushed unresisted from the Gulf,tearing and swallowing the land in itscourse, ploughing out deep-seachannels where sleek herds had beengrazing but a few hours before, rendingislands in twain, and ever bearing withit, through the night, enormous vortexof wreck and vast wan drift of corpses...

But the Star remained. And CaptainAbraham Smith, with a long, good ropeabout his waist, dashed again and againinto that awful surging to snatchvictims from death, clutching at passinghands, heads, garments, in the cataract-sweep of the seas, saving, aiding,cheering, though blinded by spray andbattered by drifting wreck, until hisstrength failed in the unequal struggleat last, and his men drew him aboardsenseless, with some beautiful half-drowned girl safe in his arms. But well-nigh twoscore souls had been rescuedby him; and the Star stayed on throughit all.

Long years after, the weed-grown ribsof her graceful skeleton could still beseen, curving up from the sand-dunesof Last Island, in valiant witness ofhow well she stayed.

VII.

Day breaks through the flying wrack,over the infinite heaving of the sea,over the low land made vast withdesolation. It is a spectral dawn: a wanlight, like the light of a dying sun.

The wind has waned and veered; theflood sinks slowly back to its abyssesabandoning its plunder, scattering itspiteous waifs over bar and dune, over

shoal and marsh, among the silences ofthe mango-swamps, over the long lowreaches of sand-grasses and drownedweeds, for more than a hundred miles.From the shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Ferto the shallows of Pelto Bay the deadlie mingled with the high-heaped drift;from their cypress groves the vulturesrise to dispute a share of the feast withthe shrieking frigate-birds andsqueaking gulls. And as the tremendoustide withdraws its plunging waters, allthe pirates of air follow the greatwhite-gleaming retreat: a storm ofbillowing wings and screaming throats.

And swift in the wake of gull andfrigate-bird the Wreckers come, the

Spoilers of the dead, savage skimmersof the sea, hurricane-riders wont tospread their canvas-pinions in the faceof storms; Sicilian and Corsicanoutlaws, Manila-men from the marshes,deserters from many navies, Lascars,marooners, refugees of a hundrednationalities, fishers and shrimpers byname, smugglers by opportunity, wildchannel-finders from obscure bayousand unfamiliar chenieres, all skilled inthe mysteries of these mysteriouswaters beyond the comprehension ofthe oldest licensed pilot ...

There is plunder for all birds and men.There are drowned sheep in multitude,heaped carcasses of kine. There are

casks of claret and kegs of brandy andlegions of bottles bobbing in the surf.There are billiard-tables overturnedupon the sand; there are sofas, pianos,footstools and music-stools, luxuriouschairs, lounges of bamboo. There arechests of cedar, and toilet-tables ofrosewood, and trunks of fine stampedleather stored with precious apparel.There are objets de luxe innumerable.There are children's playthings: Frenchdolls in marvellous toilets, and toy carts,and wooden horses, and woodenspades, and brave little wooden shipsthat rode out the gale in which thegreat Nautilus went down. There ismoney in notes and in coin in purses,in pocketbooks, and in pockets: plenty

of it! There are silks, satins, laces, andfine linen to be stripped from thebodies of the drowned, and necklaces,bracelets, watches, finger-rings and finechains, brooches and trinkets ... "Chibidizza! Oh! chi bedda mughieri! Eccu,la bidizza!" That ball-dress was made inParis by But you never heard of him,Sicilian Vicenzu ... "Che bella sposina!"Her betrothal ring will not come off,Giuseppe; but the delicate bone snapseasily: your oyster-knife can sever thetendon ... "Guardate! chi beddapicciota!" Over her heart you will findit, Valentino the locket held by that fineSwiss chain of woven hair "Cayamanan!"

And it is not your quadroonbondsmaid, sweet lady, who nowdisrobes you so roughly; those Malayhands are less deft than hers, but sheslumbers very far away from you, andmay not be aroused from her sleep. "Naquita mo! dalaga! na quita maganda!" ...Juan, the fastenings of those diamondear-drops are much too complicated foryour peon fingers: tear them out!"Dispense, chulita!" ...

... Suddenly a long, mighty silver trillingfills the ears of all: there is a wildhurrying and scurrying; swiftly, oneafter another, the overburdened luggersspread wings and flutter away.

Thrice the great cry rings ripplingthrough the gray air, and over the greensea, and over the far-flooded shell-reefs,where the huge white flashes are, sheet-lightning of breakers, and over theweird wash of corpses coming in.

It is the steam-call of the relief-boat,hastening to rescue the living, to gatherin the dead.

The tremendous tragedy is over!

Out of the Sea's Strength

I.

There are regions of Louisiana coastwhose aspect seems not of the present,but of the immemorial past of thatepoch when low flat reaches ofprimordial continent first rose intoform above a Silurian Sea. To indulgethis geologic dream, any fervid andbreezeless day there, it is only necessaryto ignore the evolutional protests of afew blue asters or a few compositeflowers of the coryopsis sort, whichcontrive to display their rare flashes ofcolor through the general waving ofcat-heads, blood-weeds, wild cane, andmarsh grasses. For, at a hasty glance, thegeneral appearance of this marshverdure is vague enough, as it ranges

away towards the sand, to convey theidea of amphibious vegetation, aprimitive flora as yet undecidedwhether to retain marine habits andforms, or to assume terrestrial ones;and the occasional inspection ofsurprising shapes might strengthen thisfancy. Queer flat-lying and many-branching things, which resemble sea-weeds in juiciness and color andconsistency, crackle under your feetfrom time to time; the moist andweighty air seems heated rather frombelow than from above, less by the sunthan by the radiation of a coolingworld; and the mists of morning orevening appear to simulate the vaporyexhalation of volcanic forces, latent,

but only dozing, and uncomfortablyclose to the surface. And indeedgeologists have actually averred thatthose rare elevations of the soil, which,with their heavy coronets of evergreenfoliage, not only look like islands, butare so called in the Frenchnomenclature of the coast, have beenprominences created by ancient mudvolcanoes.

The family of a Spanish fisherman,Feliu Viosca, once occupied and gaveits name to such an islet, quite close tothe Gulf-shore, the loftiest bit of landalong fourteen miles of just suchmarshy coast as I have spoken of.Landward, it dominated a desolation

that wearied the eye to look at, awilderness of reedy sloughs, patched atintervals with ranges of bitter-weed,tufts of elbow-bushes, and broadreaches of saw-grass, stretching away toa bluish-green line of woods thatclosed the horizon, and imperfectlydrained in the driest season by a slimylittle bayou that continually vomitedfoul water into the sea. The point hadbeen much discussed by geologists; itproved a godsend to United Statessurveyors weary of attempting to takeobservations among quagmires,moccasins, and arborescent weeds fromfifteen to twenty feet high. Savagefishermen, at some unrecorded time,had heaped upon the eminence a hill

of clam-shells, refuse of a millionfeasts; earth again had been formedover these, perhaps by the blind agencyof worms working through centuriesunnumbered; and the new soil hadgiven birth to a luxuriant vegetation.Millennial oaks interknotted their rootsbelow its surface, and vouchsafedprotection to many a frailer growth ofshrub or tree, wild orange, water-willow, palmetto, locust, pomegranate,and many trailing tendrilled things,both green and gray. Then, perhapsabout half a century ago, a few whitefishermen cleared a place forthemselves in this grove, and built afew palmetto cottages, with boat-houses and a wharf, facing the bayou.

Later on this temporary fishing stationbecame a permanent settlement: homesconstructed of heavy timber andplaster mixed with the trailing moss ofthe oaks and cypresses took the placesof the frail and fragrant huts ofpalmetto. Still the population itselfretained a floating character: it ebbedand came, according to season andcircumstances, according to luck or lossin the tilling of the sea. Viosca, thefounder of the settlement, alwaysremained; he always managed to dowell.

He owned several luggers and sloops,which were hired out upon excellentterms; he could make large and

profitable contracts with New Orleansfish-dealers; and he was vaguelysuspected of possessing more occultresources. There were some confusedstories current about his having oncebeen a daring smuggler, and havingonly been reformed by the pleadings ofhis wife Carmen, a little brown womanwho had followed him from Barcelonato share his fortunes in the westernworld.

On hot days, when the shade was fullof thin sweet scents, the place had atropical charm, a drowsy peace.Nothing except the peculiar appearanceof the line of oaks facing the Gulfcould have conveyed to the visitor any

suggestion of days in which the trillingof crickets and the fluting of birds hadceased, of nights when the voices ofthe marsh had been hushed for fear. Inone enormous rank the veteran treesstood shoulder to shoulder, but in theattitude of giants over mastered, forcedbackward towards the marsh, made torecoil by the might of the ghostlyenemy with whom they had striven athousand years, the Shrieker, the Sky-Sweeper, the awful Sea-Wind!

Never had he given them so terrible awrestle as on the night of the tenth ofAugust, eighteen hundred and fifty-six.All the waves of the excited Gulfthronged in as if to see, and lifted up

their voices, and pushed, and roared,until the cheniere was islanded by sucha billowing as no white man's eyes hadever looked upon before. Grandly theoaks bore themselves, but every fibreof their knotted thews was strained inthe unequal contest, and two of thegiants were overthrown, upturning, asthey fell, roots coiled and huge as theserpent-limbs of Titans. Moved to itsentrails, all the islet trembled, while thesea magnified its menace, and reachedout whitely to the prostrate trees; butthe rest of the oaks stood on, andstrove in line, and saved the habitationsdefended by them ...

II.

Before a little waxen image of theMother and Child, an odd little Virginwith an Indian face, brought home byFeliu as a gift after one of his Mexicanvoyages, Carmen Viosca had burnedcandles and prayed; sometimes tellingher beads; sometimes murmuring thelitanies she knew by heart; sometimesalso reading from a prayer-book wornand greasy as a long-used pack ofcards. It was particularly stained at onepage, a page on which her tears hadfallen many a lonely night a page with aclumsy wood cut representing a celestiallamp, a symbolic radiance, shiningthrough darkness, and on either side akneeling angel with folded wings. And

beneath this rudely wrought symbol ofthe Perpetual Calm appeared in big,coarse type the title of a prayer that hasbeen offered up through many acentury, doubtless, by wives of Spanishmariners, Contra las Tempestades.

Once she became very muchfrightened. After a partial lull the stormhad suddenly redoubled its force: theground shook; the house quivered andcreaked; the wind brayed and screamedand pushed and scuffled at the door;and the water, which had beenwhipping in through every crevice, allat once rose over the threshold andflooded the dwelling. Carmen dippedher finger in the water and tasted it. It

was salt!

And none of Feliu's boats had yetcome in; doubtless they had beendriven into some far-away bayous bythe storm. The only boat at thesettlement, the Carmencita, had beenalmost wrecked by running upon asnag three days before; there was atleast a fortnight's work for the ship-carpenter of Dead Cypress Point. AndFeliu was sleeping as if nothingunusual had happened the heavy sleepof a sailor, heedless of commotionsand voices. And his men, Miguel andMateo, were at the other end of thecheniere.

With a scream Carmen aroused Feliu.He raised himself upon his elbow,rubbed his eyes, and asked her, withexasperating calmness, "Que tienes quetienes " (What ails thee )

"Oh, Feliu! the sea is coming upon us!"she answered, in the same tongue. Butshe screamed out a word inspired byher fear: she did not cry, "Se nos vieneel mar encima!" but "Se nos viene LAALTURA!" the name that conveys theterrible thought of depth swallowed upin height, the height of the high sea.

"No lo creo!" muttered Feliu, looking atthe floor; then in a quiet, deep voice hesaid, pointing to an oar in the corner of

the room, "Echame ese remo."

She gave it to him. Still reclining uponone elbow, Feliu measured the depth ofthe water with his thumb nail upon theblade of the oar, and then badeCarmen light his pipe for him. Hiscalmness reassured her. For half anhour more, undismayed by theclamoring of the wind or the calling ofthe sea, Feliu silently smoked his pipeand watched his oar. The water rose alittle higher, and he made another mark;then it climbed a little more, but not sorapidly; and he smiled at Carmen as hemade a third mark. "Como creia!" heexclaimed, "no hay porque asustarse: elagua baja!" And as Carmen would have

continued to pray, he rebuked her fears,and bade her try to obtain some rest:

"Basta ya de plegarios, querida! vete yduerme." His tone, though kindly, wasimperative; and Carmen, accustomed toobey him, laid herself down by his side,and soon, for very weariness, slept.

