CHITA: 
 
 A MEMORY OF LAST ISLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 LAFCADIO HEARN 
 n 
 
 But Nature whistled with all her winds, 
 Did as she pleased, and went her way" 
 
 EMERSON 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1889, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 Ait rij/Att rtitrvtit. 
 Printed in the United States of America. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 - 
 
 THE LEGEND OF L !LE DERNIERE . i 
 
 PART II. 
 OUT OF THE SEA S STRENGTH . . 61 
 
 PART III. 
 THE SHADOW OF THE TIDE . . .129 
 
 242351 
 
Je suis la vaste melee, 
 Reptile, etant Ponde; ai&e, 
 
 Etant le vent, 
 Force et fuite, haine et vie, 
 Houle immense, poursuivie 
 
 Et poursuivant. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
PART I. 
 
 The Legend of L lie Demure. 
 
THE LEGEND OF LILE BERN I ERE. 
 
 I. 
 
 TRAVELLING south from New Or 
 leans to the Islands, you pass through 
 a strange land into a strange sea, by vari 
 ous winding waterways. You can journey 
 to the Gulf) by lugger if you please ; but 
 the trip may be made much more rapidly 
 and agreeably on some one of those light, 
 narrow steamers, built especially for bayou- 
 travel, which usually receive passengers 
 at a point not far from the foot of old 
 Saint-Louis Street, hard by the sugar- 
 landing, where there is ever a pushing 
 and flocking of steam-craft all striving 
 for place to rest their white breasts against 
 the levee, side by side, like great -veary 
 
4 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 swans. But the miniature steamboat on 
 which you engage passage to the Gulf 
 never lingers long in the Mississippi : she 
 crosses the river, slips into some canal- 
 mouth, labors along the artificial channel 
 awhile, and then leaves it with a scream 
 of joy, to puff her free way down many a 
 league of heavily shadowed bayou. Per 
 haps thereafter she may bear you through 
 the immense silence of drenched rice- 
 fields, where the yellow -green level is 
 broken at long intervals by the black sil 
 houette of some irrigating machine ; but, 
 whichever of the five different routes be 
 pursued, you will find yourself more than 
 once floating through sombre mazes of 
 swamp -forest, past assemblages of cy 
 presses all hoary with the parasitic til- 
 landsia, and grotesque as gatherings of 
 fetich -gods. Ever from river or from 
 lakelet the steamer glides again into canal 
 
*T 
 
 The Legend of L lle Derniere. 5 
 
 or bayou, from bayou or canal once more 
 into lake or bay ; and sometimes the 
 swamp-forest visibly thins away from these 
 shores into wastes of reedy morass where, 
 even of breathless nights, the quaggy soil 
 trembles to a sound like thunder of break 
 ers on a coast : the storm-roar of billions 
 of reptile voices chanting in cadence, 
 rhythmically surging in stupendous cres 
 cendo and diminuendo, a monstrous and 
 appalling chorus of frogs ! . . . . 
 
 Panting, screaming, scraping JiejM^t-^ 
 torn over the sand-bars, all day the little 
 steamer strives to reach the grand blaze 
 of blue open water below the marsh-lands ; 
 and perhaps she may be fortunate enough 
 to enter the Gulf about the time of sun 
 set. For the sake of passengers, she trav 
 els by day only ; but there are other ves 
 sels which make the journey also by night 
 --threading the bayou -labyrinths winter 
 
6 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 and summer: sometimes steering by the 
 North Star, sometimes feeling the way 
 with poles in the white season of fogs, 
 sometimes, again, steering by that Star 
 of Evening which in our sky glows like 
 another moon, and drops over the silent 
 lakes as she passes a quivering trail of 
 silver fire. 
 
 Shadows lengthen; and at last the 
 7>~" woods dwindle away behind you into thin 
 bluish lines ; land and water alike take 
 more luminous color; bayous open into 
 broad passes ; lakes link themselves with 
 sea-bays ; and the ocean-wind bursts 
 upon you, keen, cool, and full of light. 
 For the first time the vessel begins to 
 swing, rocking to the great living pulse 
 of the tides. And gazing from the deck 
 around you, with no forest walls to break 
 the view, it will seem to you that the low 
 land must have once been rent asunder 
 
The Legend of LSIle Dernier e. 7 
 
 by the sea, and strewn about the Gulf in 
 fantastic tatters. . . . 
 
 Sometimes above a waste of wind-blown 
 prairie-cane you see an oasis emerging, 
 a ridge or hillock heavily umbraged with 
 the rounded foliage of evergreen oaks : 
 a ch enilre. And from the shining flood 
 also kindred green knolls arise, pretty 
 islets, each with its beach -girdle of daz 
 zling sand and shells, yellow-white, and 
 all radiant with semi-tropical foliage, myr 
 tle and palmetto, orange and magnolia. 
 Under their emerald shadows curious lit 
 tle villages of palmetto huts are drowsing, 
 where dwell a swarthy population of Ori 
 entals, Malay fishermen, who speak the 
 Spanish-Creole of the Philippines as well 
 as their own Tagal, and perpetuate in 
 Louisiana the Catholic traditions of the 
 Indies. There are girls in tjiose unfamil 
 iar villages worthy to inspire any stat- 
 
8 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 uary, beautiful with the beauty of ruddy 
 bronze, gracile as the palmettoes that 
 sway above them Further seaward you 
 may also pass a Chinese settlement : some 
 queer camp of wooden dwellings cluster 
 ing around a vast platform that stands 
 above the water upon a thousand piles ; 
 over the miniature wharf you can scarce 
 ly fail to observe a white sign-board paint 
 ed with crimson ideographs. The great 
 platform is used for drying fish in the 
 sun; and the fantastic characters of the 
 sign, literally translated, mean : " Heap 
 Shrimp Plenty: . . . And finally all the 
 land melts down into desolations of sea- 
 marsh, whose stillness is seldom broken, 
 except by the melancholy cry of long- 
 legged birds, and in wild seasons by that 
 sound which shakes all shores when the 
 weird Musician of the Sea touches the 
 bass keys of his mighty organ. . . . 
 
The Legend of L lie Dernier e. 9 
 
 II. 
 
 Beyond the sea-marshes a curious archi 
 pelago lies. If you travel by steamer to 
 the sea-islands to-day, you are tolerably 
 certain to enter the Gulf by Grande Pass 
 --skirting Grande Terre, the most famil 
 iar island of all; not so much because of 
 its proximity as because of its great crum 
 bling fort and its graceful pharos : the sta 
 tionary White - Light of Barataria. Oth 
 erwise the place is bleakly uninteresting : 
 a wilderness of wind-swept grasses and 
 sinewy weeds waving away from a thin 
 beach ever speckled with drift and decay 
 ing things, worm -riddled timbers, dead 
 porpoises. Eastward the russet level is 
 broken by the columnar silhouette of the 
 light-house, and again, beyond it, by some 
 puny scrub timber, above which rises the 
 angular ruddy mass of the old brick fort, 
 
io Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 whose ditches swarm with crabs, and 
 whose sluiceways are half choked by ob 
 solete cannon-shot, now thickly covered 
 with incrustation of oyster shells. . . . 
 Around all the gray circling of a shark- 
 haunted sea. . . . 
 
 Sometimes of autumn evenings there, 
 when the hollow of heaven flames like 
 the interior of a chalice, and waves and 
 clouds are flying in one wild rout of 
 broken gold, you may see the tawny 
 grasses all covered with something like 
 husks, wheat-colored husks, large, flat, 
 and disposed evenly along the lee -side 
 of each swaying stalk, so as to present 
 only their edges to the wind. nKt, if you 
 approach, those pale husks all break open 
 to display strange splendors of scarlet 
 and seal-brown, with arabesque mottlings 
 in white and black : they change into 
 wondrous living blossoms, which detach 
 
The Legend of L fle Dernier e. 1 1 
 
 themselves before your eyes and rise in 
 air, and flutter away by thousands to set 
 tle down farther off, and turn into wheat- 
 colored husks once more ... a whirlingij 
 flower-drift of sleepy butterflies ! 1 
 
 Southwest, across the pass, gleams beau 
 tiful Grande Isle : primitively a wilder 
 ness of palmetto (latanier) ; then drained, 
 diked, and cultivated by Spanish sugar- 
 planters ; and now familiar chiefly as a 
 bathing-resort. Since the war the ocean 
 reclaimed its own; the cane-fields have 
 degenerated into sandy plains, over which 
 tramways wind to the smooth beach ; the 
 plantation-residences have been converted 
 into rustic hotels, and the negro-quarters 
 remodelled into villages of cozy cottages 
 for the reception of guests. But with its 
 imposing groves of oak, its golden wealth 
 of orange-trees, its odorous lanes of ole- 
 
1 2 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 ander, its broad grazing-meadows yellow- 
 starred with wild camomile, Grande Isle 
 remains the prettiest island of the Gulf ; 
 and its loveliness is exceptional. For the 
 bleakness of Grand Terre is reiterated 
 by most of the other islands, Caillou, 
 Cassetete, Calumet, Wine Island, the twin 
 Timbaliers, Gull Island, and the many 
 islets haunted by the gray pelican, all 
 of which are little more than sand-bars 
 covered with wiry grasses, prairie -cane, 
 and scrub - timber. Last Island (L lle 
 Derniere), well worthy a long visit in 
 other years, in spite of its remoteness, 
 is now a ghastly desolation twenty -five 
 miles long. Lying nearly forty miles 
 west of Grande Isle, it was nevertheless 
 far more populated a generation ago : it 
 was not only the most celebrated island 
 of the group, but also the most fashion 
 able watering-place of the aristocratic 
 
The Legend of L? lie Dernier e. 13 
 
 South ; to-day it is visited by fishermen 
 only, at long intervals. Its admirable 
 beach in many respects resembled that of 
 Grande Isle to-day; the accommodations 
 also were much similar, although finer : a 
 charming village of cottages facing the 
 Gulf near the western end. The hotel it 
 self was a massive two-story construction 
 of timber, containing many apartments, 
 together with a large dining-room and 
 dancing-hall. In rear of the hotel was 
 a bayou, where passengers landed " Vil 
 lage Bayou " it is still called by seamen ; 
 but the deep channel which now cuts the 
 island in two a little eastwardly did not 
 exist while the village remained. The sea 
 tore it out in one night the same night 
 when trees, fields, dwellings, all vanished 
 into the Gulf, leaving no vestige of former 
 human habitation except a few of those 
 strong brick props and foundations upon 
 
14 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 which the frame houses and cisterns had 
 been raised. One living creature was 
 found there after the cataclysm a cow! 
 But how that solitary cow survived the 
 fury of a storm-flood that actually rent 
 the island in twain has ever remained a 
 
 mystery. . . . 
 
 III. 
 
 On the Gulf side of these islands mou 
 may observe that the trees when (acre 
 are any trees all bend away frornVhe 
 sea ; and, even of bright, hot days when 
 the wind sleeps, there is something gro 
 tesquely pathetic in their look of ago- 
 terror. A group of oaks at Grande 
 Isle I remember as especially suggestive : 
 five stooping silhouettes in line against 
 the horizon, like fleeing women with 
 streaming garments and wind-blown hair, 
 V ^- bowing grievously and thrusting out 
 
 \ arms desperately northward as to save 
 v^.~. 
 
The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 15 
 
 themselves from falling. / And they are 
 being pursued indeed ^for the sea is 
 devouring the land. Many and many a 
 mile of ground has yielded to the tireless 
 charging of Ocean s cavalry : far out you 
 
 f - 
 
 can see, through a good glass, the por 
 poises at play where of old the sugar-cane 
 shook out its million bannerets ; and 
 shark-fins now seam deep water above a 
 site where pigeons used to coo. Men 
 build dikes ; but the besieging tides bring 
 up their battering-rams whole forests 
 of drift huge trunks of water-oak and 
 weighty cypress. Forever the yellow Mis 
 sissippi strives to build; forever the sea 
 
 i 
 
 struggles to destroy ; and amid their 
 eternal strife the islands and the prom 
 ontories change shape, more slowly, but 
 not less fantastically, than the clouds of 
 heaven. 
 