It was a feverish sleep, nevertheless,shattered at brief intervals by terriblesounds, sounds magnified by hernervous condition a sleep visited bydreams that mingled in a strange waywith the impressions of the storm, andmore than once made her heart stop,and start again at its own stopping. Oneof these fancies she never could forget

a dream about little Concha, Conchita,her firstborn, who now slept far awayin the old churchyard at Barcelona. Shehad tried to become resigned, not tothink. But the child would come backnight after night, though the earth layheavy upon her night after night,through long distances of Time andSpace. Oh! the fancied clinging ofinfant-lips! the thrilling touch of littleghostly hands! those phantom-caressesthat torture mothers' hearts! ... Nightafter night, through many a month ofpain. Then for a time the gentlepresence ceased to haunt her, seemed tohave lain down to sleep forever underthe high bright grass and yellowflowers. Why did it return, that night of

all nights, to kiss her, to cling to her, tonestle in her arms

For in her dream she thought herselfstill kneeling before the waxen Image,while the terrors of the tempest wereever deepening about her, raving ofwinds and booming of waters and ashaking of the land. And before her,even as she prayed her dream-prayer,the waxen Virgin became tall as awoman, and taller, rising to the roofand smiling as she grew. Then Carmenwould have cried out for fear, but thatsomething smothered her voice,paralyzed her tongue. And the Virginsilently stooped above her, and placedin her arms the Child, the brown Child

with the Indian face. And the Childwhitened in her hands and changed,seeming as it changed to send a sharppain through her heart: an old painlinked somehow with memories ofbright windy Spanish hills, and summerscent of olive groves, and all theluminous Past; it looked into her facewith the soft dark gaze, with theunforgotten smile of ... dead Conchita!

And Carmen wished to thank; thesmiling Virgin for that priceless bliss,and lifted up her eyes, but the sicknessof ghostly fear returned upon herwhen she looked; for now the Motherseemed as a woman long dead, and thesmile was the smile of fleshlessness,

and the places of the eyes were voidsand darknesses ... And the sea sent upso vast a roar that the dwelling rocked.

Carmen started from sleep to find herheart throbbing so that the couchshook with it. Night was growing gray;the door had just been opened andslammed again. Through the rain-whipped panes she discerned thepassing shape of Feliu, making for thebeach a broad and bearded silhouette,bending against the wind. Still thewaxen Virgin smiled her Mexican smile,but now she was only seven incheshigh; and her bead-glass eyes seemed totwinkle with kindliness while the flameof the last expiring taper struggled for

life in the earthen socket at her feet.

III.

Rain and a blind sky and a bursting seaFeliu and his men, Miguel and Mateo,looked out upon the thundering andflashing of the monstrous tide. Thewind had fallen, and the gray air wasfull of gulls. Behind the cheniere, backto the cloudy line of low woods manymiles away, stretched a wash of lead-colored water, with a green pointpiercing it here and there elbow-bushesor wild cane tall enough to keep theirheads above the flood. But theinundation was visibly decreasing; withthe passing of each hour more and

more green patches and points hadbeen showing themselves: by degreesthe course of the bayou had becomedefined two parallel winding lines ofdwarf-timber and bushy shrubstraversing the water toward the distantcypress-swamps. Before the cheniere allthe shell-beach slope was piled withwreck uptorn trees with the foliage stillfresh upon them, splintered timbers ofmysterious origin, and logs inmultitude, scarred with gashes of theaxe. Feliu and his comrades had savedwood enough to build a little town,working up to their waists in the surf,with ropes, poles, and boat-hooks. Thewhole sea was full of flotsam. Voto aCristo! what a wrecking there must have

been! And to think the Carmencitacould not be taken out!

They had seen other luggers makingeastward during the morning couldrecognize some by their sails, others bytheir gait, exaggerated in their strugglewith the pitching of the sea: the SanPablo, the Gasparina, the Enriqueta, theAgueda, the Constanza. Ugly water, yes!but what a chance for wreckers! ...Some great ship must have gone topieces; scores of casks were rolling inthe trough, casks of wine. Perhaps itwas the Manila, perhaps the Nautilus!

A dead cow floated near enough forMateo to throw his rope over one horn;

and they all helped to get it out. It was amilch cow of some expensive breed;and the owner's brand had beenburned upon the horns: amonographic combination of theletters A and P. Feliu said he knew thatbrand: Old-man Preaulx, of Belle-Isle,who kept a sort of dairy at Last Islandduring the summer season, used tomark all his cows that way. Strange!

But, as they worked on, they began tosee stranger things, white dead facesand dead hands, which did not looklike the hands or the faces of drownedsailors: the ebb was beginning to runstrongly, and these were passing outwith it on the other side of the mouth

of the bayou; perhaps they had beenwashed into the marsh during thenight, when the great rush of the seacame. Then the three men left the water,and retired to higher ground to scanthe furrowed Gulf; their practiced eyesbegan to search the courses of the sea-currents, keen as the gaze of birds thatwatch the wake of the plough. Andsoon the casks and the drift wereforgotten; for it seemed to them thatthe tide was heavy with human deadpassing out, processionally, to the greatopen. Very far, where the huge pitchingof the swells was diminished bydistance into a mere fluttering ofripples, the water appeared as ifsprinkled with them; they vanished and

became visible again at irregularintervals, here and there floating mostthickly eastward! tossing, swayingpatches of white or pink or blue orblack each with its tiny speck of flesh-color showing as the sea lifted orlowered the body. Nearer to shore therewere few; but of these two were closeenough to be almost recognizable:Miguel first discerned them. They wererising and falling where the water wasdeepest well out in front of the mouthof the bayou, beyond the floodedsand-bars, and moving toward theshell-reef westward. They were driftingalmost side by side. One was that of anegro, apparently well attired, andwearing a white apron; the other

seemed to be a young colored girl, cladin a blue dress; she was floating uponher face; they could observe that shehad nearly straight hair, braided andtied with a red ribbon. These wereevidently house-servants, slaves. Butfrom whence Nothing could be learneduntil the luggers should return; andnone of them was yet in sight. StillFeliu was not anxious as to the fate ofhis boats, manned by the best sailors ofthe coast. Rarely are these Louisianafishermen lost in sudden storms; evenwhen to other eyes the appearances aremost pacific and the skies mostsplendidly blue, they divine some far-off danger, like the gulls; and like thegulls also, you see their light vessels

fleeing landward. These men seemliving barometers, exquisitely sensitiveto all the invisible changes ofatmospheric expansion andcompression; they are not easily caughtin those awful dead calms whichsuddenly paralyze the wings of a bark,and hold her helpless in their charmedcircle, as in a nightmare, until theblackness overtakes her, and the long-sleeping sea leaps up foaming todevour her.

"Carajo!"

The word all at once bursts from Feliu'smouth, with that peculiar guttural snarlof the "r" betokening strong

excitement, while he points tosomething rocking in the ebb, beyondthe foaming of the shell-reef, under acircling of gulls. More dead Yes butsomething too that lives and moves,like a quivering speck of gold; andMateo also perceives it, a gleam ofbright hair, and Miguel likewise, after amoment's gazing. A living child; alifeless mother. Pobrecita! No boatwithin reach, and only a mighty surf-wrestler could hope to swim thitherand return!

But already, without a word, brownFeliu has stripped for the struggle;another second, and he is shootingthrough the surf, head and hands

tunnelling the foam hills.... One twothree lines passed! four! that is wherethey first begin to crumble white fromthe summit, five! that he can ridefearlessly! ... Then swiftly, easily, headvances, with a long, powerful breast-stroke, keeping his bearded head wellup to watch for drift, seeming to slidewith a swing from swell to swell,ascending, sinking, alternatelypresenting breast or shoulder to thewave; always diminishing more andmore to the eyes of Mateo and Miguel,till he becomes a moving speck,occasionally hard to follow through theconfusion of heaping waters ... You arenot afraid of the sharks, Feliu! no: theyare afraid of you; right and left they

slunk away from your coming thatmorning you swam for life in West-Indian waters, with your knife in yourteeth, while the balls of the Cubancoast-guard were purring all aroundyou. That day the swarming sea waswarm, warm like soup and clear, withan emerald flash in every ripple, notopaque and clamorous like the Gulftoday ... Miguel and his comrade areanxious. Ropes are unrolled and inter-knotted into a line. Miguel remains onthe beach; but Mateo, bearing the endof the line, fights his way out,swimming and wading by turns, to thefurther sandbar, where the water isshallow enough to stand in, if youknow how to jump when the breaker

comes.

But Feliu, nearing the flooded shell-bank, watches the white flashings,knows when the time comes to keepflat and take a long, long breath. Oneheavy volleying of foam, darkness andhissing as of a steam-burst; a vibrantlifting up; a rush into light, and againthe volleying and the seething darkness.Once more, and the fight is won! Hefeels the upcoming chill of deeperwater, sees before him the greenquaking of unbroken swells, and farbeyond him Mateo leaping on the bar,and beside him, almost within arm'sreach, a great billiard-table swaying, anda dead woman clinging there, and ... the

child.

A moment more, and Feliu has liftedhimself beside the waifs ... How fastthe dead woman clings, as if with theone power which is strong as death, thedesperate force of love! Not in vain; forthe frail creature bound to the mother'scorpse with a silken scarf has still thestrength to cry out: "Maman! maman!"But time is life now; and the tiny handsmust be pulled away from the fair deadneck, and the scarf taken to bind theinfant firmly to Feliu's broad shoulders,quickly, roughly; for the ebb will notwait ...

And now Feliu has a burden; but his

style of swimming has totally changed;he rises from the water like a Triton,and his powerful arms seem to spin incircles, like the spokes of a flyingwheel. For now is the wrestle indeed!after each passing swell comes aprodigious pulling from beneath, thesea clutching for its prey.

But the reef is gained, is passed; thewild horses of the deep seem to knowthe swimmer who has learned to ridethem so well. And still the brown armsspin in an ever-nearing mist of spray;and the outer sand-bar is not far off,and there is shouting Mateo, leaping inthe surf, swinging something about hishead, as a vaquero swings his noose! ...

Sough! splash! it struggles in the troughbeside Feliu, and the sinewy handdescends upon it. Tiene! tira, Miguel!And their feet touch land again! ...

She is very cold, the child, and very still,with eyes closed.

"Esta muerta, Feliu " asks Mateo.

"No!" the panting swimmer makesanswer, emerging, while the waves reachwhitely up the sand as in pursuit, "no;vive! respira todavia!"

Behind him the deep lifts up its millionhands, and thunders as in acclaim.

IV.

"Madre de Dios! mi sueno!" screamedCarmen, abandoning her preparationsfor the morning meal, as Feliu, nude,like a marine god, rushed in and heldout to her a dripping and gasping baby-girl, "Mother of God! my dream!" Butthere was no time then to tell ofdreams; the child might die. In oneinstant Carmen's quick, deft hands hadstripped the slender little body; andwhile Mateo and Feliu were finding dryclothing and stimulants, and Migueltelling how it all happened quickly,passionately, with furious gesture, thekind and vigorous woman exerted allher skill to revive the flickering life.

Soon Feliu came to aid her, while hismen set to work completing theinterrupted preparation of thebreakfast. Flannels were heated for thefriction of the frail limbs; and brandy-and-water warmed, which Carmenadministered by the spoonful, skilfullyas any physician, until, at last, the littlecreature opened her eyes and began tosob. Sobbing still, she was laid inCarmen's warm feather-bed, wellswathed in woollen wrappings. Theimmediate danger, at least, was over;and Feliu smiled with pride andpleasure.

Then Carmen first ventured to relateher dream; and his face became grave

again. Husband and wife gazed amoment into each other's eyes, feelingtogether the same strange thrill thatmysterious faint creeping, as of a windpassing, which is the awe of theUnknowable. Then they looked at thechild, lying there, pink checked with theflush of the blood returning; and sucha sudden tenderness touched them asthey had known long years before,while together bending above theslumbering loveliness of lost Conchita.

"Que ojos!" murmured Feliu, as heturned away, feigning hunger ... (He wasnot hungry; but his sight had grown alittle dim, as with a mist.) Que ojos!They were singular eyes, large, dark, and

wonderfully fringed. The child's hairwas yellow it was the flash of it thathad saved her; yet her eyes and browswere beautifully black. She was comely,but with such a curious, delicatecomeliness totally unlike the robustbeauty of Concha ... At intervals shewould moan a little between her sobs;and at last cried out, with a thin, shrillcry: "Maman! oh! maman!" ThenCarmen lifted her from the bed to herlap, and caressed her, and rocked hergently to and fro, as she had done manya night for Concha, murmuring, "Yosere tu madre, angel mio, dulzura mia;sere tu madrecita, palomita mia!" (I willbe thy mother, my angel, my sweet; Iwill be thy little mother, my doveling.)