 And worthy of study are those wan 
 
16 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 battle-grounds where the woods made 
 their last brave stand against the irresisti 
 ble invasion, usually at some long point 
 of sea-marsh, widely fringed with billow 
 ing sand. Just where the waves curl 
 beyond such a point you may discern a 
 multitude of blackened, snaggy shapes 
 protruding above the water, some high 
 enough to resemble ruined chimneys, oth 
 ers bearing a startling likeness to enor 
 mous skeleton-feet and skeleton-hands, 
 with crustaceous white growths clinging 
 to them here and there like remnants of 
 integument. These are bodies and limbs 
 of drowned oaks, so long drowned that 
 the shell -scurf is inch -thick upon parts 
 of_thern.v Farther in upon the beach 
 immense trunks lie overthrown. Some 
 look like vast broken columns; some sug 
 gest colossal torsos imbedded, and seem 
 to reach out mutilated stumps in despair 
 
The Legend of L lle Derniere. 1 7 
 
 I 
 from their deepening graves ;-|-and beside 
 
 ii "" 
 
 these are others which have kept their 
 feet with astounding obstinacy, although 
 the barbarian tides have been charging 
 them for twenty years, and gradually torn 
 away the soil above and beneath their 
 roots. The sand around, soft beneath 
 and thinly crusted upon the surface, is 
 everywhere pierced with holes made by 
 a beautifully mottled and semi -diapha 
 nous crab, with hairy legs, big staring 
 eyes, and milk-white claws ; while in the 
 green sedges beyond there is a perpetual 
 rustling, as of some strong wind beating 
 among reeds : a marvellous creeping of 
 " fiddlers," which the inexperienced vis 
 itor might at first mistake for so many 
 peculiar beetles, as they run about side 
 ways, each with his huge single claw 
 folded upon his body like a wing-case. 
 Year by year that rustling strip of green 
 
1 8 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 land grows narrower; the sand spreads 
 and sinks, shuddering and wrinkling like 
 a living brown skin ; and the last stand 
 ing corpses of the oaks, ever clinging with 
 naked, dead feet to the sliding beach, lean 
 more and more out of the perpendicular. 
 As the sands subside, the stumps appear to 
 creep ; their intertwisted masses of snak- 
 ish roots seem to crawl, to writhe, like 
 the reaching arms of cephalopods. . . . 
 
 . . . Grande Terre is going: the sea 
 mines her fort, and will before many years 
 carry the ramparts by storm. Grande 
 Isle is going, slowly but surely : the 
 Gulf has eaten three miles into her mead- 
 owed land. Last Island has gone ! How 
 it went I first heard from the lips of a 
 veteran pilot, while we sat one evening 
 together on the trunk of a drifted cypress 
 which some high tide had pressed deeply 
 into the Grande Isle beach. The day had 
 
The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 19 
 
 been tropically warm ; we had sought the 
 shore for a breath of living air. Sunset 
 came, and with it the ponderous heat 
 lifted, a sudden breeze blew, lightnings 
 flickered in the darkening horizon, wind 
 and water began to strive together, and 
 soon all the low coast boomed. Then 
 my companion began his story ; perhaps 
 the coming of the storm inspired him to 
 speak ! And as I listened to him, listen 
 ing also to the clamoring of the coast, 
 there flashed back to me recollection of a 
 singular Breton fancy : that the Voice of 
 the Sea is never one voice, but a tumult 
 of many voices voices of drowned men, 
 the muttering of multitudinous dead, 
 the moaning of innumerable ghosts, all 
 rising, to rage against the living, at the 
 great Witch-call of storms. . . . 
 
20 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The charm of a single summer day on 
 these island shores is something impossi 
 ble to express, never to be forgotten. Rare 
 ly, in the paler zones, do earth and heaven 
 take such luminosity: those will best un 
 derstand me who have seen the splendor 
 of a West Indian sky. And yet there is 
 a tenderness of tint, a caress of color, in 
 these Gulf-days which is not of the An 
 tilles, a spirituality, as of eternal tropical 
 spring. It must have been to even such 
 a sky that Xenophanes lifted up his eyes 
 of old when he vowed the Infinite Blue 
 was God ; it was indeed under such a 
 sky that De Soto named the vastest and 
 grandest of Southern havens Espiritu 
 Santo, the Bay of the Holy Ghost. 
 There is a something unutterable in this 
 bright Gulf-air that compels awe, some- 
 
The Legend of L fle Dernier e. 2 1 
 
 thing vital, something holy, something 
 pantheistic : and reverentially the mind 
 asks itself if what the eye beholds is not 
 the IT^eu/xa indeed, the Infinite Breath, 
 the Divine Ghost, the great Blue Soul of 
 the Unknown. All, all is blue in the 
 calm, save the low land under your feet, 
 which you almost forget, since it seems 
 only as a tiny green flake afloat in the 
 liquid eternity of day. Then slowly, ca- 1 
 ressingly, irresistibly, the witchery of the 
 Infinite grows upon you : out of Time 
 and Space you begin to dream with open 
 eyes, to drift into delicious oblivion of 
 facts, to forget the past, the present, the! 
 substantial, to comprehend nothing butj 
 
 the existence of that infinite Blue Ghost 
 
 1 1 
 
 as something into which you would wish ! 
 to melt utterly away forever. . . . 
 
 And this day-magic of azure endures 
 sometimes for months together. Cloud- 
 
22 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 lessly the dawn reddens up through a 
 violet east: there is no speck upon the 
 blossoming of its Mystical Rose, unless 
 it be the silhouette of some passing gull, 
 whirling his sickle-wings against the crim 
 soning. Ever, as the sun floats higher, 
 flood shifts its color. Sometimes 
 smooth and gray, yet flickering with the 
 morning gold, it is the vision of John, 
 the apocalyptic Sea of Glass mixed with 
 fire; again, with the growing breeze, it 
 
 i takes that incredible purple tint familiar 
 mostly to painters of West Indian scenery; 
 once more, under the blaze of noon, it 
 changes to a waste of broken emerald. 
 With evening, the horizon assumes tints 
 i of inexpressible sweetness, pearl - lights, 
 / opaline colors of milk and fire ; and in the 
 west are topaz - glowings and wondrous 
 flushings as of nacre. Then, if the sea 
 \ sleeps, it dreams of all these, faintly, 
 
The Legend of Lite Dernier e. 23 
 
 weirdly, shadowing them even to the 
 verge of heaven. 
 
 Beautiful, too, are those white phantas 
 magoria which, at the approach of equi 
 noctial days, mark the coming of the 
 winds. Over the rim of the sea a bright 
 cloud gently pushes up its head. It rises; 
 and others rise with it, to right and left 
 slowly at first ; then more swiftly. All 
 are brilliantly white and flocculent, like 
 loose new cotton. Gradually they mount 
 in enormous line high above the Gulf, 
 rolling and wreathing into an arch that 
 expands and advances, bending from 
 horizon to horizon. A clear, cold breath 
 accompanies its coming. Reaching the 
 zenith, it seems there to hang poised 
 awhile, a ghostly bridge arching the em 
 pyrean, upreaching its measureless span 
 from either underside of the world. Then 
 the colossal phantom begins to turn, as 
 
24 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 on a pivot of air, always preserving its 
 curvilinear symmetry, but moving its un 
 seen ends beyond and below the sky-cir 
 cle. And at last it floats away unbroken 
 beyond the blue sweep of the 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 
 low shores ; only long sloping beaches 
 and bars of smooth tawny sand. Sand 
 and sea teem with vitality ; over all the 
 dunes there is a constant susurration, a 
 blattering and swarming of Crustacea; 
 through all the sea there is a ceaseless 
 play of silver lightning, flashing of myr 
 iad fish. Sometimes the shallows are 
 thickened with minute, transparent, crab- 
 like organisms, all colorless as gelatine. 
 There are days also when countless me 
 dusae drift in beautiful veined creatures 
 
The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 25 
 
 that throb like hearts, with perpetual sys 
 tole and diastole of their diaphanous en 
 velops: some, of translucent azure or rose, 
 seem in the flood the shadows or ghosts of 
 huge campanulate flowers ; others have 
 the semblance of strange living vegeta 
 bles, great milky tubers, just beginning 
 to sprout. But woe to the human skin 
 grazed by those shadowy sproutings and 
 spectral stamens ! the touch of glowing 
 iron is not more painful. . . . Within an 
 hour or two after their appearance all 
 these tremulous jellies vanish mysterious 
 ly as they came. 
 
 Perhaps, if a bold swimmer, you may 
 venture out alone a long way once! 
 Not twice ! even in company. As the 
 water deepens beneath you, and you feel 
 those ascending wave-currents of coldness 
 arising which bespeak profundity, you will 
 also begin to feel innumerable touches, as 
 
26 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 of groping fingers touches of the bodies 
 of fish, innumerable fish, fleeing towards 
 shore. The farther you advance, the 
 more thickly you will feel them come ; 
 and above you and around you, to right 
 and left, others will leap and fall so swift 
 ly as to daze the sight, like intercrossing 
 fountain-jets of fluid silver. The gulls 
 fly lower about you, circling with sinister 
 squeaking cries ; perhaps for an instant 
 your feet touch in the deep something 
 heavy, swift, lithe, that rushes past with a 
 swirling shock. Then the fear of the 
 Abyss, the vast and voiceless Nightmare 
 of the Sea, will come upon you ; the si 
 lent panic of all those opaline millions 
 that flee glimmering by will enter into 
 you also. . . . 
 
 From what do they flee thus perpetu 
 ally ? Is it from the giant sawfish or the 
 ravening shark ? from the herds of the 
 
s* 
 
 The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 27 
 
 porpoises, or from the grande- ecaille, 
 that splendid monster whom no net may 
 hold, all helmed and armored in argent 
 plate-mail ? or from the hideous devil 
 fish of the Gulf, gigantic, flat-bodied, 
 black, with immense side-fins ever out 
 spread like the pinions of a bat, the ter 
 ror of luggermen, the uprooter of anch 
 ors ? From all these, perhaps, and from 
 other monsters likewise goblin shapes 
 evolved by Nature as destroyers, as equi 
 librists, as counterchecks to that prodig 
 ious fecundity, which, unhindered, would 
 thicken the deep into one measureless 
 and waveless ferment of being. . . . But 
 when there are many bathers these perils 
 are forgotten, numbers give courage, 
 one can abandon one s self, without fear 
 of the invisible, to the long, quivering, 
 electrical caresses of the sea. . 
 
28 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 V. 
 
 Thirty years ago, Last Island lay steep 
 ed in the enormous light of even such 
 magical days. July was dying; for 
 weeks no fleck of cloud had broken the 
 heaven s blue dream of eternity; winds 
 held their breath ; slow wavelets caressed 
 the bland brown beach with a sound as 
 of kisses and whispers. To one who 
 found himself alone, beyond the limits of 
 the village and beyond the hearing of its 
 voices, the vast silence, the vast light, 
 seemed full of weirdness. And these 
 hushes, these transparencies, do not al 
 ways inspire a causeless apprehension : 
 they are omens sometimes omens of com 
 ing tempest. Nature, incomprehensible 
 Sphinx ! before her -mightiest bursts of 
 rage, ever puts forth her divinest witchery, 
 makes more manifest her awful beauty 
 
The Legend of Ulle Dernier e. 29 
 
 But in that forgotten summer the witch 
 ery lasted many long days, (Jays born in 
 rose-light, burie^L-ilL gold. It was the 
 height of the season. The long myrtle- 
 shadowed village was thronged with its 
 summer population ; the big hotel could 
 hardly accommodate all its guests; the 
 bathing -houses were too few for the 
 crowds who flocked to the water morn 
 ing and evening. There were diversions 
 for all, hunting and fishing parties, 
 yachting excursions, rides, music, games, 
 promenades. Carriage wheels whirled 
 flickering along the beach, seaming its 
 smoothness noiselessly, as if muffled. 
 Love wrqte its 
 
 . . .Then one great noon, when the blue 
 abyss of day seemed to yawn over the 
 world more deeply than ever before, a 
 sudden change touched the quicksilver 
 smoothness of the waters the swaying 
 
30 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 shadow of a vast motion. First the whole 
 sea-circle appeared to rise up bodily at the 
 sky ; the horizon-curve lifted to a straight 
 line; the line darkened and approached, 
 a monstrous wrinkle, an immeasurable 
 fold of green water, moving swift as a 
 cloud-shadow pursued by sunlight. But 
 it had looked formidable only by startling 
 contrast with the previous placidity of the 
 open : it was scarcely two feet high ; it 
 curled slowly as it neared the beach, and 
 combed itself out in sheets of woolly foam 
 with a low, rich roll of whispered thunder. 
 Swift in pursuit another followed a third 
 a feebler fourth ; then the sea only 
 swayed a little, and stilled again. Min 
 utes passed, and the immeasurable heav 
 ing recommenced one, two, f hree, four 
 . . . seven long swells this time; and 
 the Gulf smoothed itself once more. Ir 
 regularly the phenomenon continued to 
 
The Legend of L?Ile Derniere. 3 1 
 
 repeat itself, each time with heavier bil 
 lowing and briefer intervals of quiet un 
 til at last the whole sea grew restless and 
 shifted color and flickered green ; the 
 swells became shorter and changed form. 
 Then from horizon to shore ran one 
 uninterrupted heaving one vast green 
 swarming of snaky shapes, rolling in to 
 hiss and flatten upon the sand. Yet no 
 single cirrus-speck revealed itself through 
 all the violet heights : there was no wind 1 
 you might have fancied the sea had 
 been upheaved from beneath. . . . 
 