And the long silk fringes of the child'seyes overlapped, shadowed her littlecheeks; and she slept just as Conchitahad slept long ago, with her head onCarmen's bosom.

Feliu re-appeared at the inner door: at asign, he approached cautiously, withoutnoise, and looked.

"She can talk," whispered Carmen inSpanish: "she called her mother" hallamado a su madre.

"Y Dios tambien la ha llamado,"responded Feliu, with rude pathos;"And God also called her."

"But the Virgin sent us the child, Feliu,sent us the child for Concha's sake."

He did not answer at once; he seemedto be thinking very deeply; Carmenanxiously scanned his impassive face.

"Who knows " he answered, at last;"who knows Perhaps she has ceased tobelong to any one else."

One after another, Feliu's luggersfluttered in, bearing with them news ofthe immense calamity. And all thefishermen, in turn, looked at the child.Not one had ever seen her before.

V.

Ten days later, a lugger full of armedmen entered the bayou, and moored atViosca's wharf. The visitors were, forthe most part, country gentlemen,residents of Franklin and neighboringtowns, or planters from the Techecountry, forming one of the numerousexpeditions organized for the purposeof finding the bodies of relatives orfriends lost in the great hurricane, andof punishing the robbers of the dead.They had searched numberless nooksof the coast, had given sepulture tomany corpses, had recovered a largeamount of jewelry, and as Feliuafterward learned, had summarily triedand executed several of the most

abandoned class of wreckers foundwith ill-gotten valuables in theirpossession, and convicted of havingmutilated the drowned. But they cameto Viosca's landing only to obtaininformation; he was too well knownand liked to be a subject for suspicion;and, moreover, he had one good friendin the crowd, Captain Harris of NewOrleans, a veteran steamboat man and amarket contractor, to whom he haddisposed of many a cargo of freshpompano, sheep's-head, and Spanish-mackerel ... Harris was the first to stepto land; some ten of the party followedhim. Nearly all had lost some relative orfriend in the great catastrophe; thegathering was serious, silent, almost

grim, which formed about Feliu.

Mateo, who had come to the countrywhile a boy, spoke English better thanthe rest of the cheniere people; he actedas interpreter whenever Feliu found anydifficulty in comprehending oranswering questions; and he told themof the child rescued that wild morning,and of Feliu's swim. His recital evokeda murmur of interest and excitement,followed by a confusion of questions.Well, they could see for themselves,Feliu said; but he hoped they wouldhave a little patience; the child was stillweak; it might be dangerous to startleher. "We'll arrange it just as you like,"responded the captain; "go ahead,

Feliu!" ...

All proceeded to the house, under thegreat trees; Feliu and Captain Harrisleading the way. It was sultry andbright; even the sea-breeze was warm;there were pleasant odors in the shade,and a soporific murmur made of leaf-speech and the hum of gnats. Only thecaptain entered the house with Feliu;the rest remained without some takingseats on a rude plank bench under theoaks others flinging themselves downupon the weeds a few stood still,leaning upon their rifles. Then Carmencame out to them with gourds and abucket of fresh water, which all wereglad to drink.

They waited many minutes. Perhaps itwas the cool peace of the place thatmade them all feel how hot and tiredthey were: conversation flagged; andthe general languor finally betrayeditself in a silence so absolute that everyleaf-whisper seemed to becomeseparately audible.

It was broken at last by the gutturalvoice of the old captain emerging fromthe cottage, leading the child by thehand, and followed by Carmen andFeliu. All who had been resting rose upand looked at the child.

Standing in a lighted space, with one

tiny hand enveloped by the captain'sgreat brown fist, she looked so lovelythat a general exclamation of surprisewent up. Her bright hair, loose andsteeped in the sun-flame, illuminatedher like a halo; and her large dark eyes,gentle and melancholy as a deer's,watched the strange faces before herwith shy curiosity. She wore the samedress in which Feliu had found her asoft white fabric of muslin, withtrimmings of ribbon that had oncebeen blue; and the now discoloredsilken scarf, which had twice done hersuch brave service, was thrown over hershoulders. Carmen had washed andrepaired the dress very creditably; butthe tiny slim feet were bare, the brine-

soaked shoes she wore that fearfulnight had fallen into shreds at the firstattempt to remove them.

"Gentlemen," said Captain Harris, "wecan find no clew to the identity of thischild. There is no mark upon herclothing; and she wore nothing in theshape of jewelry except this string ofcoral beads. We are nearly all Americanshere; and she does not speak anyEnglish ... Does any one here knowanything about her "

Carmen felt a great sinking at her heart:was her new-found darling to be takenso soon from her But no answer cameto the captain's query. No one of the

expedition had ever seen that childbefore. The coral beads were passedfrom hand to hand; the scarf wasminutely scrutinized without avail.Somebody asked if the child could nottalk German or Italian.

"Italiano No!" said Feliu, shaking hishead.... One of his luggermen,Gioachino Sparicio, who, though aSicilian, could speak several Italianidioms besides his own, had alreadyessayed.

"She speaks something or other,"answered the captain "but no English. Icouldn't make her understand me; andFeliu, who talks nearly all the infernal

languages spoken down this way, sayshe can't make her understand him.Suppose some of you who knowFrench talk to her a bit ... Laroussel,why don't you try "

The young man addressed did not atfirst seem to notice the captain'ssuggestion. He was a tall, lithe fellow,with a dark, positive face: he had neverremoved his black gaze from the childsince the moment of her appearance.Her eyes, too, seemed to be all for himto return his scrutiny with a sort ofvague pleasure, a half savageconfidence ... Was it the first embryonicfeeling of race-affinity quickening inthe little brain some intuitive,

inexplicable sense of kindred Sheshrank from Doctor Hecker, whoaddressed her in German, shook herhead at Lawyer Solari, who tried tomake her answer in Italian; and herlook always went back plaintively to thedark, sinister face of Laroussel,Laroussel who had calmly taken ahuman life, a wicked human life, onlythe evening before.

"Laroussel, you're the only Creole inthis crowd," said the captain; "talk toher! Talk gumbo to her! ... I've nodoubt this child knows German verywell, and Italian too," he added,maliciously "but not in the way yougentlemen pronounce it!"

Laroussel handed his rifle to a friend,crouched down before the little girl,and looked into her face, and smiled.Her great sweet orbs shone into his onemoment, seriously, as if searching; andthen ... she returned his smile. It seemedto touch something latent within theman, something rare; for his wholeexpression changed; and there was acaress in his look and voice none ofthe men could have believed possible ashe exclaimed:

"Fais moin bo, piti."

She pouted up her pretty lips andkissed his black moustache.

He spoke to her again:

"Dis moin to nom, piti; dis moin tonom, chere."

Then, for the first time, she spoke,answering in her argent treble:

"Zouzoune."

All held their breath. Captain Harrislifted his finger to his lips to commandsilence.

"Zouzoune Zouzoune qui, chere "

"Zouzoune, a c'est moin, Lili!"

"C'est pas tout to nom, Lili; dis moin,chere, to laut nom."

"Mo pas connin laut nom."

"Comment ye te pele to maman, piti "

"Maman, Maman 'Dele."

"Et comment ye te pele to papa, chere "

"Papa Zulien."

"Bon! Et comment to maman te pele topapa dis ca a moin, chere "

The child looked down, put a finger in

her mouth, thought a moment, andreplied:

"Li pele li, 'Cheri'; li pele li, 'Papoute.'"

"Aie, aie! c'est tout, ca to maman tejamain pele li daut' chose "

"Mo pas connin, moin."

She began to play with some trinketsattached to his watch chain; a very smallgold compass especially impressed herfancy by the trembling and flashing ofits tiny needle, and she murmured,coaxingly:

"Mo oule ca! Donnin ca a moin."

He took all possible advantage of thesituation, and replied at once:

"Oui! mo va donnin toi ca si to di mointo laut nom."

The splendid bribe evidently impressedher greatly; for tears rose to the browneyes as she answered:

"Mo pas capab di' ca; mo pas capab di'laut nom ... Mo oule; mo pas capab!"

Laroussel explained. The child's namewas Lili, perhaps a contraction ofEulalie; and her pet Creole nameZouzoune. He thought she must be the

daughter of wealthy people; but shecould not, for some reason or other, tellher family name. Perhaps she could notpronounce it well, and was afraid ofbeing laughed at: some of the oldFrench names were very hard forCreole children to pronounce, so longas the little ones were indulged in thehabit of talking the patois; and after acertain age their mispronunciationswould be made fun of in order toaccustom them to abandon the idiomof the slave-nurses, and to speak onlyFrench. Perhaps, again, she was reallyunable to recall the name: certainmemories might have been blurred inthe delicate brain by the shock of thatterrible night. She said her mother's

name was Adele, and her father's Julien;but these were very common names inLouisiana, and could afford scarcelyany better clew than the innocentstatement that her mother used toaddress her father as "dear" (Cheri), orwith the Creole diminutive "little papa"(Papoute). Then Laroussel tried toreach a clew in other ways, withoutsuccess. He asked her about where shelived, what the place was like; and shetold him about fig-trees in a court, andgalleries, and banquettes, and spoke ofa faubou', without being able to nameany street. He asked her what her fatherused to do, and was assured that he dideverything that there was nothing hecould not do. Divine absurdity of

childish faith! infinite artlessness ofchildish love! ... Probably the little girl'sparents had been residents of NewOrleans dwellers of the old colonialquarter, the faubourg, the faubou'.

"Well, gentlemen," said Captain Harris,as Laroussel abandoned his cross-examination in despair, "all we can donow is to make inquiries. I supposewe'd better leave the child here. She isvery weak yet, and in no condition tobe taken to the city, right in the middleof the hot season; and nobody couldcare for her any better than she's beingcared for here. Then, again, seems tome that as Feliu saved her life, and thatat the risk of his own, he's got the prior

claim, anyhow; and his wife is just crazyabout the child wants to adopt her. Ifwe can find her relatives so much thebetter; but I say, gentlemen, let themcome right here to Feliu, themselves,and thank him as he ought to bethanked, by God! That's just what Ithink about it."

Carmen understood the little speech; allthe Spanish charm of her youth hadfaded out years before; but in the oneswift look of gratitude she turnedupon the captain, it seemed to blossomagain; for that quick moment, she wasbeautiful.

"The captain is quite right," observed

Dr. Hecker: "it would be verydangerous to take the child away justnow." There was no dissent.

"All correct, boys " asked the captain ..."Well, we've got to be going. By-by,Zouzoune!"

But Zouzoune burst into tears.Laroussel was going too!

"Give her the thing, Laroussel! she gaveyou a kiss, anyhow more than she'd dofor me," cried the captain.

Laroussel turned, detached the littlecompass from his watch chain, andgave it to her. She held up her pretty

face for his farewell kiss ...

VI.

But it seemed fated that Feliu's waifshould never be identified; diligentinquiry and printed announcementsalike proved fruitless. Sea and sand hadeither hidden or effaced all the recordsof the little world they had engulfed:the annihilation of whole families, theextinction of races, had, in more thanone instance, rendered vain all effortsto recognize the dead. It required thesubtle perception of long intimacy toname remains tumefied and discoloredby corruption and exposure, mangledand gnawed by fishes, by reptiles, and

by birds; it demanded the great courageof love to look upon the eyeless facesfound sweltering in the blackness ofcypress-shadows, under the lowpalmettoes of the swamps, wheregorged buzzards started from sleep, orcottonmouths uncoiled, hissing, at thecoming of the searchers. Andsometimes all who had loved the lostwere themselves among the missing.The full roll call of names could neverbe made out; extraordinary mistakeswere committed. Men whom the worlddeemed dead and buried came back,like ghosts, to read their own epitaphs.

... Almost at the same hour thatLaroussel was questioning the child in

Creole patois, another expedition,searching for bodies along the coast,discovered on the beach of a low isletfamed as a haunt of pelicans, thecorpse of a child. Some locks of brighthair still adhering to the skull, a stringof red beads, a white muslin dress, ahandkerchief broidered with the initials"A.L.B.," were secured as clews; and thelittle body was interred where it hadbeen found.

And, several days before, CaptainHotard, of the relief-boat EstelleBrousseaux, had found, drifting in theopen Gulf (latitude 26 degrees 43minutes; longitude 88 degrees 17minutes), the corpse of a fair-haired

woman, clinging to a table. The bodywas disfigured beyond recognition:even the slender bones of the handshad been stripped by the nibs of thesea-birds-except one finger, the third ofthe left, which seemed to have beenprotected by a ring of gold, as by acharm. Graven within the plain yellowcirclet was a date, "JUILLET 1851";and the names, "ADELE + JULIEN,"separated by a cross. The Estelle carriedcoffins that day: most of them werealready full; but there was one forAdele.

Who was she who was her Julien ...When the Estelle and many othervessels had discharged their ghastly

cargoes; when the bereaved of the landhad assembled as hastily as they mightfor the du y of identification; whenmemories were strained almost tomadness in research of names, dates,incidents for the evocation of deadwords, resurrection of vanished days,recollection of dear promises, then, inthe confusion, it was believed anddeclared that the little corpse found onthe pelican island was the daughter ofthe wearer of the wedding ring: AdeleLa Brierre, nee Florane, wife of Dr.Julien La Brierre, of New Orleans, whowas numbered among the missing.

And they brought dead Adele back, upshadowy river windings, over linked

brightnesses of lake and lakelet,through many a green glimmeringbayou, to the Creole city, and laid her torest somewhere in the old Saint-LouisCemetery. And upon the tabletrecording her name were also graventhe words

.....................

Aussi a la memoire de son mari;

JULIEN RAYMOND LA BRIERRE,ne a la paroisse St. Landry, le 29 Mai;MDCCCXXVIII; et de leur fille,EULALIE, agee de 4 as et 5 mois, Quitous perirent dans la grande tempetequi balaya L'Ile Derniere, le 10 Aout,

MDCCCLVI ..... + ..... Priez pour eux!

VII.

Yet six months afterward the face ofJulien La Brierre was seen again uponthe streets of New Orleans. Menstarted at the sight of him, as at aspectre standing in the sun. Andnevertheless the apparition cast ashadow. People paused, approached,half extended a hand through oldhabit, suddenly checked themselves andpassed on, wondering they should haveforgotten, asking themselves why theyhad so nearly made an absurd mistake.

It was a February day, one of those

crystalline days of our snowlessSouthern winter, when the air is clearand cool, and outlines sharpen in thelight as if viewed through the focus ofa diamond glass; and in that brightnessJulien La Brierre perused his own briefepitaph, and gazed upon the sculpturedname of drowned Adele. Only half ayear had passed since she was laid awayin the high wall of tombs, in thatstrange colonial columbarium wherethe dead slept in rows, behind squaredmarbles lettered in black or bronze. Yether resting-place, in the highest range,already seemed old. Under ourSouthern sun, the vegetation ofcemeteries seems to spring into beingspontaneously to leap all suddenly into

luxuriant life! Microscopic mossygrowths had begun to mottle the slabthat closed her in; over its face somesingular creeper was crawling, plantingtiny reptile-feet into the chiselled lettersof the inscription; and from the moistsoil below speckled euphorbias weregrowing up to her, and morning glories,and beautiful green tangled things ofwhich he did not know the name.

And the sight of the pretty lizards,puffing their crimson pouches in thesun, or undulating athwart epitaphs,and shifting their color whenapproached, from emerald to ashen-gray; the caravans of the ants,journeying to and from tiny chinks in

the masonry; the bees gathering honeyfrom the crimson blossoms of thecrete-de-coq, whose radicles soughtsustenance, perhaps from human dust,in the decay of generations: all that richlife of graves summoned up fancies ofResurrection, Nature's resurrection-work wondrous transformations offlesh, marvellous bans migration ofsouls! ... From some forgotten creviceof that tomb roof, which aloneintervened between her and the vastlight, a sturdy weed was growing. Heknew that plant, as it quivered againstthe blue, the chou-gras, as Creolechildren call it: its dark berries form themockingbird's favorite food ... Mightnot its roots, exploring darkness, have

found some unfamiliar nutrimentwithin might it not be that somethingof the dead heart had risen to purpleand emerald life in the sap oftranslucent leaves, in the wine of thesavage berries, to blend with the bloodof the Wizard Singer, to lend a strangesweetness to the melody of his wooing...

... Seldom, indeed, does it happen that aman in the prime of youth, in thepossession of wealth, habituated tocomforts and the elegances of life,discovers in one brief week howminute his true relation to the humanaggregate, how insignificant his part asone living atom of the social organism.

Seldom, at the age of twenty-eight, hasone been made able to comprehend,through experience alone, that in thevast and complex Stream of Being hecounts for less than a drop; and that,even as the blood loses and replaces itscorpuscles, without a variance in thevolume and vigor of its current, so areindividual existences eliminated andreplaced in the pulsing of a people'slife, with never a pause in its mightymurmur. But all this, and much more,Julien had learned in seven mercilessdays seven successive and terribleshocks of experience. The enormousworld had not missed him; and hisplace therein was not void society hadsimply forgotten him. So long as he

had moved among them, all he knewfor friends had performed their pettyaltruistic roles, had discharged theirsmall human obligations, had keptturned toward him the least selfish sideof their natures, had made with him atolerably equitable exchange of ideasand of favors; and after hisdisappearance from their midst, theyhad duly mourned for his loss tothemselves! They had played out thefinal act in the unimportant drama ofhis life: it was really asking too much todemand a repetition ... Impossible todeceive himself as to the feeling hisunanticipated return had aroused:feigned pity where he had looked forsympathetic welcome; dismay where he

had expected surprised delight; and,oftener, airs of resignation, ordisappointment ill disguised, alwaysinsincerity, politely masked or coldlybare. He had come back to findstrangers in his home, relatives at lawconcerning his estate, and himselfregarded as an intruder among theliving, an unlucky guest, a revenant ...How hollow and selfish a world itseemed! And yet there was love in it; hehad been loved in it, unselfishly,passionately, with the love of fatherand of mother, of wife and child ... Allburied! all lost forever! ... Oh! would toGod the story of that stone were not alie! would to kind God he also weredead! ...

Evening shadowed: the violet deepenedand prickled itself with stars; the sunpassed below the west, leaving in hiswake a momentary splendor ofvermilion ... our Southern day is notprolonged by gloaming. And Julien'sthoughts darkened with the darkening,and as swiftly. For while there was yetlight to see, he read another name thathe used to know the name ofRAMIREZ ... Nacio en Cienfuegos, islade Cuba ... Wherefore born for whateternal purpose, Ramirez, in the City ofa Hundred Fires He had blown out hisbrains before the sepulchre of hisyoung wife ... It was a detached doublevault, shaped like a huge chest, and

much dilapidated already: under thecontinuous burrowing of the crawfishit had sunk greatly on one side, tiltingas if about to fall. Out from its zigzagfissurings of brick and plaster, a sinistervoice seemed to come: "Go thou anddo likewise! ... Earth groans with herburthen even now, the burthen ofMan: she holds no place for thee!"

VIII.

... That voice pursued him into thedarkness of his chilly room, hauntedhim in the silence of his lodging. Andthen began within the man that ghostlystruggle between courage and despair,between patient reason and mad revolt,

between weakness and force, betweendarkness and light, which all sensitiveand generous natures must wage intheir own souls at least once perhapsmany times in their lives. Memory, insuch moments, plays like an electricstorm; all involuntarily he foundhimself reviewing his life.

Incidents long forgotten came backwith singular vividness: he saw the Pastas he had not seen it while it was thePresent; remembrances of home,recollections of infancy, recurred tohim with terrible intensity, the artlesspleasures and the trifling griefs, thelittle hurts and the tender pettings, thehopes and the anxieties of those who

loved him, the smiles and tears ofslaves ... And his first Creole pony, apresent from his father the day after hehad proved himself able to recite hisprayers correctly in French, withoutone mispronunciation without sayingcrasse for grace, and yellow Michel,who taught him to swim and to fishand to paddle a pirogue; and the bayou,with its wonder-world of turtles andbirds and creeping things; and hisGerman tutor, who could notpronounce the j; and the songs of thecane-fields, strangely pleasing, full ofquaverings and long plaintive notes, likethe call of the cranes ... Tou', tou' paysblanc! ... Afterward Camaniere hadleased the place; everything must have

been changed; even the songs could notbe the same. Tou', tou' pays blare! Daniequi commande ...

And then Paris; and the university, withits wild under-life, some debts, somefollies; and the frequent fond lettersfrom home to which he might havereplied so much oftener; Paris, wheretalent is mediocrity; Paris, with itsthunders and its splendors and itsseething of passion; Paris, supremefocus of human endeavor, with itsmadnesses of art, its frenzied strivingto express the Inexpressible, itsspasmodic strainings to clutch theUnattainable, its soarings of soul-fireto the heaven of the Impossible ...

What a rejoicing there was at his return!how radiant and level the long Road ofthe Future seemed to open before him!everywhere friends, prospects,felicitations. Then his first serious love;and the night of the ball at St.Martinsville, the vision of light! Gracileas a palm, and robed at once so simply,so exquisitely in white, she had seemedto him the supreme realization of allpossible dreams of beauty ... And hispassionate jealousy; and the slap fromLaroussel; and the humiliating two-minute duel with rapiers in which helearned that he had found his master.The scar was deep. Why had notLaroussel killed him then ... Not evil-

hearted, Laroussel, they used to saluteeach other afterward when they met;and Laroussel's smile was kindly. Whyhad he refrained from returning itWhere was Laroussel now

For the death of his generous father,who had sacrificed so much to reformhim; for the death, only a short whileafter, of his all-forgiving mother, hehad found one sweet woman toconsole him with her tender words, herloving lips, her delicious caress. She hadgiven him Zouzoune, the darling linkbetween their lives, Zouzoune, whowaited each evening with blackEglantine at the gate to watch for hiscoming, and to cry through all the

house like a bird, "Papa, lape vini! papaZulien ape vini!" ... And once that shehad made him very angry by upsettingthe ink over a mass of business papers,and he had slapped her (could he everforgive himself ) she had cried, throughher sobs of astonishment and pain: "Tolaimin moin to batte moin!" (Thoulovest me thou beatest me!) Nextmonth she would have been five yearsold. To laimin moin to batte moin! ...

A furious paroxysm of grief convulsedhim, suffocated him; it seemed to himthat something within must burst, mustbreak. He flung himself down uponhis bed, biting the coverings in order tostifle his outcry, to smother the sounds

of his despair. What crime had he everdone, oh God! that he should be madeto suffer thus was it for this he hadbeen permitted to live had been rescuedfrom the sea and carried round all theworld unscathed Why should he live toremember, to suffer, to agonize Was notRamirez wiser

How long the contest within himlasted, he never knew; but ere it wasdone, he had become, in more waysthan one, a changed man. For the first,though not indeed for the last time,something of the deeper and noblercomprehension of human weaknessand of human suffering had beenrevealed to him, something of that

larger knowledge without which thesense of duty can never be fullyacquired, nor the understanding ofunselfish goodness, nor the spirit oftenderness. The suicide is not a coward;he is an egotist.

A ray of sunlight touched his wetpillow, awoke him. He rushed to thewindow, flung the latticed shuttersapart, and looked out.

Something beautiful and ghostly filledall the vistas, frost-haze; and in somequeer way the mist had momentarilycaught and held the very color of thesky. An azure fog! Through it thequaint and checkered street as yet but

half illumined by the sun, took tonesof impossible color; the view paledaway through faint bluish tints intotransparent purples; all the shadowswere indigo. How sweet the morning!how well life seemed worth living!Because the sun had shown his facethrough a fairy veil of frost! ...

Who was the ancient thinker was itHermes who said:

"The Sun is Laughter; for 'tis He whomaketh joyous the thoughts of men,and gladdeneth the infinite world." ...

The Shadow of the Tide.

I.

Carmen found that her little pet hadbeen taught how to pray; for each nightand morning when the devout womanbegan to make her orisons, the childwould kneel beside her, with littlehands joined, and in a voice sweet andclear murmur something she hadlearned by heart. Much as this pleasedCarmen, it seemed to her that thechild's prayers could not be whollyvalid unless uttered in Spanish; forSpanish was heaven's own tongue, lalengua de Dios, el idioma de Dios; andshe resolved to teach her to say the

Salve Maria and the Padre Nuestro inCastilian also, her own favorite prayerto the Virgin, beginning with the words,"Madre santisima, toda dulce yhermosa." . . .