 And indeed the fancy of a seismic ori 
 gin for a windless surge would not appear 
 in these latitudes to be utterly without 
 foundation. On the fairest days a south 
 east breeze may bear you an odor singu 
 lar enough to startle you from sleep, a 
 strong, sharp smell as of fish-oil ; and gaz 
 ing at the sea you might be still more 
 
32 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 startled at the sudden apparition of great 
 oleaginous patches spreading over the 
 water, sheeting over the swells. That is, 
 if you had never heard of the mysterious 
 submarine oil-wells, the volcanic fountains, 
 unexplored, that well up with the eternal 
 pulsing of the Gulf-Stream. . . . 
 
 But the pleasure-seekers of Last Island 
 knew there must have been a " great 
 blow " somewhere that day. Still the sea 
 swelled ; and a splendid surf made the 
 evening bath delightful. Then, just at 
 sundown, a beautiful cloud-bridge grew 
 up and arched the sky with a single span 
 of cottony pink vapor, that changed and 
 deepened color with the dying of the iri 
 descent day. And the cloud -bridge ap 
 proached, stretched, strained, and swung 
 round at last to make way for the coming 
 of the gale, even as the light bridges that 
 traverse the dreamy Teche swing open 
 
The Legend of L lle Derniere. 33 
 
 when luggermen sound through their 
 conch-shells the long, bellowing signal of 
 approach. 
 
 Then the wind began to blow, with the 
 passing of July. It blew from the north 
 east, clear, cool. It blew in enormous 
 sighs, dying away at regular intervals, as 
 if pausing to draw breath. All night it 
 blew ; and in each pause could be heard 
 the answering moan of the rising surf, 
 as if the rhythm of the sea moulded itself 
 after the rhythm of the air, as if the wav 
 ing of the water responded precisely to 
 the waving of the wind, a billow for ev 
 ery puff, a surge for every sigh. 
 
 The August morning broke in a bright 
 sky ; the breeze still came cool and clear 
 from the northeast. The waves were run 
 ning now at a sharp angle to the shore : 
 they began to carry fleeces, an innumer 
 able flock of vague green shapes, wind- 
 
34 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 driven to be despoiled of their ghostly 
 wool. Far as the eye could follow the 
 line of the beach, all the slope was white 
 with the great shearing of them. Clouds 
 came, flew as in a panic against the face 
 of the sun, and passed. All that day and 
 through the night and into the morning 
 again the breeze continued from the north 
 east, blowing like an equinoctial eale. . . . 
 Then day by day the vast breath fresh 
 ened steadily, and the waters heightened. 
 A week later sea/bathing had become 
 perilous : colossal breakers were herding 
 in, like moving leviathan-backs, twice the 
 height of a man. Still the gale grew, and 
 the billowing waxed mightier, and faster 
 and faster overhead flew the tatters of 
 torn cloud. The gray morning of the gth 
 wanly lighted a surf that appalled the best 
 swimmers : the sea was one wild agony 
 of foam, the gale was rending off the heads 
 
The Legend of Llle Derniere. 35 
 
 of the waves and veiling the horizon with 
 a fog of salt spray. Shadowless and gray 
 the day remained ; there were mad bursts 
 of lashing rain. Evening brought with it 
 a sinister apparition, looming through a 
 cloud-rent in the west a scarlet sun in 
 a green sky. His sanguine disk, enor 
 mously magnified, seemed barred like the 
 body of a belted planet. A moment, and 
 the crimson spectre vanished; and the 
 moonless night came. 
 
 Then the Wind grew weird. It ceased 
 being a breath ; it became a Voice moan 
 ing across the world, hooting, uttering 
 nightmare sounds, Whoo ! whoo ! - 
 whoo! and with each stupendous owl- 
 cry the mooing of the waters seemed to 
 deepen, more and more abysmally, 
 through all the hours of darkness. 
 From the northwest the breakers of the 
 bay began to roll high over the sandy 
 
36 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 slope, into the salines ; the village bayou 
 broadened to a bellowing flood. ... So 
 the tumult swelled and the turmoil 
 heightened until morning, a morning of 
 gray gloom and whistling rain. Rain of 
 bursting clouds and rain of wind-blown 
 brine from the great spuming agony of 
 the sea. 
 
 The steamer Star was due from St. 
 Mary s that fearful morning. Could she 
 come? No one really believed it, no 
 one. And nevertheless men struggled 
 to the roaring beach to look for her, be 
 cause hope is stronger than reason. . . . 
 
 Even to-day, in these Creole islands, 
 the advent of the steamer is the great 
 event of the week. There are no tele 
 graph lines, no telephones: the mail- 
 packet is the only trustworthy medium 
 of communication with the outer world, 
 bringing friends, news, letters. The 
 
M 
 
 The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 37 
 
 magic of steam has placed New Orleans 
 nearer to New York than to the Timbal- 
 iers, nearer to Washington than to Wine 
 Island, nearer to Chicago than to Bara- 
 taria Bay. And even during the deepest 
 sleep of waves and winds there will come 
 betimes to sojourners in this unfamiliar 
 archipelago a feeling of lonesomeness 
 that is a fear, a feeling of isolation from 
 the world of men, totally unlike that 
 sense of solitude which haunts one in 
 the silence of mountain-heights, or amid 
 the eternal tumult of lofty granitic coasts: 
 a sense of helpless insecurity. The land 
 seems but an undulation of the sea-bed : 
 its highest ridges do not rise more than 
 the height of a man above the salines on 
 either side ; the salines themselves lie 
 almost level with the level of the flood- 
 tides ; the tides are variable, treacher 
 ous, mysterious. But when all around 
 
38 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 and above these ever-changing shores the 
 twin vastnesses of heaven and sea begin 
 to utter the tremendous revelation of 
 themselves as infinite forces in conten 
 tion, then indeed this sense of separation 
 from humanity appals. . . . Perhaps it was 
 such a feeling which forced men, on the 
 tenth day of August, eighteen hundred 
 and fifty-six, to hope against hope for the 
 coming of the Star, and to strain their 
 eyes towards far-off Terrebonne. " It was 
 a wind you could lie down on," said my 
 friend the pilot. 
 
 ..." Great God !" shrieked a voice 
 above the shouting of the storm, "she 
 is coming /" ... It was true. Down the 
 Atchafalaya, and thence through strange 
 mazes of bayou, lakelet, and pass, by a 
 rear route familiar only to the best of 
 pilots, the frail river-craft had toiled into 
 Caillou Bay, running close to the main 
 
XI 
 
 The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 39 
 
 shore ; and now she was heading right 
 for the island, with the wind aft, over the 
 monstrous sea. On she came, swaying, 
 rocking, plunging, with a great white 
 ness wrapping her about like a cloud, 
 and moving with her moving, a tem 
 pest-whirl of spray ; ghost-white and like 
 a ghost she came, for her smoke-stacks 
 exhaled no visible smoke the wind de 
 voured it! The excitement on shore 
 became wild; men shouted themselves 
 hoarse; women laughed and cried. Ev 
 ery telescope and opera-glass was directed 
 upon the coming apparition ; all wondered 
 how the pilot kept his feet ; all marvelled 
 at the madness of the captain. 
 
 But Captain Abraham Smith was not 
 mad. A veteran American sailor, he had 
 learned to know the great Gulf as scholars 
 know deep books by heart : he knew the 
 birthplace of its tempests, the mystery of 
 
4O Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 its tides, the omens of its hurricanes. 
 While lying at Brashear City he felt the 
 storm had not yet reached its highest, 
 vaguely foresaw a mighty peril, and re 
 solved to wait no longer for a lull. 
 " Boys," he said, " we ve got to take her 
 out in spite of Hell!" And they "took 
 her out." Through all the peril, his men 
 stayed by him and obeyed him. By mid- 
 morning the wind had deepened to a roar, 
 lowering sometimes to a rumble, some 
 times bursting upon the ears like a meas 
 ureless and deafening crash. Then the 
 captain knew the Star was running a race 
 with Death. " She ll win it," he mutter 
 ed ; " she ll stand it Perhaps they ll 
 
 have need of me to-night." 
 
 She won ! With a sonorous steam- 
 chant of triumph the brave little vessel 
 rode at last into the bayou, and anchored 
 hard by her accustomed resting-place, in 
 
The Legend of L lle Derniere. 41 
 
 full view of the hotel, though not near 
 enough to shore to lower her gang-plank. 
 . . . But she had sung her swan-song. 
 Gathering in from the northeast, the 
 waters of the bay were already marbling 
 over the salines and half across the isl 
 and ; and still the wind increased its par 
 oxysmal power. 
 
 Cottages began to rock. Some slid 
 away from the solid props upon which 
 they rested. A chimney tumbled. Shut 
 ters were wrenched off; verandas demol 
 ished. Light roofs lifted, dropped again, 
 and flapped into ruin. Trees bent their 
 heads to the earth. And still the storm 
 grew louder and blacker with every pass 
 ing hour. 
 
 The Star rose with the rising of the 
 waters, dragging her anchor. Two more 
 anchors were put out, and still she dragged 
 dragged in with the flood, twisting, 
 
42 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 shuddering, careening in her agony. 
 Evening fell ; the sand began to move 
 with the wind, stinging faces like a con 
 tinuous fire of fine shot ; and frenzied 
 blasts came to buffet the steamer for 
 ward, sideward. Then one of her hog- 
 chains parted with a clang like the boom 
 of a big bell. Then another ! . . . Then 
 the captain bade his men to cut away 
 all her upper works, clean to the deck. 
 Overboard into the seething went her 
 stacks, her pilot-house, her cabins, and 
 whirled away. And the naked hull of 
 the Star, still dragging her three anchors, 
 labored on through the darkness, nearer 
 and nearer to the immense silhouette of 
 the hotel, whose hundred windows were 
 now all aflame. The vast timber build 
 ing seemed to defy the storm. The wind, 
 roaring round its broad verandas, hiss 
 ing through every crevice with the sound 
 
^ 
 
 The Legend of L? He Dernier e. 43 
 
 and force of steam, appeared to waste its 
 rage. And in the half-lull between two 
 terrible gusts there came to the captain s 
 ears a sound that seemed strange in that 
 night of multitudinous terrors ... a sound 
 of music ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 . . . Almost every evening throughout 
 the season there had been dancing in the 
 great hall ; there was dancing that night 
 also. The population of the hotel had 
 been augmented by the advent of families 
 from other parts of the island, who found 
 their summer cottages insecure places of 
 shelter: there were nearly four hundred 
 guests assembled. Perhaps it was for 
 this reason that the entertainment had 
 been prepared upon a grander plan than 
 usual, that it assumed the form of a fash 
 ionable ball. And all those pleasure- 
 
44 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 seekers, representing the wealth and 
 beauty of the Creole parishes, whether 
 from Ascension or Assumption, St. 
 Mary s or St. Landry s, Iberville or 
 Terrebonne, whether inhabitants of the 
 multi-colored and many-balconied Creole 
 quarter of the quaint metropolis, or dwell 
 ers in the dreamy paradises of the Teche, 
 mingled joyously, knowing each other, 
 feeling in some sort akin whether affili 
 ated by blood, connaturalized by caste, or 
 simply interassociated by traditional sym 
 pathies of class sentiment and class in 
 terest. Perhaps in the more than ordina 
 ry merriment of that evening something 
 of nervous exaltation might have been dis 
 cerned, something like a feverish resolve 
 to oppose apprehension with gayety, to 
 combat uneasiness by diversion. But the 
 hours passed in mirthfulness; the first 
 general feeling of depression began to 
 
The Legend of L lle Derniere. 45 
 
 weigh less and less upon the guests ; they 
 had found reason to confide in the solid 
 ity of the massive building ; there were 
 no positive terrors, no outspoken fears; 
 and the new conviction of all had found 
 expression in the words of the host him 
 self, "// riy a rien de mieux a faire que 
 de samuser !" Of what avail to lament 
 the prospective devastation of cane-fields, 
 to discuss the possible ruin of crops ? 
 Better to seek solace in choregraphic har 
 monies, in the rhythm of gracious motion 
 and of perfect melody, than hearken to 
 the discords of the wild orchestra of 
 storms; wiser to admire the grace of 
 Parisian toilets, the eddy of trailing robes 
 with its fairy-foam of lace, the ivorine 
 loveliness of glossy shoulders and jew 
 elled throats, the glimmering of satin-slip 
 pered feet, than to watch the raging of 
 the flood without, or the flying of the 
 wrack. , 
 
46 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 So the music and the mirth went on: 
 they made joy for themselves those ele 
 gant guests ; they jested and sipped rich 
 wines; they pledged, and hoped, and 
 loved, and promised, with never a thought 
 of the morrow, on the night of the tenth 
 of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six. 
 Observant parents were there, planning 
 for the future bliss of their nearest and 
 dearest; mothers and fathers of hand 
 some lads, lithe and elegant as young 
 pines, and fresh from the polish of for 
 eign university training; mothers and 
 fathers of splendid girls whose simplest 
 attitudes were witcheries. Young cheeks 
 flushed, young hearts fluttered with an 
 emotion more puissant than the excite 
 ment of the dance ; young eyes betrayed 
 the happy secret discreeter lips would 
 have preserved. Slave -servants circled 
 through the aristocratic press, bearing 
 
XI 
 
 The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 47 
 
 dainties and wines, praying permission to 
 pass in terms at once humble and offi 
 cious, always in the excellent French 
 which well -trained house-servants were 
 taught to use on such occasions. 
 
 . . . Night wore on : still the shining 
 floor palpitated to the feet of the dancers; 
 still the piano-forte pealed, and still the 
 violins sang, and the sound of their 
 singing shrilled through the darkness, in 
 gasps of the gale, to the ears of Captain 
 Smith, as he strove to keep his footing on 
 the spray-drenched deck of the Star. 
 
 -" Christ !" he muttered," a dance ! 
 If that wind whips round south, there ll 
 be another dance ! . . . But I guess the 
 Star will stay.". . . 
 
 Half an hour might have passed ; still 
 the lights flamed calmly, and the violins 
 trilled, and the perfumed whirl went on. 
 . . . And suddenly the wind veered ! 
 
48 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Again the Star reeled, and shuddered, 
 and turned, and began to drag all her 
 anchors. But she now dragged away 
 from the great building and its lights, 
 away from the voluptuous thunder of the 
 grand piano, even at that moment out 
 pouring the great joy of Weber s melody 
 orchestrated by Berlioz : r Invitation a 
 la Valse, with its marvellous musical 
 swing !" 
 
 " Waltzing!" cried the captain. " God 
 _Jielp them ! God help us all now ! . . . . 
 \ The Wind waltzes to-night, with the Sea 
 for his partner /". . . ^""^ 
 
 O the stupendous Valse -Tourbillon ! 
 O the mighty Dancer! One two 
 three ! From northeast to east, from east 
 to southeast, from southeast to south : 
 then from the south he came, whirling 
 the Sea in his arms. . 
 
The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 49 
 
 . . . Some one shrieked in the midst 
 of the revels; some girl who found her 
 pretty slippers wet. What could it be? 
 Thin streams of water were spreading 
 over the level planking, curling about 
 the feet of the dancers. . . . What could it 
 be? All the land had begun to quake, 
 even as, but a moment before, the pol 
 ished floor was trembling to the pressure 
 of circling steps ; all the building shook 
 now ; every beam uttered its groan. What 
 could it be ? ... 
 
 There was a clamor, a panic, a rush to 
 the windy night. Infinite darkness above 
 and beyond ; but the lantern-beams danced 
 far out over an unbroken circle of heav 
 ing and swirling black water. Stealth 
 ily, swiftly, the measureless sea-flood was 
 rising. 
 
 "Messieurs mesdames, ce nest rien. 
 Nothing serious, ladies, I assure you. . . . 
 
5O Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Mais nous en avons vu bien souvent, les 
 inondations comme celle-ci; fa passe vite / 
 The water will go down in a few hours, 
 ladies ; it never rises higher than this ; 
 il riy a pas le moindre danger, je vous 
 dis ! Allans / il ny a My God ! what 
 is that?"... 
 
 For a moment there was a ghastly hush 
 of voices. And through that hush there 
 burst upon the ears of all a fearful and 
 unfamiliar sound, as of a colossal can 
 nonade rolling up from the south, with 
 volleying lightnings. Vastly and swiftly, 
 nearer and nearer it came, a ponderous 
 and unbroken thunder-roll, terrible as the 
 long muttering of an earthquake. 
 
 The nearest mainland, across mad 
 Caillou Bay to the sea -marshes, lay 
 twelve miles north ; west, by the Gulf, 
 the nearest solid ground was twenty miles 
 distant. There were boats, yes ! but the 
 
y 
 
 The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 5 1 
 
 stoutest swimmer might never reach them 
 now ! . . . 
 
 Then rose a frightful cry, the hoarse, 
 hideous, indescribable cry of hopeless fear, 
 the despairing animal-cry man utters 
 when suddenly brought face to face with 
 Nothingness, without preparation, with 
 out consolation, without possibility of re 
 spite Sauve quipeut! Some wrenched 
 
 down the doors ; some clung to the heavy 
 banquet-tables, to the sofas, to the billiard- 
 tables : during one terrible instant, 
 against fruitless heroisms, against futile 
 generosities, raged all the frenzy of self^ 
 ishness, all the brutalities of panic. And 
 then then came, thundering through 
 the blackness, the giant swells, boom on 
 boom ! . . . . One crash ! the huge frame 
 building rocks like a cradle, seesaws, 
 crackles. What are human shrieks now ? 
 the tornado is shrieking ! Another ! 
 
52 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 chandeliers splinter; lights are dashed 
 out ; a sweeping cataract hurls in : the 
 immense hall rises, oscillates, twirls as 
 upon a pivot, crepitates, crumbles into 
 ruin. Crash again ! the swirling wreck 
 dissolves into the wallowing of another 
 monster billow; and a hundred cottages 
 overturn, spin in sudden eddies, quiver, 
 disjoint, and melt into the seething. 
 
 ... So the hurricane passed, tearing 
 off the heads of the prodigious waves, to 
 hurl them a hundred feet in air, heap 
 ing up the ocean against the land, 
 upturning the woods. Bays and passes 
 were swollen to abysses ; rivers regorged ; 
 the sea-marshes were changed to raging 
 wastes of water. Before New Orleans 
 the flood of the mile -broad Mississippi 
 rose six feet above highest water -mark. 
 One hundred and ten miles away, Don- 
 aldsonville trembled at the towering tide 
 
The Legend of Ulle Demi ere. 53 
 
 of the Lafourche. Lakes strove to burst 
 their boundaries. Far-off river steamers 
 tugged wildly at their cables, shiver 
 ing like tethered creatures that hear by 
 night the approaching howl of destroy 
 ers. Smoke-stacks were hurled over 
 board, pilot - houses torn away, cabins 
 blown to fragments. 
 
 And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass, 
 over the agony of Caillou Bay, the bil 
 lowing tide rushed unresisted from the 
 Gulf, tearing and swallowing the land 
 in its course, ploughing out deep-sea 
 channels where sleek herds had been 
 grazing but a few hours before, rending 
 islands in twain, and ever bearing with 
 it, through the night, enormous vortex of 
 wreck and vast wan drift of corpses. . . . 
 
 But the Star remained. And Captain 
 Abraham Smith, with a long, good rope 
 
54 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 about his waist, dashed again and again 
 into that awful surging to snatch victims 
 from death, clutching at passing hands, 
 heads, garments, in the cataract-sweep of 
 the seas, saving, aiding, cheering, though 
 blinded by spray and battered by drifting 
 wreck, until his strength failed in the un 
 equal struggle at last, and his men drew 
 him aboard senseless, with some beautiful 
 half-drowned girl safe in his arms. But 
 well-nigh twoscore souls had been rescued 
 by him ; and the Star stayed on through 
 it all. 
 
 Long years after, the weed-grown ribs 
 of her graceful skeleton could still be 
 seen, curving up from the sand-dunes of 
 Last Island, in valiant witness of how well 
 
 she stayed. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Day breaks through the flying wrack, 
 over the infinite heaving of the sea, over 
 
The Legend of L 1 lie Dernier e. 55 
 
 the low land made vast with desolation. 
 It is a spectral dawn: a wan light, like 
 the light of a dying sun. 
 
 The wind has waned and veered ; the 
 flood sinks slowly back to its abysses 
 abandoning its plunder, scattering its 
 piteous waifs over bar and dune, over 
 shoal and marsh, among the silences of 
 the mango - swamps, over the long low 
 reaches of sand - grasses and drowned 
 weeds, for more than a hundred miles. 
 From the shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to 
 the shallows of Pelto Bay the dead lie 
 mingled with the high -heaped drift; 
 from their cypress groves the vultures 
 rise to dispute a share of the feast with 
 the shrieking frigate-birds and squeaking 
 / gulls. And as the tremendous tide with 
 draws its plunging waters, all th^ftfrates^ 
 of air follow the great white^gTeaming 
 retreat : a storm of billowing wings and 
 screaming throats. 
 
56 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 And swift in the wake of gull and frig- 
 ate-bird the Wreckers come, the Spoilers 
 of the dead, savage skimmers of the sea, 
 hurricane -riders wont to spread their 
 canvas-pinions in the face of storms ; Si 
 cilian and Corsican outlaws, Manila-men 
 from the marshes, deserters from many 
 navies, Lascars, marooners, refugees of a 
 hundred nationalities, fishers and shrimp 
 ers by name, smugglers by opportunity, 
 wild channel-finders from obscure bayous 
 and unfamiliar ch enieres, all skilled in the 
 mysteries of these mysterious waters be 
 yond the comprehension of the oldest li 
 censed 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 and legions 
 of bottles bobbing in the surf. There are 
 billiard-tables overturned upon the sand ; 
 
/\ 
 
 The Legend of L lle Dernier e. 57 
 
 there are sofas, pianos, footstools and 
 music-stools, luxurious chairs, lounges of 
 bamboo. There are chests of cedar, and 
 toilet-tables of rosewood, and trunks of 
 fine stamped leather stored with precious 
 apparel. There are objets de luxe innu 
 merable. There are children s playthings : 
 French dolls in marvellous toilets, and 
 toy carts, and wooden horses, and wooden 
 spades, and brave little wooden ships that 
 rode out the gale in which the great 
 Nautilus went down. There is money in 
 notes and in coin in purses, in pocket- 
 books, and in pockets : plenty of it ! There 
 are silks, satins, laces, and fine linen to be 
 stripped from the bodies of the drowned, 
 and necklaces, bracelets, watches, fin 
 ger-rings and fine chains, brooches and 
 trinkets. ..." Chi bidizza ! Oh ! chi bed- 
 da mughieri / Eccii, la bidizza /" That 
 ball-dress was made in Paris by But 
 
58 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 you never heard of him, Sicilian Vicen- 
 zu. . . . " Che bella sposina /" Her be 
 trothal ring will not come off, Giuseppe ; 
 but the delicate bone snaps easily: your 
 oyster -knife can sever the tendon. . . . 
 " Guardate ! chi bedda picciota /" Over 
 her heart you will find it, Valentino the 
 locket held by that fine Swiss chain of 
 woven hair " Cay a manan /" And it is 
 not your quadroon bondsmaid, sweet lady, 
 who now disrobes you so roughly ; those 
 Malay hands are less deft than hers, 
 but she slumbers very far away from you, 
 and may not be aroused from her sleep. 
 " Na quit a mo! dalaga ! na quit a ma- 
 ganda!" . . . Juan, the fastenings of those 
 diamond ear-drops are much too compli 
 cated for your peon fingers : tear them 
 out ! " Dispense, chulita /" . . . 
 
 . . . Suddenly a long, mighty silver 
 trilling fills the ears of all : there is a 
 
The Legend of L? lie Derniere. 59 
 
 wild hurrying and scurrying ; swiftly, one 
 after another, the overburdened luggers 
 spread wings and flutter away. 
 
 Thrice the great cry rings rippling 
 through the gray air, and over the green 
 sea, and over the far-flooded shell-reefs, 
 where the huge white flashes are, sheet- 
 lightning of breakers, and over the 
 weird wash of corpses coming in. 
 