So Conchita for a new name had beengiven to her with that terrible seachristening received her first lessons inSpanish; and she proved a mostintelligent pupil. Before long she couldprattle to Feliu; she would watch for hisreturn of evenings, and announce hiscoming with "Aqui viene mi papacito "she learned, too, from Carmen, manylittle caresses of speech to greet himwith. Feliu's was not a joyous nature; hehad his dark hours, his sombre days; yet

it was rarely that he felt too sullen toyield to the little one's petting, whenshe would leap up to reach his neckand to coax his kiss, with "Dame unbeso, papa! asi; y otro! otro! otro!" Hegrew to love her like his own; was shenot indeed his own, since he had wonher from death And none had yet cometo dispute his claim. More and more,with the passing of weeks, months,seasons, she became a portion of hislife a part of all that he wrought for. Atthe first, he had had a half-formedhope that the little one might bereclaimed by relatives generous and richenough to insist upon his acceptanceof a handsome compensation; and thatCarmen could find some solace in a

pleasant visit to Barceloneta. But nowhe felt that no possible generosity couldrequite him for her loss; and with theunconscious selfishness of affection,he commenced to dread heridentification as a great calamity.

It was evident that she had beenbrought up nicely. She had pretty primways of drinking and eating, queer littlefashions of sitting in company, and ofaddressing people. She had peculiarnotions about colors in dress, aboutwearing her hair; and she seemed tohave already imbibed a small stock ofsocial prejudices not altogether inharmony with the republicanism ofViosca's Point. Occasional swarthy

visitors, men of the Manilla settlements,she spoke of contemptuously asnegues-marrons; and once she shockedCarmen inexpressibly by stopping inthe middle of her evening prayer,declaring that she wanted to say herprayers to a white Virgin; Carmen'sSenora de Guadalupe was only a negra!Then, for the first time, Carmen spokeso crossly to the child as to frighten her.But the pious woman's heart smote herthe next moment for that first harshword; and she caressed the motherlessone, consoled her, cheered her, and atlast explained to her I know not howsomething very wonderful about thelittle figurine, something that madeChita's eyes big with awe. Thereafter

she always regarded the Virgin of Waxas an object mysterious and holy.

And, one by one, most of Chita's littleeccentricities were gradually eliminatedfrom her developing life and thought.More rapidly than ordinary children,because singularly intelligent, shelearned to adapt herself to all thechanges of her new environment,retaining only that indescribablesomething which to an experienced eyetells of hereditary refinement of habitand of mind: a natural grace, athorough-bred ease and elegance ofmovement, a quickness and delicacy ofperception.

She became strong again and activeactive enough to play a great deal onthe beach, when the sun was not toofierce; and Carmen made a canvasbonnet to shield her head and face.Never had she been allowed to play somuch in the sun before; and it seemedto do her good, though her little barefeet and hands became brown ascopper. At first, it must be confessed,she worried her foster-mother a greatdeal by various queer misfortunes andextraordinary freaks; getting bitten bycrabs, falling into the bayou while inpursuit of "fiddlers," or losing herselfat the conclusion of desperate effortsto run races at night with the moon, orto walk to the "end of the world." If

she could only once get to the edge ofthe sky, she said, she "could climb up."She wanted to see the stars, which werethe souls of good little children; andshe knew that God would let her climbup. "Just what I am afraid of!" thoughtCarmen to herself; "He might let herclimb up, a little ghost!" But one daynaughty Chita received a terrible lesson,a lasting lesson, which taught her thevalue of obedience.

She had been particularly cautioned notto venture into a certain part of theswamp in the rear of the grove, wherethe weeds were very tall; for Carmenwas afraid some snake might bite thechild.

But Chita's bird-bright eye haddiscerned a gleam of white in thatdirection; and she wanted to knowwhat it was. The white could only beseen from one point, behind thefurthest house, where the ground washigh. "Never go there," said Carmen;"there is a Dead Man there, will biteyou!" And yet, one day, while Carmenwas unusually busy, Chita went there.

In the early days of the settlement, aSpanish fisherman had died; and hiscomrades had built him a little tombwith the surplus of the same bricks andother material brought down the bayoufor the construction of Viosca's

cottages. But no one, except perhapssome wandering duck hunter, hadapproached the sepulchre for years.High weeds and grasses wrestledtogether all about it, and rendered ittotally invisible from the surroundinglevel of the marsh.

Fiddlers swarmed away as Chitaadvanced over the moist soil, eachuplifting its single huge claw as it sidledoff; then frogs began to leap before heras she reached the thicker grass; andlong-legged brown insects sprangshowering to right and left as sheparted the tufts of the thickeningverdure. As she went on, the bitter-weeds disappeared; jointed grasses and

sinewy dark plants of a taller growthrose above her head: she was almostdeafened by the storm of insectshrilling, and the mosquitoes becamevery wicked. All at once somethinglong and black and heavy wriggledalmost from under her naked feet,squirming so horribly that for a minuteor two she could not move for fright.But it slunk away somewhere, and hiditself; the weeds it had shaken ceased totremble in its wake; and her couragereturned. She felt such an exquisite andfearful pleasure in the gratification ofthat naughty curiosity! Then, quiteunexpectedly oh! what a start it gaveher! the solitary white object burstupon her view, leprous and ghastly as

the yawn of a cotton-mouth. Tombsruin soon in Louisiana; the one Chitalooked upon seemed ready to toppledown. There was a great ragged hole atone end, where wind and rain, andperhaps also the burrowing of crawfishand of worms, had loosened the bricks,and caused them to slide out of place.It seemed very black inside; but Chitawanted to know what was there. Shepushed her way through a gap in thethin and rotten line of pickets, andthrough some tall weeds with bigcoarse pink flowers; then she croucheddown on hands and knees before theblack hole, and peered in. It was not soblack inside as she had thought; for asunbeam slanted down through a chink

in the roof; and she could see!

A brown head without hair, withouteyes, but with teeth, ever so many teeth!seemed to laugh at her; and close to itsat a Toad, the hugest she had everseen; and the white skin of his throatkept puffing out and going in. AndChita screamed and screamed, and fledin wild terror, screaming all the way, tillCarmen ran out to meet her and carryher home. Even when safe in heradopted mother's arms, she sobbedwith fright. To the vivid fancy of thechild there seemed to be some hideousrelation between the staring reptile andthe brown death's-head, with its emptyeyes, and its nightmare-smile.

The shock brought on a fever, a feverthat lasted several days, and left her veryweak. But the experience taught her toobey, taught her that Carmen knew bestwhat was for her good. It also causedher to think a great deal. Carmen hadtold her that the dead people neverfrightened good little girls who stayedat home.

"Madrecita Carmen," she asked, "is mymamma dead "

"Pobrecita! .... Yes, my angel. God calledher to Him, your darling mother."

"Madrecita," she asked again, her young

eyes growing vast with horror, "is myown mamma now like That " ... Shepointed toward the place of the whitegleam, behind the great trees.

"No, no, no! my darling!" cried Carmen,appalled herself by the ghastlyquestion, "your mamma is with thedear, good, loving God, who lives inthe beautiful sky, above the clouds, mydarling, beyond the sun!"

But Carmen's kind eyes were full oftears; and the child read their meaning.He who teareth off the Mask of theFlesh had looked into her face oneunutterable moment: she had seen thebrutal Truth, naked to the bone!

Yet there came to her a little thrill ofconsolation, caused by the words ofthe tender falsehood; for that which shehad discerned by day could not explainto her that which she saw almostnightly in her slumber. The face, thevoice, the form of her loving motherstill lived somewhere, could not haveutterly passed away; since the sweetpresence came to her in dreams,bending and smiling over her, caressingher, speaking to her, sometimes gentlychiding, but always chiding with a kiss.And then the child would laugh in hersleep, and prattle in Creole, talking tothe luminous shadow, telling the deadmother all the little deeds and thoughts

of the day.... Why would God only lether come at night

... Her idea of God had been firstdefined by the sight of a quaint Frenchpicture of the Creation, an engravingwhich represented a shoreless sea undera black sky, and out of the blackness asolemn and bearded gray heademerging, and a cloudy hand throughwhich stars glimmered. God was likeold Doctor de Coulanges, who used tovisit the house, and talk in a voice like alow roll of thunder.... At a later day,when Chita had been told that Godwas "everywhere at the same time "without and within, beneath and aboveall things, this idea became somewhat

changed. The awful bearded face, thehuge shadowy hand, did not fade fromher thought; but they becamefantastically blended with the larger andvaguer notion of something that filledthe world and reached to the stars,something diaphanous andincomprehensible like the invisible air,omnipresent and everlasting like thehigh blue of heaven ....

II.

... She began to learn the life of thecoast.

With her acquisition of anothertongue, there came to her also the

understanding of many things relatingto the world of the sea She memorizedwith novel delight much that was toldher day by day concerning the naturesurrounding her, many secrets of theair, many of those signs of heavenwhich the dwellers in cities cannotcomprehend because the atmosphere isthickened and made stagnant abovethem cannot even watch because thehorizon is hidden from their eyes bywalls, and by weary avenues of treeswith whitewashed trunks. She learned,by listening, by asking, by observingalso, how to know the signs thatforetell wild weather: tremendoussunsets, scuddings and bridgings ofcloud, sharpening and darkening of the

sea-line, and the shriek of gulls flashingto land in level flight, out of a stilltransparent sky, and halos about themoon.

She learned where the sea-birds, withwhite bosoms and brown wings, madetheir hidden nests of sand, and wherethe cranes waded for their prey, andwhere the beautiful wild-ducks,plumaged in satiny lilac and silkengreen, found their food, and where thebest reeds grew to furnish stems forFeliu's red-clay pipe, and where theruddy sea-beans were most oftentossed upon the shore, and how thegray pelicans fished all together, likemen moving in far-extending

semicircles, beating the flood with theirwings to drive the fish before them.

And from Carmen she learned thefables and the sayings of the sea, theproverbs about its deafness, its avarice,its treachery, its terrific power, especiallyone that haunted her for all timethereafter: Si quieres aprender a orar,entra en el mar (If thou wouldst learnto pray, go to the sea). She learned whythe sea is salt, how "the tears of womenmade the waves of the sea," and howthe sea has ii no friends, and how thecat's eyes change with the tides.

What had she lost of life by her swifttranslation from the dusty existence of

cities to the open immensity of nature'sfreedom What did she gain

Doubtless she was saved from many ofthose little bitternesses and restraintsand disappointments which all well-bred city children must suffer in thecourse of their training for the more orless factitious life of society:obligations to remain very still withevery nimble nerve quivering in dumbrevolt; the injustice of being foundtroublesome and being sent to bedearly for the comfort of her elders; thecruel necessity of straining her prettyeyes, for many long hours at a time,over grimy desks in gloomy school-rooms, though birds might twitter and

bright winds flutter in the treeswithout; the austere constrains andheavy drowsiness of warm churches,filled with the droning echoes of avoice preaching incomprehensiblethings; the progressively augmentingweariness of lessons in deportment, indancing, in music, in the impossible artof keeping her dresses unruffled andunsoiled. Perhaps she never had anyreason to regret all these.

She went to sleep and awakened withthe wild birds; her life remained asunfettered by formalities as her fine feetby shoes. Excepting Carmen's oldprayer-book, in which she learned toread a little, her childhood passed

without books, also without pictures,without dainties, without music,without theatrical amusements. But shesaw and heard and felt much of thatwhich, though old as the heavens andthe earth, is yet eternally new andeternally young with the holiness ofbeauty, eternally mystical and divine,eternally weird: the unveiledmagnificence of Nature's moods, theperpetual poem hymned by wind andsurge, the everlasting splendor of thesky.

She saw the quivering pinkness ofwaters curled by the breath of themorning under the deepening of thedawn like a far fluttering and scattering

of rose-leaves of fire;

Saw the shoreless, cloudless, marvellousdouble-circling azure of perfectsummer days twin glories of infinitedeeps inter-reflected, while the Soul ofthe World lay still, suffused with ajewel-light, as of vaporized sapphire;

Saw the Sea shift color, "change sheets,"when the viewless Wizard of the Windbreathed upon its face, and made itgreen;

Saw the immeasurable panics, noiseless,scintillant, which silver, summer aftersummer, curved leagues of beach withbodies of little fish the yearly massacre

of migrating populations, nations ofsea-trout, driven from their element byterror; and the winnowing of shark-fins, and the rushing of porpoises, andthe rising of the grande-ecaille, like apillar of flame, and the diving andpitching and fighting of the frigatesand the gulls, and the armored hordesof crabs swarming out to clear theslope after the carnage and the gorginghad been done;

Saw the Dreams of the Sky, scuddingmockeries of ridged foam, andshadowy stratification of capes andcoasts and promontories long-drawnout, and imageries, multicolored, ofmountain frondage, and sierras

whitening above sierras, and phantomislands ringed around with lagoons ofglory;

Saw the toppling and smouldering ofcloud-worlds after the enormousconflagration of sunsets, incandescenceruining into darkness; and after it amoving and climbing of stars amongthe blacknesses, like searching lamps;

Saw the deep kindle countless ghostlycandles as for mysterious night-festival,and a luminous billowing under a blacksky, and effervescences of fire, and thetwirling and crawling of phosphoricfoam;

Saw the mesmerism of the Moon; sawthe enchanted tides self-heaped inmuttering obeisance before her.

Often she heard the Music of theMarsh through the night: an infinity offlutings and tinklings made by tinyamphibia, like the low blowing ofnumberless little tin horns, the clankingof billions of little bells; and, atintervals, profound tones, vibrant andheavy, as of a bass viol the orchestra ofthe great frogs! And interweaving withit all, one continuous shrilling, keen asthe steel speech of a saw, the striduloustelegraphy of crickets.

But always, always, dreaming or awake,

she heard the huge blind Sea chantingthat mystic and eternal hymn, whichnone may hear without awe, which nomusician can learn,

Heard the hoary Preacher, ElPregonador, preaching the ancientWord, the word "as a fire, and as ahammer that breaketh the rock inpieces," the Elohim Word of the Sea! ...

Unknowingly she came to know theimmemorial sympathy of the mindwith the Soul of the World, themelancholy wrought by its moods ofgray, the reverie responsive to itsvagaries of mist, the exhilaration of itsvast exultings days of windy joy, hours

of transfigured light.

She felt, even without knowing it, theweight of the Silences, the solemnitiesof sky and sea in these low regionswhere all things seem to dream watersand grasses with their momentarywavings, woods gray-webbed withmosses that drip and drool, horizonswith their delusions of vapor, cranesmeditating in their marshes, kitesfloating in the high blue.... Even thechildren were singularly quiet; and theirplay less noisy though she could nothave learned the difference than theplay of city children. Hour after hour,the women sewed or wove in silence.And the brown men, always

barefooted, always wearing rough blueshirts, seemed, when they loungedabout the wharf on idle days, as if theyhad told each other long ago all theyknew or could ever know, and hadnothing more to say. They would stareat the flickering of the current, at thedrifting of clouds and buzzard: seldomlooking at each other, and alwaysturning their black eyes again, in aweary way, to sky or sea. Even thus onesees the horses and the cattle of thecoast, seeking the beach to escape thewhizzing flies; all watch the long wavesrolling in, and sometimes turn theirheads a moment to look at one another,but always look back to the wavesagain, as if wondering at a mystery....

How often she herself had wonderedwondered at the multiform changes ofeach swell as it came in transformationsof tint, of shape, of motion, thatseemed to betoken a life infinitely moresubtle than the strange cold life oflizards and of fishes, and sinister, andspectral. Then they all appeared tomove in order, according to one law orimpulse; each had its own voice, yet allsang one and the same everlasting song.Vaguely, as she watched them andlistened to them, there came to her theidea of a unity of will in their motion,a unity of menace in their utterance theidea of one monstrous and complexlife! The sea lived: it could crawl

backward and forward; it could speak!it only feigned deafness andsightlessness for some malevolent end.Thenceforward she feared to findherself alone with it. Was it not at herthat it strove to rush, muttering, andshowing its white teeth, ... just becauseit knew that she was all by herself ... Siquieres aprender a orar, entra en el mar!And Concha had well learned to pray.But the sea seemed to her the onePower which God could not make toobey Him as He pleased. Saying thecreed one day, she repeated very slowlythe opening words, "Creo en un Dios,padre todopoderoso, Criador de cielo yde la tierra," and paused and thought.Creator of Heaven and Earth

"Madrecita Carmen," she asked, "quienentonces hizo el mar " (who then madethe sea ).

"Dios, mi querida," answered Carmen."God, my darling.... All things weremade by Him" (todas las cosas fueronhechas por El).

Even the wicked Sea! And He had saidunto it: "Thus far, and no farther." ...Was that why it had not overtaken anddevoured her when she ran back in fearfrom the sudden reaching out of itswaves Thus far.... But there were timeswhen it disobeyed when it rushedfurther, shaking the world! Was itbecause God was then asleep could not

hear, did not see, until too late

And the tumultuous ocean terrified hermore and more: it filled her sleep withenormous nightmare; it came upon herin dreams, mountain-shadowing,holding her with its spell, smotheringher power of outcry, heaping itself tothe stars.

Carmen became alarmed; she fearedthat the nervous and delicate childmight die in one of those moaningdreams out of which she had to arouseher, night after night. But Feliu,answering her anxiety with one of hisfavorite proverbs, suggested a heroicremedy:

"The world is like the sea: those whodo not know how to swim in it aredrowned; and the sea is like the world,"he added.... "Chita must learn to swim!"

And he found the time to teach her.Each morning, at sunrise, he took herinto the water. She was less terrified thefirst time than Carmen thought shewould be; she seemed to feelconfidence in Feliu; although shescreamed piteously before her firstducking at his hands. His teaching wasnot gentle. He would carry her out,perched upon his shoulder, until thewater rose to his own neck; and therehe would throw her from him, and let

her struggle to reach him again as bestshe could. The first few mornings shehad to be pulled out almost at once;but after that Feliu showed her lessmercy, and helped her only when hesaw she was really in danger. Heattempted no other instruction untilshe had learned that in order to saveherself from being half choked by thesalt water, she must not scream; and bythe time she became habituated to theseaustere experiences, she had alreadylearned by instinct alone how to keepherself afloat for a while, how topaddle a little with her hands. Then hecommenced to train her to use them, tolift them well out and throw themforward as if reaching, to dip them as

the blade of an oar is dipped at anangle, without loud splashing; and heshowed her also how to use her feet.She learned rapidly and astonishinglywell. In less than two months Feliu feltreally proud at the progress made by histiny pupil: it was a delight to watch herlifting her slender arms above the waterin swift, easy curves, with the same finegrace that marked all her other naturalmotions. Later on he taught her not tofear the sea even when it growled alittle, how to ride a swell, how to face abreaker, how to dive. She only neededpractice thereafter; and Carmen, whocould also swim, finding the child'shealth improving marvellously underthis new discipline, took good care that

Chita should practice whenever themornings were not too cold, or thewater too rough.

With the first thrill of delight at findingherself able to glide over the waterunassisted, the child's superstitiousterror of the sea passed away. Even forthe adult there are few physical joyskeener than the exultation of theswimmer; how much greater the sameglee as newly felt by an imaginativechild, a child, whose vivid fancy canlend unutterable value to the mostinsignificant trifles, can transform aweed-patch to an Eden! ... Of her ownaccord she would ask for her morningbath, as soon as she opened her eyes; it

even required some severity to preventher from remaining in the water toolong. The sea appeared to her assomething that had become tame forher sake, something that loved her in ahuge rough way; a tremendousplaymate, whom she no longer fearedto see come bounding and barking tolick her feet. And, little by little, she alsolearned the wonderful healing andcaressing power of the monster, whosecool embrace at once dispelled alldrowsiness, feverishness, weariness,even after the sultriest nights when theair had seemed to burn, and themosquitoes had filled the chamber witha sound as of water boiling in manykettles. And on mornings when the sea

was in too wicked a humor to beplayed with, how she felt the loss ofher loved sport, and prayed for calm!Her delicate constitution changed; thesoft, pale flesh became firm and brown,the meagre limbs rounded into robustsymmetry, the thin cheeks grew peachywith richer life; for the strength of thesea had entered into her; the sharpbreath of the sea had renewed andbrightened her young blood....

... Thou primordial Sea, the awfulnessof whose antiquity hath stricken allmythology dumb; thou most wrinkleddiving Sea, the millions of whose yearsoutnumber even the multitude of thyhoary motions; thou omniform and

most mysterious Sea, mother of themonsters and the gods, whence shineeternal youth Still do thy waters holdthe infinite thrill of that Spirit whichbrooded above their face in theBeginning! still is thy quickening breathan elixir unto them that flee to thee forlife, like the breath of young girls, likethe breath of children, prescribed forthe senescent by magicians of old,prescribed unto weazened elders in thebooks of the Wizards.

III

... Eighteen hundred and sixty-seven;midsummer in the pest-smitten city ofNew Orleans.

Heat motionless and ponderous. Thesteel-blue of the sky bleached from thefurnace-circle of the horizon; thelukewarm river ran yellow and noiselessas a torrent of fluid wax. Even soundsseemed blunted by the heaviness of theair; the rumbling of wheels, thereverberation of footsteps, fell half-toned upon the ear, like sounds thatvisit a dozing brain.

Daily, almost at the same hour, thecontinuous sense of atmosphericoppression became thickened; a packedherd of low-bellying clouds lumberedup from the Gulf; crowded blacklyagainst the sun; flickered, thundered,

and burst in torrential rain tepid,perpendicular and vanished utterlyaway. Then, more furiously than before,the sun flamed down; roofs andpavements steamed; the streets seemedto smoke; the air grew suffocating withvapor; and the luminous city filled witha faint, sickly odor, a stale smell, as ofdead leaves suddenly disinterred fromwet mould, as of grasses decomposingafter a flood. Something saffronspeckled the slimy water of the gutters;sulphur some called it; others fearedeven to give it a name! Was it only thewind-blown pollen of some innocuousplant

I do not know; but to many it seemed

as if the Invisible Destruction werescattering visible seed! ... Such were thedays; and each day the terror-strickencity offered up its hecatomb to death;and the faces of all the dead wereyellow as flame!

"DECEDE "; "DECEDEE ";"FALLECIO;" "DIED." ... On thedoor-posts, the telegraph-poles, thepillars of verandas, the lamps, over thegovernment letter-boxes, everywhereglimmered the white annunciations ofdeath. All the city was spotted withthem. And lime was poured into thegutters; and huge purifying fires werekindled after sunset.

The nights began with a black heat;there were hours when the acrid airseemed to ferment for stagnation, andto burn the bronchial tubing; then,toward morning, it would grow chillwith venomous vapors, with morbificdews, till the sun came up to lift thetorpid moisture, and to fill thebuildings with oven-glow. And theinterminable procession of mournersand hearses and carriages again beganto circulate between the centres of lifeand of death; and long trains andsteamships rushed from the port, withheavy burden of fugitives.

Wealth might flee; yet even in flightthere was peril. Men, who might have

been saved by the craft of experiencednurses at home, hurriedly departed inapparent health, unconsciously carryingin their blood the toxic principle of amalady unfamiliar to physicians of theWest and North; and they died upontheir way, by the road-side, by the river-banks, in woods, in deserted stations,on the cots of quarantine hospitals.Wiser those who sought refuge in thepurity of the pine forests, or in thosenear Gulf Islands, whence the brightsea-breath kept ever sweeping back theexpanding poison into the funerealswamps, into the misty lowlands. Thewatering-resorts became overcrowded;then the fishing villages were thronged,at least all which were easy to reach by

steamboat or by lugger. And at last,even Viosca's Point, remote andunfamiliar as it was, had a stranger toshelter: a good old gentleman namedEdwards, rather broken down in healthwho came as much for quiet as for sea-air, and who had been warmlyrecommended to Feliu by CaptainHarris. For some years he had beentroubled by a disease of the heart.

Certainly the old invalid could not havefound a more suitable place so far asrest and quiet were concerned. Theseason had early given such littlepromise that several men of the Pointbetook themselves elsewhere; and theaged visitor had two or three vacant

cabins from among which to select adwelling-place. He chose to occupy themost remote of all, which Carmenfurnished for him with a cool moss bedand some necessary furniture, includinga big wooden rocking-chair. It seemedto him very comfortable thus. He tookhis meals with the family, spent most ofthe day in his own quarters, spoke verylittle, and lived so unobtrusively andinconspicuously that his presence in thesettlement was felt scarcely more thanthat of some dumb creature, somedomestic animal, some humble petwhose relation to the family is onlyfully comprehended after it has failedto appear for several days in itsaccustomed place of patient waiting,

and we know that it is dead.

IV.

Persistently and furiously, at half-pasttwo o'clock of an August morning,Sparicio rang Dr. La Brierre's night-bell.He had fifty dollars in his pocket, and aletter to deliver. He was to earn anotherfifty dollars deposited in Feliu's hands,by bringing the Doctor to Viosca'sPoint. He had risked his life for thatmoney, and was terribly in earnest.