 It is the steam-call of the relief-boat, 
 hastening to rescue the living, to gather 
 in the dead. 
 
 The tremendous tragedy is over! 
 
PART II. 
 
 Out of the Sea s Strength,. 
 
OUT OF THE SEA S STRENGTH. 
 
 I. 
 
 r I "HERE are regions of Louisiana 
 A coast whose aspect seems not of 
 the present, but of the immemorial past 
 of that epoch when low flat reaches of 
 primordial continent first rose into form 
 above a Silurian Sea. To indulge this 
 geologic dream, any fervid and breezeless 
 day there, it is only necessary to ignore 
 the evolutional protests of a few blue 
 asters or a few composite flowers of the 
 coryopsis sort, which contrive to display 
 their rare flashes of color through the 
 general waving of cat-heads, blood-weeds, 
 wild cane, and marsh grasses. For, at a 
 hasty glance, the general appearance of 
 
64 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 this marsh verdure is vague enough, as 
 it ranges away towards the sand, to con 
 vey the idea of amphibious vegetation, 
 a primitive flora as yet undecided 
 whether to retain marine habits and 
 forms, or to assume terrestrial ones ; 
 and the occasional inspection of surpris 
 ing shapes might strengthen this fancy. 
 Queer flat-lying and many- branching 
 things, which resemble sea-weeds in juici 
 ness and color and consistency, crackle 
 under your feet from time to time ; the 
 moist and weighty air seems heated rath 
 er from below than from above, less by 
 
 the sun than by the radiation of a cool- 
 
 / 
 
 ing world; and the mists of morning or 
 evening appear to simulate the vapory 
 exhalation of volcanic forces, latent, but 
 ^orily dozing, and uncomfortably close to 
 the surface. And indeed geologists have 
 actually averred that those rare eleva- 
 
Out of the Sea s Strength. 65 
 
 tions cC the soil, which, with their heavy 
 coronets of evergreen foliage, not only 
 look like islands, but are so called in the 
 French nomenclature of the coast, have 
 been prominences created by ancient mud 
 volcanoes. 
 
 The family of a Spanish fisherman, Fe- 
 liu Viosca, once occupied and gave its 
 name to such an islet, quite close to the 
 Gulf-shore, the loftiest bit of land along 
 fourteen miles of just such marshy coast 
 as I have spoken of. Landward, it dom 
 inated a desolation that wearied the eye 
 to look at, a wilderness of reedy sloughs, 
 patched at intervals with ranges of bitter- 
 weed, tufts of elbow-bushes, and broad 
 reaches of saw-grass, stretching away to 
 a bluish-green line of woods that closed 
 the horizon, and imperfectly drained in 
 the driest season by a slimy little bayou 
 that continually vomited foul water into 
 
66 Chita : A Memory of Last Isl md. 
 
 the sea. The point had been much dis 
 cussed by geologists ; it proved a god 
 send to United States surveyors weary 
 of attempting to take observations among 
 quagmires, moccasins, and arborescent 
 weeds from fifteen to twenty feet high. 
 Savage fishermen, at some unrecorded 
 time, had heaped upon the eminence a 
 hill of clam-s*hells, refuse of a million 
 feasts ; earth again had been formed over 
 these, perhaps by the blind agency of 
 worms working through centuries un 
 numbered ; and the new soil had given 
 birth to a luxuriant vegetation. Millen 
 nial oaks interknotted their roots below 
 its surface, and vouchsafed protection to 
 many a frailer growth of shrub or tree, 
 wild orange, water-willow, palmetto, lo 
 cust, pomegranate, and many trailing ten- 
 drilled things, both green and gray. Then, 
 perhaps about half a century ago, a 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 67 
 
 few white fishermen cleared a place for 
 themselves in this grove, and built a few 
 palmetto cottages, with boat-houses and 
 a wharf, facing the bayou. Later on this 
 temporary fishing station became a per 
 manent settlement : homes constructed 
 of heavy timber and plaster mixed with 
 the trailing moss of the oaks and cypress 
 es took the places of the frail and fra 
 grant huts of palmetto. Still the popu 
 lation itself retained a floating character : 
 it ebbed and came, according to season 
 and circumstances, according to luck or 
 loss in the tilling of the sea. Viosca, the 
 founder of the settlement, always re 
 mained ; he always managed to do well. 
 He owned several luggers and sloops, 
 which were hired out upon excellent 
 terms ; he could make large and profita 
 ble contracts with New Orleans fish-deal 
 ers; and he was vaguely suspected of 
 
68 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 possessing more occult resources. There 
 were some confused stories current about 
 his having once been a daring smuggler, 
 and having only been reformed by the 
 pleadings of his wife Carmen, a little 
 brown woman who had followed him 
 from Barcelona to share his fortunes in 
 the western world. 
 
 On hot days, when the shade was full 
 of thin sweet scents, the place had a 
 tropical charm, a drowsy peace. Nothing 
 except the peculiar appearance of the line 
 of oaks facing the Gulf could have con 
 veyed to the visitor any suggestion of 
 days in which the trilling of crickets and 
 the fluting of birds had ceased, of nights 
 when the voices of the marsh had been 
 hushed for fear. In one enormous ranlT^; 
 the veteran trees stood shoulder to shoul- \i 
 der, but in the attitude of giants over- \ 
 mastered, forced backward towards the 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 69 
 
 f~\ 
 marsh, made to recoil by the might of / 
 
 the ghostly enemy with whom they had/ 
 striven a thousand years, the Shrieker/ 
 the Sky-Sweeper, the awful Sea-Wind ! 
 
 Never had he given them so terrible a 
 wrestle as on the night of the tenth of 
 August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six. 
 All the waves of the excited Gulf thronged 
 in as if to see, and lifted up their voices, 
 and pushed, and roared, until the cheniere 
 was islanded by such a billowing as no 
 white man s eyes had ever looked upon 
 before. Grandly the oaks bore them 
 selves, but every fibre of their knotted 
 thews was strained in the unequal con 
 test, and two of the giants were over 
 thrown, upturning, as they fell, roots 
 coiled and huge as the serpent-limbs of 
 Titans. Moved to its entrails, all the 
 islet trembled, while the sea magnified its 
 menace, and reached out whitely to the 
 
 
7O Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 prostrate trees ; but the rest of the oaks 
 stood on, and strove in line, and saved 
 the habitations defended by them. . . . 
 
 II. 
 
 Before a little waxen image of the 
 Mother and Child, an odd little Virgin 
 with an Indian face, brought home by 
 Feliu as a gift after one of his Mexican 
 voyages, Carmen Viosca had burned 
 candles and prayed ; sometimes telling 
 her beads ; sometimes murmuring the 
 litanies she knew by heart; sometimes 
 also reading from a prayer-book worn and 
 greasy as a long-used pack of cards. It 
 was particularly stained at one page, a 
 page on which her tears had fallen many 
 a lonely night a page with a clumsy 
 wood-cut representing a celestial lamp, a 
 symbolic radiance, shining through dark- 
 ness, and on either side a kneeling angel 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 7 1 
 
 with folded wings. And beneath this 
 rudely wrought symbol of the Perpetual 
 Calm appeared in big, coarse type the 
 title of a prayer that has been offered up 
 through many a century, doubtless, by 
 wives of Spanish mariners, Contra las 
 Tempestades. 
 
 Once she became very much fright 
 ened. After a partial lull the storm had 
 suddenly redoubled its force : the ground 
 shook ; the house quivered and creaked ; 
 the wind brayed and screamed and pushed 
 and scuffled at the door ; and the water, 
 which had been whipping in through 
 every crevice, all at once rose over the 
 threshold and flooded the dwelling. Car 
 men dipped her finger in the water and 
 tasted it. It was salt ! 
 
 And none of Feliu s boats had yet come 
 in ; doubtless they had been driven into 
 some far-away bayous by the storm. The 
 
72 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 only boat at the settlement, the Carmen- 
 cita, had been almost wrecked by running 
 upon a snag three days before; there 
 was at least a fortnight s work for the 
 ship-carpenter of Dead Cypress Point. 
 And Feliu was sleeping as if nothing un 
 usual had happened the heavy sleep of 
 a sailor, heedless of commotions and 
 voices. And his men, Miguel and Mateo, 
 were at the other end of the chenwre. 
 
 With a scream Carmen aroused Feliu. 
 He raised himself upon his elbow, rubbed 
 his eyes, and asked her, with exasperat 
 ing calmness, " Que tienes ? que tienes ?" 
 (What ails thee ?) 
 
 " Oh, Feliu ! the sea is coming upon 
 us !" she answered, in the same tongue. 
 But she screamed out a word inspired by 
 her fear: she did not cry, "Se nos viene 
 el mar encima /" but " Se nos viene LA 
 ALTURA !" the name that conveys the 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 73 
 
 terrible thought of depth swallowed up in 
 height, the height of the high sea. 
 
 " No lo creo /" muttered Feliu, looking 
 at the floor; then in a quiet, deep voice 
 he said, pointing to an oar in the corner 
 of the room, "Echame ese remo." 
 
 She gave it to him. Still reclining 
 upon one elbow, Feliu measured the depth 
 of the water with his thumb-nail upon the 
 blade of the oar, and then bade Carmen 
 light his pipe for him. His calmness 
 reassured her. For half an hour more, 
 undismayed by the clamoring of the wind 
 or the calling of the sea, Feliu silently 
 smoked his pipe and watched his oar. 
 The water rose a little higher, and he 
 made another mark ; then it climbed a 
 little more, but not so rapidly ; and he 
 smiled at Carmen as he made a third 
 mark. " Como creia /" he exclaimed, " no 
 hay porque asustarse : el agua baja /" 
 

 74 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 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 y duerme" His 
 tone, though kindly, was imperative ; and 
 Carmen, accustomed to obey him, laid 
 herself down by his side, and soon, for 
 very weariness, slept. 
 
 It was a feverish sleep, nevertheless, 
 shattered at brief intervals by terrible 
 sounds, sounds magnified by her nervous 
 condition a sleep visited by dreams that 
 mingled in a strange way with the im 
 pressions of the storm, and more than 
 once made her heart stop, and start again 
 at its own stopping. One of these fan 
 cies she never could forget a dream 
 about little Concha, Conchita, her first 
 born, who now slept far away in the 
 old churchyard at Barcelona. She had 
 tried to become resigned, not to think. 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 75 
 
 But the child would come back night after 
 night, though the earth lay heavy upon 
 her night after night, through long dis 
 tances of Time and Space. Oh ! the 
 fancied clinging of infant-lips ! the thrill 
 ing touch of little ghostly hands ! those 
 phantom -caresses that torture mothers 
 hearts! . . . Night after night, through 
 many a month of pain. Then for a time 
 the gentle presence ceased to haunt her, 
 seemed to have lain down to sleep for 
 ever under the high bright grass and yel 
 low flowers. Why did it return, that night 
 of all nights, to kiss her, to cling to her, 
 to nestle in her arms ? . . . 
 
 For in her dream she thought herself 
 still kneeling before the waxen Image, 
 while the terrors of the tempest were ever 
 deepening about her, raving of winds 
 and booming of waters and a shaking of 
 the land. And before her, even as she 
 
76 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 prayed her dream-prayer, the waxen Vir 
 gin became tall as a woman, and taller, 
 rising to the roof and smiling as she grew. 
 Then Carmen would have cried out for 
 fear, but that something smothered her 
 voice, paralyzed her tongue. And the 
 Virgin silently stooped above her, and 
 placed in her arms the Child, the brown 
 Child with the Indian face. And the 
 Child whitened in her hands and changed, 
 seeming as it changed to send a sharp 
 pain through her heart : an old pain linked 
 somehow with memories of bright windy 
 Spanish hills, and summer-scent of olive 
 groves, and all the luminous Past; it 
 looked into her face with the soft dark 
 gaze, with the unforgotten smile of ... 
 dead Conchita! 
 
 And Carmen wished to thank the smil 
 ing Virgin for that priceless bliss, and 
 lifted up her eyes; but the sickness of 
 
Out of the Sea s Strength. 77 
 
 ghostly fear returned upon her when she 
 looked ; for now the Mother seemed as a 
 woman long dead, and the smile was the 
 smile of fleshlessness, and the places of 
 the eyes were voids and darknesses. . . . 
 And the sea sent up so vast a roar that 
 the dwelling rocked. 
 