Julien descended in his under-clothing,and opened the letter by the light ofthe hall lamp. It enclosed a check for alarger fee than he had ever before

received, and contained an urgentrequest that he would at onceaccompany Sparicio to Viosca's Point,as the sender was in hourly danger ofdeath. The letter, penned in a long,quavering hand, was signed, "HenryEdwards."

His father's dear old friend! Juliencould not refuse to go, though hefeared it was a hopeless case. Anginapectoris, and a third attack at seventyyears of age! Would it even be possibleto reach the sufferer's bedside in time"Due giorno, con vento," said Sparicio.Still, he must go; and at once. It wasFriday morning; might reach the PointSaturday night, with a good wind ... He

roused his housekeeper, gave allneedful instructions, prepared his littlemedicine-chest; and long before thefirst rose-gold fire of day had flashedto the city spires, he was sleeping thesleep of exhaustion in the tiny cabin ofa fishing-sloop.

... For eleven years Julien had devotedhimself, heart and soul, to the exerciseof that profession he had first studiedrather as a polite accomplishment thanas a future calling. In the unselfishpursuit of duty he had found the onlypossible consolation for his irreparableloss; and when the war came to sweepaway his wealth, he entered the strugglevalorously, not to strive against men,

but to use his science against death.After the passing of that huge shock,which left all the imposing andsplendid fabric of Southern feudalismwrecked forever, his profession stoodhim in good stead; he found himselfnot only able to supply those personalwants he cared to satisfy, but also toalleviate the misery of many whom hehad known in days of opulence; theprincely misery that never doffed itssmiling mask, though living in secret,from week to week, on bread andorange-leaf tea; the misery that affectedcondescension in accepting aninvitation to dine, staring at the face ofa watch (refused by the Mont-de-Piete)with eyes half blinded by starvation;

the misery which could afford but onerobe for three marriageable daughters,one plain dress to be worn in turn byeach of them, on visiting days; thepretty misery young, brave, sweet,asking for a "treat" of cakes toojocosely to have its asking answered,laughing and coquetting with its well-fed wooers, and crying for hunger afterthey were gone. Often and often, hisheart had pleaded against his purse forsuch as these, and won its case in thesilent courts of Self. But evermysteriously the gift came, sometimesas if from the hand of a former slave;sometimes as from a remorsefulcreditor, ashamed to write his name.Only yellow Victorine knew; but the

Doctor's housekeeper never openedthose sphinx-lips of hers, until yearsafter the Doctor's name haddisappeared from the City Directory...

He had grown quite thin, a little gray.The epidemic had burthened him withresponsibilities too multifarious andponderous for his slender strength tobear. The continual nervous strain ofabnormally protracted duty, theperpetual interruption of sleep, hadalmost prostrated even his will. Now heonly hoped that, during this briefabsence from the city, he might findrenewed strength to do his terrible task.

Mosquitoes bit savagely; and the heat

became thicker; and there was yet nowind. Sparicio and his hired boyCarmelo had been walking backwardand forward for hours overhead, urgingthe vessel yard by yard, with long poles,through the slime of canals andbayous. With every heavy push, theweary boy would sigh out, "SantoAntonio! Santo Antonio!" SullenSparicio himself at last burst intovociferations of ill-humor: "SantoAntonio Ah! santissimu e santudiavulu! ... Sacramentu paescite vegnuun asidente! malidittu lu Signuri!" Allthrough the morning they walked andpushed, trudged and sighed and swore;and the minutes dragged by morewearily than the shuffling of their feet.

"Managgia Cristo co tutta a croce!" ..."Santissimu e santu diavulu!" ...

But as they reached at last the first ofthe broad bright lakes, the heat lifted,the breeze leaped up, the loose sailflapped and filled; and, bendinggraciously as a skater, the old SanMarco began to shoot in a straight lineover the blue flood. Then, while theboy sat at the tiller, Sparicio lighted histiny charcoal furnace below, andprepared a simple meal, deliciousyellow macaroni, flavored with goats'cheese; some fried fish, that smelledappetizingly; and rich black coffee, ofOriental fragrance and thickness. Julienate a little, and lay down to sleep again.

This time his rest was undisturbed bythe mosquitoes; and when he woke, inthe cooling evening, he felt almostrefreshed. The San Marco was flyinginto Barataria Bay. Already the lanternin the lighthouse tower had begun toglow like a little moon; and right on therim of the sea, a vast and vermilion sunseemed to rest his chin. Gray pelicanscame flapping around the mast; sea-birds sped hurtling by, their whitebosoms rose-flushed by the westernglow ... Again Sparicio's little furnacewas at work, more fish, more macaroni,more black coffee; also a square-shouldered bottle of gin made itsappearance. Julien ate less sparingly atthis second meal; and smoked a long

time on deck with Sparicio, whosuddenly became very good-humored,and chatted volubly in bad Spanish,and in much worse English. Then whilethe boy took a few hours' sleep, theDoctor helped delightedly inmaneuvering the little vessel. He hadbeen a good yachtsman in other years;and Sparicio declared he would make agood fisherman. By midnight the SanMarco began to run with a long,swinging gait; she had reached deepwater. Julien slept soundly; the steadyrocking of the sloop seemed to soothehis nerves.

"After all," he thought to himself, as herose from his little bunk next morning,

"something like this is just what Ineeded." ... The pleasant scent of hotcoffee greeted him; Carmelo washanding him the tin cup containing it,down through the hatchway. Afterdrinking it he felt really hungry; he atemore macaroni than he had ever eatenbefore. Then, while Sparicio slept, heaided Carmelo; and during the middleof the day he rested again. He had nothad so much uninterrupted repose formany a week. He fancied he could feelhimself getting strong. At supper-timeit seemed to him he could not getenough to eat, although there wasplenty for everybody.

All day long there had been exactly the

same wave-crease distorting the whiteshadow of the San Marco's sail uponthe blue water; all day long they hadbeen skimming over the liquid level ofa world so jewel-blue that the lowgreen ribbon-strips of marsh land, thefar-off fleeing lines of pine-yellowsand beach, seemed flaws or breaks inthe perfected color of the universe; allday long had the cloudless sky revealedthrough all its exquisite transparencythat inexpressible tenderness which nopainter and no poet can ever reimage,that unutterable sweetness which no artof man may ever shadow forth, andwhich none may ever comprehend,though we feel it to be in some strangeway akin to the luminous and

unspeakable charm that makes uswonder at the eyes of a woman whenshe loves.

Evening came; and the great dominantcelestial tone deepened; the circlinghorizon filled with ghostly tints,spectral greens and grays, and pearl-lights and fish-colors ... Carmelo, as hecrouched at the tiller, was singing, in alow, clear alto, some tristful littlemelody. Over the sea, behind them, lay,black-stretching, a long low arm ofisland-shore; before them flamed thesplendor of sun-death; they weresailing into a mighty glory, into a vastand awful light of gold.

Shading his vision with his fingers,Sparicio pointed to the long lean limbof land from which they were fleeing,and said to La Brierre:

"Look-a, Doct-a! Last-a Islan'!"

Julien knew it; he only nodded his headin reply, and looked the other way, intothe glory of God. Then, wishing todivert the fisherman's attention toanother theme, he asked what wasCarmelo singing. Sparicio at onceshouted to the lad:

"Ha! ... ho! Carmelo! Santu diavulu! ...Sing-a loud-a! Doct-a lik-a! Sing-a!sing!" .... "He sing-a nicee," added the

boatman, with his peculiar dark smile.And then Carmelo sang, loud andclearly, the song he had been singingbefore, one of those artlessMediterranean ballads, full of caressingvowel-sounds, and young passion, andmelancholy beauty:

"M'ama ancor, belta fulgente, Come tum'amasti allor; Ascoltar non dei gente,Solo interroga il tuo cor." ...

"He sing-a nicee, mucha bueno!"murmured the fisherman. And then,suddenly, with a rich and splendidbasso that seemed to thrill every fibreof the planking, Sparicio joined in thesong:

"M'ama pur d'amore eterno, Ne deilittosembri a te; T'assicuro che l'infernoUna favola sol e." ...

All the roughness of the man wasgone! To Julien's startled fancy, thefishers had ceased to be; lo! Carmelowas a princely page; Sparicio, a king!How perfectly their voices marriedtogether! they sang with passion, withpower, with truth, with that wondrousnatural art which is the birthright ofthe rudest Italian soul. And the starsthrobbed out in the heaven; and theglory died in the west; and the nightopened its heart; and the splendor ofthe eternities fell all about them. Still

they sang; and the San Marco sped onthrough the soft gloom, ever slightlyswerved by the steady blowing of thesoutheast wind in her sail; alwayswearing the same crimpling-frill ofwave-spray about her prow, alwaysaccompanied by the same smooth-backed swells, always spinning outbehind her the same long trail ofinterwoven foam. And Julien lookedup. Ever the night thrilled more andmore with silent twinklings; more andmore multitudinously lights pointed inthe eternities; the Evening Star quiveredlike a great drop of liquid white fireready to fall; Vega flamed as a pharoslighting the courses ethereal, to guidethe sailing of the suns, and the

swarming of fleets of worlds. Then thevast sweetness of that violet nightentered into his blood, filled him withthat awful joy, so near akin to sadness,which the sense of the Infinite brings,when one feels the poetry of the MostAncient and Most Excellent of Poets,and then is smitten at once with thecontrast-thought of the sickliness andselfishness of Man, of the blindnessand brutality of cities, whereinto thedivine blue light never purely comes,and the sanctification of the Silencesnever descends ... furious cities, walledaway from heaven ... Oh! if one couldonly sail on thus always, always throughsuch a night through such a star-sprinkled violet light, and hear Sparicio

and Carmelo sing, even though it werethe same melody always, always thesame song!

... "Scuza, Doct-a! look-a out!" Julienbent down, as the big boom, loosened,swung over his head. The San Marcowas rounding into shore, heading forher home. Sparicio lifted a huge conch-shell from the deck, put it to his lips,filled his deep lungs, and flung out intothe night thrice a profound, mellifluent,booming horn-tone. A minute passed.Then, ghostly faint, as an echo fromvery far away, a triple blowingresponded...

And a long purple mass loomed and

swelled into sight, heightened,approached land and trees black-shadowing, and lights that swung ...The San Marco glided into a bayou,under a high wharfing of timbers,where a bearded fisherman waited, anda woman. Sparicio flung up a rope.

The bearded man caught it by thelantern-light, and tethered the SanMarco to her place. Then he asked, in adeep voice:

"Has traido al Doctor "

"Si, si!" answered Sparicio... "Y el viejo"

"Aye! pobre!" responded Feliu, "hacetres dias que esta muerto."

Henry Edwards was dead!

He had died very suddenly, without acry or a word, while resting in hisrocking-chair, the very day afterSparicio had sailed. They had made hima grave in the marsh, among the highweeds, not far from the ruined tomb ofthe Spanish fisherman. But Spariciohad fairly earned his hundred dollars.

V.

So there was nothing to do at Viosca'sPoint except to rest. Feliu and all his

men were going to Barataria in themorning on business; the Doctor couldaccompany them there, and take theGrand Island steamer Monday for NewOrleans. With this intention Julienretired, not sorry for being able tostretch himself at full length on thegood bed prepared for him, in one ofthe unoccupied cabins. But he wokebefore day with a feeling of intenseprostration, a violent headache, andsuch an aversion for the mere idea offood that Feliu's invitation to breakfastat five o'clock gave him an internalqualm. Perhaps a touch of malaria. Inany case he felt it would be bothdangerous and useless to return totown unwell; and Feliu, observing his

condition, himself advised against thejourney. Wednesday he would haveanother opportunity to leave; and in themeanwhile Carmen would take goodcare of him ... The boats departed, andJulien slept again.

The sun was high when he rose up anddressed himself, feeling no better. Hewould have liked to walk about theplace, but felt nervously afraid of thesun. He did not remember having everfelt so broken down before. He pulleda rocking-chair to the window, tried tosmoke a cigar. It commenced to makehim feel still sicker, and he flung itaway. It seemed to him the cabin wasswaying, as the San Marco swayed

when she first reached the deep water.

A light rustling sound approached, asound of quick feet treading the grass:then a shadow slanted over thethreshold. In the glow of the opendoorway stood a young girl, gracile, tall,with singularly splendid eyes, browneyes peeping at him from beneath agolden riot of loose hair.

"M'sieu-le-Docteur, maman d'mande sivous n'avez besoin d'que'que chose " ...She spoke the rude French of thefishing villages, where the language liveschiefly as a baragouin, mingled oftenwith words and forms belonging tomany other tongues. She wore a loose-

falling dress of some light stuff, steel-gray in color; boys' shoes were on herfeet.

He did not reply; and her large eyesgrew larger for wonder at the strangefixed gaze of the physician, whose facehad visibly bleached, blanched tocorpse-pallor. Silent seconds passed;and still the eyes stared flamed as if thelife of the man had centralized andfocussed within them.

His voice had risen to a cry in histhroat, quivered and swelled onepassionate instant, and failed as in adream when one strives to call, and yetcan only moan ... She! Her unforgotten

eyes, her brows, her lips! the oval of herface! the dawn-light of her hair! ...Adele's own poise, her own grace! eventhe very turn of her neck, even thebird-tone of her speech! ... Had thegrave sent forth a Shadow to haunt himcould the perfidious Sea have yieldedup its dead For one terrible fraction ofa minute, memories, doubts, fears, madfancies, went pulsing through his brainwith a rush like the rhythmic throbbingof an electric stream; then the shockpassed, the Reason spoke: "Fool! countthe long years since you first saw herthus! count the years that have gonesince you looked upon her last! AndTime has never halted, silly heart!neither has Death stood still!"

... "Plait-il " the clear voice of theyoung girl asked. She thought he hadmade some response she could notdistinctly hear.

Mastering himself an instant, as theheart faltered back to its duty, and thecolor remounted to his lips, heanswered her in French:

"Pardon me! I did not hear ... you gaveme such a start!" ... But even thenanother extraordinary fancy flashedthrough his thought; and with thetutoiement of a parent to a child, withan irresistible outburst of suchtenderness as almost frightened her, he

cried: "Oh! merciful God! how like her!... Tell me, darling, your name; ... tell mewho you are " (Dis-moi qui tu es,mignonne; dis-moi ton nom.)

... Who was it had asked her the samequestion, in another idiom ever so longago The man with the black eyes andnose like an eagle's beak, the one whogave her the compass. Not this man no!

She answered, with the timid gravity ofsurprise:

"Chita Viosca"

He still watched her face, and repeatedthe name slowly, reiterated it in a tone

of wonderment: "Chita Viosca ChitaViosca!"

"C'est a dire ..." she said, looking downat her feet, "Concha Conchita." Hisstrange solemnity made her smile, thesmile of shyness that knows not whatelse to do. But it was the smile of deadAdele.

"Thanks, my child," he exclaimed of asudden, in a quick, hoarse, changedtone. (He felt that his emotion wouldbreak loose in some wild way, if helooked upon her longer.) "I would liketo see your mother this evening; but Inow feel too ill to go out. I am going totry to rest a little."

"Nothing I can bring you " she asked,"some fresh milk "

"Nothing now, dear: if I need anythinglater, I will tell your mother when shecomes."

"Mamma does not understand Frenchvery well."

"No importa, Conchita; le hablare enEspanol."

"Bien, entonces!" she responded, withthe same exquisite smile. "Adios,senor!" ...

But as she turned in going, his piercingeye discerned a little brown speckbelow the pretty lobe of her right ear,just in the peachy curve between neckand cheek.... His own little Zouzounehad a birthmark like that! heremembered the faint pink trace left byhis fingers above and below it the dayhe had slapped her for overturning hisink bottle ... "To laimin moin to battemoin!"

"Chita! Chita!"

She did not hear ... After all, what amistake he might have made! Were notNature's coincidences more wonderfulthan fiction Better to wait, to question

the mother first, and thus make sure.

Still there were so many coincidences!The face, the smile, the eyes, the voice,the whole charm; then that mark, andthe fair hair. Zouzoune had alwaysresembled Adele so strangely! Thatgolden hair was a Scandinavian bequestto the Florane family; the tall daughterof a Norwegian sea captain had oncebecome the wife of a Florane. Vioscawho ever knew a Viosca with such hairYet again, these Spanish emigrantssometimes married blonde Germangirls ... Might be a case of atavism, too.Who was this Viosca If that was hiswife, the little brown Carmen, whenceChita's sunny hair ...

And this was part of that same desolateshore whither the Last Island dead hadbeen drifted by that tremendous surge!On a clear day, with a good glass, onemight discern from here the long bluestreak of that ghastly coast ...Somewhere between here and there ...Merciful God! ...

... But again! That bivouac-night beforethe fight at Chancellorsville, Larousselhad begun to tell him such a singularstory ... Chance had brought them, theold enemies, together; made them dearfriends in the face of Death. How littlehe had comprehended the man! what abrave, true, simple soul went up that

day to the Lord of Battles! ... What wasit that story about the little Creole girlsaved from Last Island, that storywhich was never finished ... Eh! what apain!

Evidently he had worked too much,slept too little. A decided case ofnervous prostration. He must lie down,and try to sleep.

These pains in the head and back werebecoming unbearable. Nothing but restcould avail him now.

He stretched himself under themosquito curtain. It was very still,breathless, hot! The venomous insects

were thick; they filled the room with acontinuous ebullient sound, as ifinvisible kettles were boiling overhead.A sign of storm.... Still, it was strange!he could not perspire ...

Then it seemed to him that Larousselwas bending over him Laroussel in hiscavalry uniform. "Bon jour, camarade!nous allons avoir un bien mauvaistemps, mon pauvre Julien." How! badweather "Comment un mauvais temps "... He looked in Laroussel's face. Therewas something so singular in his smile.Ah! yes, he remembered now: it was thewound! ... "Un vilain temps!" whisperedLaroussel. Then he was gone ...Whither

"Cheri!" ...

The whisper roused him with a fearfulstart ... Adele's whisper! So she waswont to rouse him sometimes in theold sweet nights, to crave some littleattention for ailing Eulalie, to makesome little confidence she hadforgotten to utter during the happyevening ... No, no! It was only the trees.The sky was clouding over. The windwas rising ... How his heart beat! howhis temples pulsed! Why, this was fever!Such pains in the back and head!

Still his skin was dry, dry as parchment,burning. He rose up; and a bursting

weight of pain at the base of the skullmade him reel like a drunken man. Hestaggered to the little mirror nailedupon the wall, and looked. How hiseyes glowed; and there was blood in hismouth! He felt his pulse spasmodic,terribly rapid. Could it possibly ... No:this must be some pernicious malarialfever! The Creole does not easily fall aprey to the great tropical malady, unlessafter a long absence in other climates.True! he had been four years in thearmy! But this was 1867 ... He hesitateda moment; then, opening his medicinechest, he measured out and swallowedthirty grains of quinine.

Then he lay down again. His head

pained more and more; it seemed as ifthe cervical vertebrae were filled withfluid iron. And still his skin remaineddry as if tanned. Then the anguishgrew so intense as to force a groan withalmost every aspiration ... Nausea, andthe stinging bitterness of quinine risingin his throat; dizziness, and a brutalwrenching within his stomach.Everything began to look pink; thelight was rose-colored. It darkenedmore, kindled with deepening tint.Something kept sparkling and spinningbefore his sight, like a firework ... Thena burst of blood mixed with chemicalbitterness filled his mouth; the lightbecame scarlet as claret ... This this was... not malaria ...

VI.

... Carmen knew what it was; but thebrave little woman was not afraid of it.Many a time before she had met it faceto face, in Havanese summers; sheknew how to wrestle with it; she hadtorn Feliu's life away from its yellowclutch, after one of those longstruggles that strain even the strengthof love. Now she feared mostly forChita. She had ordered the girl underno circumstances to approach thecabin.

Julien felt that blankets had beenheaped upon him, that some gentle

hand was bathing his scorching facewith vinegar and water. Vaguely alsothere came to him the idea that it wasnight. He saw the shadow-shape of awoman moving against the red lightupon the wall; he saw there was a lampburning.

Then the delirium seized him: hemoaned, sobbed, cried like a child,talked wildly at intervals in French, inEnglish, in Spanish.

"Mentira! you could not be her mother... Still, if you were And she must notcome in here, jamais! ... Carmen, didyou know Adele, Adele Florane So likeher, so like, God only knows how like!

... Perhaps I think I know; but I do notdo not know justly, fully how like! ... Si!si! es el vomito! yo lo conozco, Carmen!... She must not die twice ... I died twice... I am going to die again. She onlyonce. Till the heavens be no more shewill not rise ... Moi, au contraire, il fautque je me leve toujours! They need meso much; the slate is always full; the bellwill never stop. They will ring that bellfor me when I am dead ... So will I riseagain! resurgam! ... How could I savehim could not save myself. It was a badcase, at seventy years! ... There! Qui ca "...

He saw Laroussel again, reaching out ahand to him through a whirl of red

smoke. He tried to grasp it, and couldnot ... "N'importe, mon ami," saidLaroussel, "tu vas la voir bientot." Whowas he to see soon "qui done,Laroussel " But Laroussel did notanswer. Through the red mist heseemed to smile; then passed.

For some hours Carmen had trustedshe could save her patient, desperate asthe case appeared to be. His was one ofthose rapid and violent attacks, such asoften despatch their victims in a singleday. In the Cuban hospitals she hadseen many and many terrible examples:strong young men, soldiers fresh fromSpain, carried panting to the feverwards at sunrise; carried to the

cemeteries at sunset. Even troopersriddled with revolutionary bullets hadlingered longer ... Still, she had believedshe might save Julien's life: the burningforehead once began to bead, theburning hands grew moist.

But now the wind was moaning; the airhad become lighter, thinner, cooler. Astone was gathering in the east; and tothe fever-stricken man the changemeant death ... Impossible to bring thepriest of the Caminada now; and therewas no other within a day's sail. Shecould only pray; she had lost all hope inher own power to save.

Still the sick man raved; but he talked

to himself at longer intervals, and withlonger pauses between his words; hisvoice was growing more feeble, hisspeech more incoherent. His thoughtvacillated and distorted, like flame in awind.

Weirdly the past became confoundedwith the present; impressions of sightand of sound interlinked in fastasticaffinity, the face of Chita Viosca, themurmur of the rising storm. Thenflickers of spectral lightning passedthrough his eyes, through his brain,with every throb of the burningarteries; then utter darkness came, adarkness that surged and moaned, asthe circumfluence of a shadowed sea.

And through and over the moaningpealed one multitudinous human cry,one hideous interblending ofshoutings and shriekings ... A woman'shand was locked in his own ..."Tighter," he muttered, "tighter still,darling! hold as long as you can!" It wasthe tenth night of August, eighteenhundred and fifty-six ...

"Cheri!"

Again the mysterious whisper startledhim to consciousness, the dimknowledge of a room filled with rubycolored light, and the sharp odor ofvinegar. The house swung roundslowly; the crimson flame of the lamp

lengthened and broadened by turns;then everything turned dizzily fast,whirled as if spinning in a vortex ...Nausea unutterable; and a frightfulanguish as of teeth devouring himwithin, tearing more and more furiouslyat his breast. Then one atrociouswrenching, rending, burning, and thegush of blood burst from lips andnostrils in a smothering deluge. Againthe vision of lightnings, the swaying,and the darkness of long ago. "Quick!quick! hold fast to the table, Adele!never let go!" ...

... Up, up, up! what! higher yet Up tothe red sky! Red black-red ... heatediron when its vermilion dies. So, too,

the frightful flood! And noiseless.Noiseless because heavy, clammy, thick,warm, sickening blood Well might theland quake for the weight of such atide! Why did Adele speak SpanishWho prayed for him ...

"Alma de Cristo santisima santificame!

"Sangre de Cristo, embriagame!

"O buen Jesus, oye me!" ...

Out of the darkness into such a light!An azure haze! Ah! the delicious frost!... All the streets were filled with thesweet blue mist ... Voiceless the Cityand white; crooked and weed grown its

narrow ways! ... Old streets of tombs,these ... Eh! How odd a custom! aNight-bell at every door. Yes, of course!a night-bell! the Dead are Physicians ofSouls: they may be summoned only bynight, called up from the darkness andsilence ... Yet she might he not dare toring for her even by day ........ Strange hehad deemed it day! why, it was black,starless ... And it was growing queerlycold ...... How should he ever find hernow It was so black ... so cold! ...

"Cheri!"

All the dwelling quivered with themighty whisper.

Outside, the great oaks were tremblingto their roots; all the shore shook andblanched before the calling of the sea.

And Carmen, kneeling at the feet ofthe dead, cried out, alone in the night:

"O Jesus misericordioso! tenedcompasion de el!"

THE END