 Carmen started from sleep to find her 
 heart throbbing so that the couch shook 
 with it. Night was growing gray; the 
 door had just been opened and slammed 
 again. Through the rain-whipped panes 
 she discerned the passing shape of Feliu, 
 making for the beach a broad and beard 
 ed silhouette, bending against the wind. 
 Still the waxen Virgin smiled her Mexi 
 can smile, but now she was only seven 
 inches high ; and her bead -glass eyes 
 seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the 
 flame of the last expiring taper struggled 
 for life in the earthen socket at her feet. 
 
78 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 III. 
 
 Rain and a blind sky and a bursting 
 sea. Feliu and his men, Miguel and Ma- 
 teo, looked out upon the thundering and 
 flashing of the monstrous tide. The wind 
 had fallen, and the gray air was full of 
 gulls. Behind the c/ieniere, back to the 
 cloudy line of low woods many miles 
 away, stretched a wash of lead -colored 
 water, with a green point piercing it here 
 and there elbow-bushes or wild cane tall 
 enough to keep their heads above the 
 flood. But the inundation was visibly 
 decreasing; with the passing of each 
 hour more and more green patches and 
 points had been showing themselves : by 
 degrees the course of the bayou had be 
 come defined two parallel winding lines 
 of dwarf-timber and bushy shrubs trav 
 ersing the water toward the distant cy- 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 79 
 
 press -swamps. Before the ch eniere all 
 the shell-beach slope was piled with wreck 
 uptorn trees with the foliage still fresh 
 upon them, splintered timbers of mysteri 
 ous origin, and logs in multitude, scarred 
 with gashes of the axe. Feliu and his 
 comrades had saved wood enough to build 
 a little town, working up to their waists 
 in the surf, with ropes, poles, and boat- 
 hooks. The whole sea was full of flotsam. 
 Voto a Cristo ! what a wrecking there 
 must have been ! And to think the Car- 
 mencita could not be taken out ! 
 
 They had seen other luggers making 
 eastward during the morning could rec 
 ognize some by their sails, others by their 
 gait, exaggerated in their struggle with 
 the pitching of the sea: the San Pablo, 
 the Gasparina, the Enriqueta, the Ague- 
 da, the Constanza. Ugly water, yes ! 
 but what a chance for wreckers ! . . Some 
 
8o Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 great ship must have gone to pieces ; - 
 scores of casks were rolling in the trough, 
 casks of wine. Perhaps it was the Ma 
 nila, perhaps the Nautilus! 
 
 A dead cow floated near enough for 
 Mateo to throw his rope over one horn ; 
 and they all helped to get it out. It was 
 a milch cow of some expensive breed ; and 
 the owner s brand had been burned upon 
 the horns : a monographic combination 
 of the letters A and P. Feliu said he 
 knew that brand: Old-man Preaulx, of 
 Belle- Isle, who kept a sort of dairy at Last 
 Island during the summer season, used to 
 mark all his cows that way. Strange ! 
 
 But, as they worked on, they began to 
 see stranger things, white dead faces and 
 dead hands, which did not look like the 
 hands or the faces of drowned sailors: 
 the ebb was beginning to run strongly, 
 and these were passing out with it on the 
 
Out of the Sea s Strength. 8 1 
 
 other side of the mouth of the bayou ; 
 perhaps they had been washed into the 
 marsh during the night, when the great 
 rush of the sea came. Then the three 
 men left the water, and retired to higher 
 ground to scan the furrowed Gulf ; their 
 practised eyes began to search the courses 
 of the sea-currents, keen as the gaze of 
 birds that watch the wake of the plough. 
 And soon the casks and the drift were 
 forgotten ; for it seemed to them that the 
 tide was heavy with human dead pass 
 ing out, processionally, to the great open. 
 Very far, where the huge pitching of the 
 swells was diminished by distance into a 
 mere fluttering of ripples, the water ap 
 peared as if sprinkled with them ; they 
 vanished and became visible again at ir 
 regular intervals, here and there floating 
 most thickly eastward, tossing, swaying 
 patches of white or pink or blue or black, 
 
82 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 each with its tiny speck of flesh -color 
 showing as the sea lifted or lowered the 
 body. Nearer to shore there were few ; 
 but of these two were close enough to be 
 almost recognizable : Miguel first dis 
 cerned them. They were rising and fall 
 ing where the water was deepest well out 
 in front of the mouth of the bayou, be 
 yond the flooded sand-bars, and moving 
 toward the shell -reef westward. They 
 were drifting almost side by side. One 
 was that of a negro, apparently well at 
 tired, and wearing a white apron ; the 
 other seemed to be a young colored girl, 
 clad in a blue dress ; she was floating upon 
 her face ; they could observe that she 
 had nearly straight hair, braided and tied 
 with a red ribbon. These were evident 
 ly house - servants, slaves. But from 
 whence ? Nothing could be learned un 
 til the luggers should return ; and none of 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 83 
 
 them was yet in sight. Still Feliu was 
 not anxious as to the fate of his boats, 
 manned by the best sailors of the coast. 
 Rarely are these Louisiana fishermen lost 
 in sudden storms ; even when to other 
 eyes the appearances are most pacific and 
 the skies most splendidly blue, they divine 
 some far-off danger, like the gulls; and 
 like the gulls also, you see their light ves 
 sels fleeing landward. These men seem 
 living barometers, exquisitely sensitive to 
 all the invisible changes of atmospheric 
 expansion and compression ; they are not 
 easily caught in those awful dead calms 
 which suddenly paralyze the wings of 
 a bark, and hold her helpless in their 
 charmed circle, as in a nightmare, until 
 the blackness overtakes her, and the long- 
 sleeping sea leaps up foaming to devour 
 her. 
 
84 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 " Carajo /" 
 
 The word all at once bursts from Fe- 
 liu s mouth, with that peculiar guttural 
 snarl of the "r" betokening strong ex 
 citement, while he points to something 
 rocking in the ebb, beyond the foaming 
 of the shell-reef, under a circling of gulls. 
 More dead ? Yes but something too that 
 lives and moves, like a quivering speck of 
 gold ; and Mateo also perceives it, a gleam 
 of bright hair, and Miguel likewise, af 
 ter a moment s gazing. A living child ; 
 a lifeless mother. Pobrecita! No boat with 
 in reach, and only a mighty surf-wrestler 
 could hope to swim thither and return ! 
 
 But already, without a word, brown Fe- 
 liu has stripped for the struggle ; another 
 second, and he is shooting through the 
 surf, head and hands tunnelling the foam- 
 hills One two three lines passed ! 
 
 four! that is where they first begin to 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 85 
 
 crumble white from the summit, five! 
 that he can ride fearlessly! . . . Then 
 swiftly, easily, he advances, with a long, 
 powerful breast - stroke, keeping his 
 bearded head well up to watch for drift, 
 seeming to slide with a swing from 
 swell to swell, ascending, sinking, al 
 ternately presenting breast or shoulder to 
 the wave ; always diminishing more and 
 more to the eyes of Mateo and Miguel, 
 till he becomes a moving speck, occasion 
 ally hard to follow through the confusion 
 of heaping waters. . . . You are not afraid 
 of the sharks, Feliu ! no : they are afraid 
 of you ; right and left they slunk away 
 from your coming that morning you swam 
 for life in West-Indian waters, with your 
 knife in your teeth, while the balls of the 
 Cuban coast-guard were purring all around 
 you. That day the swarming sea was 
 warm, warm like soup and clear, with 
 
86 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 an emerald flash in every ripple, not 
 opaque and clamorous like the Gulf to 
 day. . . . Miguel and his comrade are 
 anxious. Ropes are unrolled and inter- 
 knotted into a line. Miguel remains on 
 the beach ; but Mateo, bearing the end 
 of the line, fights his way out, swimming 
 and wading by turns, to the further sand 
 bar, where the water is shallow enough 
 to stand in, if you know how to jump 
 when the breaker comes. 
 
 But Feliu, nearing the flooded shell- 
 bank, watches the white flashings, knows 
 when the time comes to keep flat and take 
 a long, long breath. One heavy volley 
 ing of foam, darkness and hissing as of 
 a steam-burst ; a vibrant lifting up ; a rush 
 into light, and again the volleying and 
 the seething darkness. Once more, and 
 the fight is won ! He feels the upcoming 
 chill of deeper water, sees before him 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 87 
 
 the green quaking of unbroken swells, 
 and far beyond him Mateo leaping on the 
 bar, and beside him, almost within arm s- 
 reach, a great billiard-table swaying, and 
 a dead woman clinging there, and .... 
 the child. 
 
 A moment more, and Feliu has lifted 
 himself beside the waifs. . . . How fast the 
 dead woman clings, as if with the one 
 power which is strong a? death, the des 
 perate force of love ! Not in vain ; for 
 the frail creature bound to the mother s 
 corpse with a silken scarf has still the 
 strength to cry out : " Maman / maman /" 
 But time is life now ; and the tiny hands 
 must be pulled away from the fair dead 
 neck, and the scarf taken to bind the in 
 fant firmly to Feliu s broad shoulders, 
 quickly, roughly; for the ebb will not 
 wait. . . . 
 
 And now Feliu has a burden ; but his 
 
88 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 style of swimming has totally changed ; 
 he rises from the water like a Triton, and 
 his powerful arms seem to spin in circles, 
 like the spokes of a flying wheel. For 
 now is the wrestle indeed! after each 
 passing swell comes a prodigious pulling 
 from beneath, the sea clutching for its 
 prey. But the reef is gained, is passed ; 
 the wild horses of the deep seem to know 
 the swimmer who has learned to ride them 
 so well. And still the brown arms spin 
 in an ever-nearing mist of spray ; and the 
 outer sand-bar is not far off, and there is 
 shouting Mateo, leaping in the surf, swing 
 ing something about his head, as a vaquero 
 swings his noose ! . . . . Sough ! splash ! 
 it struggles in the trough beside Feliu, 
 and the sinewy hand descends upon it. 
 Tiene ! tira, Miguel! And their feet 
 touch land again ! . . . 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 89 
 
 She is very cold, the child, and very 
 still, with eyes closed. 
 
 " Esta muerta, Feliu ?" asks Mateo. 
 
 " No /" the panting swimmer makes 
 answer, emerging, while the waves reach 
 whitely up the sand as in pursuit, " no ; 
 vive / respira todavia /" 
 
 Behind him the deep lifts up its million 
 hands, and thunders as in acclaim. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Madre de Dios ! mi sueno /" 
 screamed Carmen, abandoning her prepa 
 rations for the morning meal, as Feliu, 
 nude, like a marine god, rushed in and 
 held out to her a dripping and gasping 
 baby-girl, " Mother of God ! my dream !" 
 But there was no time then to tell of 
 dreams ; the child might die. In one in 
 stant Carmen s quick, deft hands had 
 stripped the slender little body ; and while 
 
9O Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Mateo and Feliu were finding dry cloth 
 ing and stimulants, and Miguel telling 
 how it all happened quickly, passionately, 
 with furious gesture, the kind and vig 
 orous woman exerted all her skill to re 
 vive the flickering life. Soon Feliu came 
 to aid her, while his men set to work com 
 pleting the interrupted preparation of the 
 breakfast. Flannels were heated for the 
 friction of the frail limbs; and brandy- 
 and-water warmed, which Carmen admin 
 istered by the spoonful, skilfully as any 
 physician, until, at last, the little creat 
 ure opened her eyes and began to sob. 
 Sobbing still, she was laid in Carmen s 
 warm feather-bed, well swathed in woollen 
 wrappings. The immediate danger, at 
 least, was over ; and Feliu smiled with 
 pride and pleasure. 
 
 Then Carmen first ventured to relate 
 her dream ; and his face became grave 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 9 1 
 
 again. Husband and wife gazed a mo 
 ment into each other s eyes, feeling to 
 gether the same strange thrill that mys 
 terious faint creeping, as of a wind pass 
 ing, which is the awe of the Unknowable. 
 Then they looked at the child, lying there, 
 pink-cheeked with the flush of the blood 
 returning; and such a sudden tenderness 
 touched them as they had known long 
 years before, while together bending above 
 the slumbering loveliness of lost Conchita. 
 " Que ojos /" murmured Feliu, as he 
 turned away, feigning hunger. . . . (He 
 was not hungry ; but his sight had grown 
 a little dim, as with a mist.) Que ojos ! 
 They were singular eyes, large, dark, and 
 wonderfully fringed. The child s hair 
 was yellow it was the flash of it that 
 had saved her; yet her eyes and brows 
 were beautifully black. She was comely, 
 but with such a curious, delicate comeli- 
 
92 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 ness totally unlike the robust beauty of 
 Concha. ... At intervals she would moan 
 a little between her sobs ; and at last cried 
 out, with a thin, shrill cry : " Maman ! 
 oh ! maman !" Then Carmen lifted her 
 from the bed to her lap, and caressed her, 
 and rocked her gently to and fro, as she 
 had done many a night for Concha, mur 
 muring, " Yo sere tu madre, angel mio, 
 dulzura mia ; sere tu madrecita,palomita 
 mia /" (I will be thy mother, my angel, 
 my sweet; I will be thy little mother, 
 my doveling.) And the long silk fringes 
 of the child s eyes overlapped, shadowed 
 her little cheeks; and she slept just as 
 Conchita had slept long ago, with her 
 head on Carmen s bosom. 
 
 Feliu re-appeared at the inner door : at 
 a sign, he approached cautiously, without 
 noise, and looked. 
 
 " She can talk," whispered Carmen in 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 93 
 
 Spanish: "she called her mother" ha 
 llamado a su madre. 
 
 " Y Dios tambien la ha llamado? re 
 sponded 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 seemed 
 to be thinking very deeply ; Carmen anx 
 iously scanned his impassive face. 
 
 " Who knows?" he answered, at last ; 
 " who knows ? Perhaps she has ceased 
 to belong to any one else." . . . 
 
 One after another, Feliu s luggers flut 
 tered in, bearing with them news of the 
 immense calamity. And all the fisher 
 men, in turn, looked at the child. Not 
 one had ever seen her before. 
 
94 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 V. 
 
 Ten days later, a lugger full of armed 
 men entered the bayou, and moored at 
 Viosca s wharf. The visitors were, for 
 the most part, country gentlemen, resi 
 dents of Franklin and neighboring towns, 
 or planters from the Teche country, 
 forming one of the numerous expeditions 
 organized for the purpose of finding the 
 bodies of relatives or friends lost in the 
 great hurricane, and of punishing the rob 
 bers of the dead. They had searched 
 numberless nooks of the coast, had given 
 sepulture to many corpses, had recovered 
 a large amount of jewelry, and as Feliu 
 afterward learned, had summarily tried 
 and executed several of the most aban 
 doned class of wreckers found with ill- 
 gotten valuables in their possession, and 
 convicted of having mutilated the drowned. 
 
Out of the Sea s Strength. 95 
 
 But they came to Viosca s landing only 
 to obtain information ; he was too well 
 known and liked to be a subject for sus 
 picion ; and, moreover, he had one good 
 friend in the crowd, Captain Harris of 
 New Orleans, a veteran steamboat man 
 and a market-contractor, to whom he had 
 disposed of many a cargo of fresh pom- 
 pano, sheep s-head, and Spanish - mack 
 erel. . . . Harris was the first to step to 
 land; some ten of the party followed 
 him. Nearly all had lost some relative 
 or friend in the great catastrophe ; the 
 gathering was serious, silent, almost 
 grim, which formed about Feliu. 
 
 Mateo, who had come to the country 
 while a boy, spoke English better than 
 the rest of the cfieniere people ; he acted 
 as interpreter whenever Feliu found any 
 difficulty in comprehending or answering 
 questions ; and he told them of the child 
 
96 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 rescued that wild morning, and of Feliu s 
 swim. His recital evoked a murmur of 
 interest and excitement, followed by a 
 confusion of questions. Well, they could 
 see for themselves, Feliu said ; but he 
 hoped they would have a little patience ; 
 the child was still weak ; it might be dan 
 gerous to startle her. " We ll arrange it 
 just as you like," responded the captain ; 
 " go ahead, Feliu !" . . . 
 
 All proceeded to the house, under the 
 great trees; Feliu and Captain Harris 
 leading the way. It was sultry and 
 bright ; 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 the captain 
 entered the house with Feliu ; the rest re 
 mained without some taking seats on a 
 rude plank bench under the oaks others 
 flinging themselves down upon the weeds 
 
Out of the Sea s Strength. 97 
 
 a few stood still, leaning upon their ri 
 fles. Then Carmen came out to them 
 with gourds and a bucket of fresh water, 
 which all were glad to drink. 
 
 They waited many minutes. Perhaps 
 it was the cool peace of the place that 
 made them all feel how hot and tired they 
 were : conversation flagged ; and the gen 
 eral languor finally betrayed itself in a si 
 lence so absolute that every leaf-whisper 
 seemed to become separately audible. 
 
 It was broken at last by the guttural 
 voice of the old captain emerging from 
 the cottage, leading the child by the hand, 
 and followed by Carmen and Feliu. All 
 who had been resting rose up and looked 
 at the child. 
 
 Standing in a lighted space, with one 
 tiny hand enveloped by the captain s great 
 brown fist, she looked so lovely that a 
 general exclamation of surprise went up. 
 
98 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Her bright hair, loose and steeped in the 
 sun-flame, illuminated her like a halo ; 
 and her large dark eyes, gentle and mel 
 ancholy as a deer s, watched the strange 
 faces before her with shy curiosity. She 
 wore the same dress in which Feliu had 
 found her a soft white fabric of muslin, 
 with trimmings of ribbon that had once 
 been blue ; and the now discolored silken 
 scarf, which had twice done her such brave 
 service, was thrown over her shoulders. 
 Carmen had washed and repaired the 
 dress very creditably ; but the tiny slim 
 feet were bare, the brine-soaked shoes 
 she wore that fearful night had fallen 
 into shreds at the first attempt to remove 
 them. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said Captain Harris, 
 " we can find no clew to the identity of 
 this child. There is no mark upon her 
 clothing; and she wore nothing in the 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 99 
 
 shape of jewelry except this string of 
 coral beads. We are nearly all Ameri 
 cans here; and she does not speak any 
 English. . . . Does any one here know 
 anything about her?" 
 
 Carmen felt a great sinking at her 
 heart: was her new-found darling to be 
 taken so soon from her ? But no answer 
 came to the captain s query. No one of 
 the expedition had ever seen that child 
 before. The coral beads were passed from 
 hand to hand ; the scarf was minutely 
 scrutinized without avail. Somebody ask 
 ed if the child could not talk German or 
 Italian. 
 
 " Italiano ? No /" said Feliu, shaking 
 his head. . . . One of his luggermen, Gio- 
 achino Sparicio, who, though a Sicilian, 
 could speak several Italian idioms besides 
 his own, had already essayed. 
 
 " She speaks something or other," 
 
ioo Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 answered the captain " but no English. 
 I couldn t make her understand me; and 
 Feliu, who talks nearly all the infernal 
 languages spoken down this way, says he 
 can t make her understand him. Suppose 
 some of you who know French talk to her 
 a bit. . . . Laroussel, why don t you try ?" 
 
 The young man addressed did not at 
 first seem to notice the captain s sugges 
 tion. He was a tall, lithe fellow, with a 
 dark, positive face : he had never removed 
 his black gaze from the child since the 
 moment of her appearance. Her eyes, 
 too, seemed to be all for him to return 
 his scrutiny with a sort of vague pleas 
 ure, a half-savage confidence. . . . Was it 
 the first embryonic feeling of race-affinity 
 quickening in the little brain? some 
 intuitive, inexplicable sense of kindred? 
 She shrank from Doctor Hecker, who ad 
 dressed her in German, shook her head at 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 101 
 
 Lawyer Solari, who tried to make her an 
 swer in Italian ; and her look always went 
 back plaintively to the dark, sinister face 
 of Laroussel, Laroussel who had calmly 
 taken a human life, a wicked human life, 
 only the evening before. 
 
 " Laroussel, you re the only Creole in 
 this crowd," said the captain ; " talk to 
 her ! Talk gumbo to her ! . . . I ve no 
 doubt this child knows German very well, 
 and Italian too," he added, maliciously 
 " but not in the way you gentlemen pro 
 nounce 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 one mo 
 ment, seriously, as if searching ; and then 
 . . . she returned his smile. It seemed 
 to touch something latent within the man, 
 something rare ; for his whole expression 
 
102 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 changed ; and there was a caress in his 
 look and voice none of the men could have 
 believed possible as he exclaimed : 
 
 " Fais moin bo, piti" 
 
 She pouted up her pretty lips and 
 kissed his black moustache. 
 
 He spoke to her again : 
 
 "Dis moin to nom, piti ; dis moin 
 to nom, caterer 
 
 Then, for the first time, she spoke, an 
 swering in her argent treble : 
 
 " Zouzoune." 
 
 All held their breath. Captain Harris 
 lifted his finger to his lips to command 
 silence. 
 
 " Zouzoune ? Zouzoune qui, chere ?" 
 
 " Zouzoune, 9a c est moin, Lili !" 
 
 " C est pas tout to nom, Lili ; dis 
 moin, chere, to laut nom." 
 
 " Mo pas connin laut nom. 1 
 
 " Comment ye tepele to maman,piti?" 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 103 
 
 " Maman, Maman Dele." 
 
 " Et comment ye te pele to papa, 
 chere ?" 
 
 " Papa Zulien." 
 
 " Bon ! Et comment to maman te 
 pele to papa ? dis 9a a moin, chere ?" 
 
 The child looked down, put a finger in 
 her mouth, thought a moment, and re 
 plied : 
 
 -" Li pele li, < Cheri ; li pele li, Pa- 
 poute. " 
 
 " Ai e, aie ! c est tout, 9a? to maman 
 te jamain pele li daut chose ?" 
 
 " Mo pas connin, moin." 
 
 She began to play with some trinkets 
 attached to his watch chain ; a very small 
 gold compass especially impressed her 
 fancy by the trembling and flashing of its 
 tiny needle, and she murmured, coax- 
 ingly : 
 
 " Mo oule a ! Donnin a a moin." 
 
IO4 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 He took all possible advantage of the 
 situation, and replied at once : 
 
 " Oui ! mo va donnin toi 9a si to di 
 moin to laut nom." 
 
 The splendid bribe evidently impressed 
 her greatly; for tears rose to the brown 
 eyes as she answered : 
 
 " Mo pas capab di 9a ; mo pas capab 
 di laut nom Mo oule ; mo pas capab!" 
 
 Laroussel explained. The child s name 
 was Lili, perhaps a contraction of Eula- 
 lie; and her pet Creole name Zouzoune. 
 He thought she must be the daughter of 
 wealthy people; but she could not, for 
 some reason or other, tell her family name. 
 Perhaps she could not pronounce it well, 
 and was afraid of being laughed at : some 
 of the old French names were very hard 
 for Creole children to pronounce, so long 
 as the little ones were indulged in the 
 habit of talking the patois ; and after a 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 105 
 
 certain age their mispronunciations would 
 be made fun of in order to accustom them 
 to abandon the idiom of the slave-nurses, 
 and to speak only French. Perhaps, 
 again, she was really unable to recall the 
 name : certain memories might have been 
 blurred in the delicate brain by the shock 
 of that terrible night. She said her mo 
 ther s name was Adele, and her father s 
 Julien ; but these were very common 
 names in Louisiana, and could afford 
 scarcely any better clew than the inno 
 cent statement that her mother used to 
 address her father as " dear " (Cheri\ or 
 with the Creole diminutive "little papa" 
 (Papoute\ Then Laroussel tried to reach 
 a clew in other ways, without success. He 
 asked her about where she lived, what 
 the place was like ; and she told him about 
 fig-trees in a court, and galleries, and ban 
 quettes, and spoke of a fatibou, without" 
 
io6 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 being able to name any street. He asked 
 her what her father used to do, and was 
 assured that he did everything that there 
 was nothing he could not do. Divine ab 
 surdity of childish faith ! infinite artless- 
 ness of childish love ! . . . Probably the 
 little girl s parents had been residents of 
 New Orleans dwellers of the old colonial 
 quarter, the faubourg, ti\e faubou\ 
 
 " Well, gentlemen," said Captain Har 
 ris, as Laroussel abandoned his cross-ex 
 amination in despair, " all we can do now 
 is to make inquiries. I suppose we d bet 
 ter leave the child here. She is very 
 weak yet, and in no condition to be taken 
 to the city, right in the middle of the hot 
 season ; and nobody could care for her 
 any better than she s being cared for here. 
 Then, again, seems to me that as Feliu 
 saved her life, and that at the risk of his 
 own, he s got the prior claim, anyhow ; 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 107 
 
 and his wife is just crazy about the child 
 wants to adopt her. If we can find her 
 relatives so much the better; but I say, 
 gentlemen, let them come right here to 
 Feliu, themselves, and thank him as he 
 ought to be thanked, by God ! That s 
 just what I think about it." 
 
 Carmen understood the little speech ; 
 all the Spanish charm of her youth had 
 faded out years before ; but in the one 
 swift look of gratitude she turned upon 
 the captain, it seemed to blossom again ; 
 for that quick moment, she was beau 
 tiful. 
 
 " The captain is quite right," observed 
 Dr. Hecker : " it would be very dangerous 
 to take the child away just now." There 
 was no dissent. 
 
 " All correct, boys ?" asked the cap 
 tain. ..." Well, we ve got to be going. 
 By-by, Zouzoune !" 
 
io8 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 But Zouzoune burst into tears. Larous- 
 sel was going too ! 
 
 " Give her the thing, Laroussel ! she 
 gave you a kiss, anyhow more than she d 
 do for me," cried the captain. 
 
 Laroussel turned, detached the little 
 compass from his watch chain, and gave 
 it to her. She held up her pretty face 
 for his farewell kiss. . . . 
 
 VI. 
 
 But it seemed fated that Feliu s waif 
 should never be identified ; diligent in 
 quiry and printed announcements alike 
 proved fruitless. Sea and sand had either 
 hidden or effaced all the records of the 
 little world they had engulfed : the anni 
 hilation of whole families, the extinction 
 of races, had, in more than one instance, 
 rendered vain all efforts to recognize the 
 dead. It required the subtle perception 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 109 
 
 of long intimacy to name remains tume 
 fied and discolored by corruption and ex 
 posure, mangled and gnawed by fishes, by 
 reptiles, and by birds ; it demanded the 
 great courage of love to look upon the 
 eyeless faces found sweltering in the black 
 ness of cypress-shadows, under the low 
 palmettoes of the swamps, where gorged 
 buzzards started from sleep, or cotton- 
 mouths uncoiled, hissing, at the coming 
 of the searchers. And sometimes all who 
 had loved the lost were themselves among 
 the missing. The full roll-call of names 
 could never be made out ; extraordinary 
 mistakes were committed. Men whom 
 the world deemed dead and buried came 
 back, like ghosts, to read their own epi 
 taphs. 
 
 . . . Almost at the same hour that La- 
 roussel was questioning the child in Creole 
 patois, another expedition, searching for 
 
 8 
 
no Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 bodies along the coast, discovered on the 
 beach of a low islet famed as a haunt of 
 pelicans, the corpse of a child. Some 
 locks of bright hair still adhering to the 
 skull, a string of red beads, a white mus 
 lin dress, a handkerchief broidered with 
 the initials "A. L. B.," were secured as 
 clews ; and the little body was interred 
 where it had been found. 
 
 And, several days before, Captain Ho- 
 tard, of the relief-boat Estelle Brousseaux, 
 had found, drifting in the open Gulf (lati 
 tude 26 43 ; longitude 88 17 ), the 
 corpse of a fair-haired woman, clinging to 
 a table. The body was disfigured beyond 
 recognition : even the slender bones of the 
 hands had been stripped by the nibs of 
 the sea-birds except one finger, the third 
 of the left, which seemed to have been 
 protected by a ring of gold, as by a charm. 
 Graven within the plain yellow circlet 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 1 1 1 
 
 was a date, "]UILLET 1851"; and the 
 names, " A DELE + JULIEN," separated 
 by a cross. The Estelle carried coffins 
 that day : most of them were already full ; 
 but there was one for Adele. 
 
 Who was she ? who was her Julien? . . . 
 When the Estelle and many other vessels 
 had discharged their ghastly cargoes; 
 when the bereaved of the land had as 
 sembled as hastily as they might for the 
 duty of identification ; when memories 
 were strained almost to madness in re 
 search of names, dates, incidents for the 
 evocation of dead words, resurrection of 
 vanished days, recollection of dear prom 
 ises, then, in the confusion, it was be 
 lieved and declared that the little corpse 
 found on the pelican island was the 
 daughter of the wearer .of the wedding- 
 ring: Adele La Brierre, nee Florane, 
 wife of Dr. Julien La Brierre, of New 
 
H2 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Orleans, who was numbered among the 
 missing. 
 
 And they brought dead Adele back, 
 up shadowy river windings, over linked 
 brightnesses of lake and lakelet, through 
 many a green-glimmering bayou, to the 
 Creole city, and laid her to rest some 
 where in the old Saint-Louis Cemetery. 
 And upon the tablet recording her name 
 were also graven the words : 
 
 Aussi a la mtmoire dt 
 
 son mart, 
 JULIEN RAYMOND LA BRIERRE, 
 
 nd a la paroisse St. Landry, 
 
 le 29 Mai, MDCCCXX VIII; 
 
 et de leur fille, 
 
 EULALIE, 
 age"e de 4 ans et 5 mots, 
 
 Qui tons ptrirent 
 
 dans la grande tempete quf 
 
 balayd L lie Derntere, le 
 
 10 AoAt, MDCCCL VI 
 
 ... + ... 
 Priez pour eux ! 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 113 
 
 VII. 
 
 Yet six months afterward the face of 
 Julien La Brierre was seen again upon 
 the streets of New Orleans. Men started 
 at the sight of him, as at a spectre stand 
 ing in the sun. And nevertheless the 
 apparition cast a shadow. People paused, 
 approached, half extended a hand through 
 old habit, suddenly checked themselves 
 and passed on, wondering they should 
 have forgotten, asking themselves why 
 they had so nearly made an absurd 
 mistake. 
 
 It was a February day, one of those 
 crystalline days of our snowless Southern 
 winter, when the air is clear and cool, and 
 outlines sharpen in the light as if viewed 
 through the focus of a diamond glass; 
 and in that brightness Julien La Brierre 
 perused his own brief epitaph, and gazed 
 
ii4 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 upon the sculptured name of drowned 
 Adele. Only half a year had passed since 
 she was laid away in the high wall of 
 tombs, in that strange colonial colum 
 barium where the dead slept in rows, be 
 hind squared marbles lettered in black or 
 bronze. Yet her resting-place, in the 
 highest range, already seemed old. Un 
 der our Southern sun, the vegetation of 
 cemeteries seems to spring into being 
 spontaneously to leap all suddenly into 
 luxuriant life ! Microscopic mossy growths 
 had begun to mottle the slab that closed 
 her in ; over its face some singular creep 
 er was crawling, planting tiny reptile-feet 
 into the chiselled letters of the inscrip 
 tion ; and from the moist soil below 
 speckled euphorbias were growing up to 
 her, and morning-glories, and beautiful 
 green tangled things of which he did not 
 know the name. 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 115 
 
 And the sight of the pretty lizards, puff 
 ing their crimson pouches in the sun, or 
 undulating athwart epitaphs, and shifting 
 their color when approached, from emer 
 ald to ashen-gray; the caravans of the 
 ants, journeying to and from tiny chinks 
 in the masonry ; the bees gathering honey 
 from the crimson blossoms of the crete- 
 de-coq, whose radicles sought sustenance, 
 perhaps from human dust, in the decay 
 of generations : all that rich life of graves 
 summoned up fancies of Resurrection, 
 Nature s resurrection - work wondrous 
 transformations of flesh, marvellous trans 
 migration of souls ! . . . From some for 
 gotten crevice of that tomb roof, which 
 alone intervened between her and the 
 vast light, a sturdy weed was growing. 
 He knew that plant, as it quivered against 
 the blue, the chou-gras, as Creole chil 
 dren call it: its dark berries form the 
 
1 1 6 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 mocking-bird s favorite food. . . . Might 
 not its roots, exploring darkness, have 
 found some unfamiliar nutriment within ? 
 might it not be that something of the 
 dead heart had risen to purple and emer 
 ald life in the sap of translucent leaves, 
 in the wine of the savage berries, to blend 
 with the blood of the Wizard Singer, to 
 lend a strange sweetness to the melody 
 of his wooing ? . . . 
 
 . . . Seldom, indeed, does it happen that 
 a man in the prime of youth, in the posses 
 sion of wealth, habituated to comforts and 
 the elegances of life, discovers in one brief 
 week how minute his true relation to the 
 human aggregate, how insignificant his 
 part as one living atom of the social or 
 ganism. Seldom, at the age of twenty- 
 eight, has one been made able to compre 
 hend, through experience alone, that in 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 117 
 
 the vast and complex Stream of Being he 
 counts for less than a drop ; and that, 
 even as the blood loses and replaces its 
 corpuscles, without a variance in the vol 
 ume and vigor of its current, so are indi. 
 vidual existences eliminated and replaced 
 in the pulsing of a people s life, with nev 
 er a pause in its mighty murmur. But all 
 this, and much more, Julien had learned 
 in seven merciless days seven successive 
 and terrible shocks of experience. The 
 enormous world had not missed him ; and 
 his place therein was not void society 
 had simply forgotten him. So long as he 
 had moved among them, all he knew for 
 friends had performed their petty altruis 
 tic roles, had discharged their small hu 
 man obligations, had kept turned toward 
 him the least selfish side of their nature s, 
 had made with him a tolerably equita 
 ble exchange of ideas and of favors ; and 
 
1 1 8 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 after his disappearance from their midst, 
 they had duly mourned for his loss to 
 themselves ! They had played out the 
 final act in the unimportant drama of his 
 life : it was really asking too much to de 
 mand a repetition. . . . Impossible to de 
 ceive himself as to the feeling his unan 
 ticipated return had aroused : feigned pity 
 where he had looked for sympathetic wel 
 come ; dismay where he had expected sur 
 prised delight; and, oftener,^irs of resig 
 nation, or disappointment ill disguised, 
 always insincerity, politely masked or cold 
 ly bare. He had come back to find stran 
 gers in his home, relatives at law concern 
 ing his estate, and himself regarded as an 
 intruder among the living, an unlucky 
 guest, a revenant. ... How hollow and 
 selfish a world it seemed ! And yet there 
 was love in it ; he had been loved in it, 
 unselfishly, passionately, with the love of 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 119 
 
 father and of mother, of wife and child 
 
 All buried ! all lost forever ! . . . Oh ! 
 would to God the story of that stone were 
 not a lie ! would to kind God he also 
 were dead ! . . . 
 
 Evening shadowed : the violet deepened 
 and prickled itself with stars; the sun 
 passed below the west, leaving in his wake 
 a momentary splendor of vermilion . . . 
 our Southern day is not prolonged by 
 gloaming. And Julien s thoughts dark 
 ened with the darkening, and as swiftly. 
 For while there was yet light to see, he 
 read another name that he used to know 
 the name of RAMIREZ. . . . Nacio en 
 Cienfuegos, isla de Cuba. . . . Wherefore 
 born ? for what eternal purpose, Ramirez, 
 in the City of a Hundred Fires ? He 
 had blown out hij brains before the sep 
 ulchre of his young wife. ... It was a de 
 tached double vault, shaped like a huge 
 
1 20 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 chest, and much dilapidated already : 
 under the continuous burrowing of the 
 crawfish it had sunk greatly on one side, 
 tilting as if about to fall. Out from its 
 zigzag fissurings of brick and plaster, a 
 sinister voice seemed to come : " Go thou 
 and do likewise / . . . Earth groans with 
 her burthen even now, the burthen of 
 Man: she holds no place for thee T 
 
 VIII. 
 
 . . . That voice pursued him into the 
 darkness of his chilly room, haunted him 
 in the silence of his lodging. And then 
 began within the man that ghostly strug 
 gle between courage and despair, between 
 patient reason and mad revolt, between 
 weakness and force, between darkness and 
 light, which all sensitive and generous 
 natures must wage in their own souls at 
 least once perhaps many times in their 
 
Out of the Sea s Strength. 121 
 
 lives. Memory, in such moments, plays 
 like an electric storm; all involuntarily 
 he found himself reviewing his life. 
 
 Incidents long forgotten came back 
 with singular vividness : he saw the Past 
 as he had not seen it while it was the Pres 
 ent; remembrances of home, recollec 
 tions of infancy, recurred to him with ter 
 rible intensity, the artless pleasures and 
 the trifling griefs, the little hurts and the 
 tender pettings, the hopes and the anxi 
 eties of those who loved him, the smiles 
 
 and tears of slaves And his first Creole 
 
 pony, a present from his father the day 
 after he had proved himself able to recite 
 his prayers correctly in French, without 
 one mispronunciation without saying 
 crasse for grace ; and yellow Michel, who 
 taught him to swim and to fish lahd to 
 paddle a pirogue ; and the bayouu with 
 its wonder-world of turtles and birds and 
 
122 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 creeping things ; and his German tutor, 
 who could not pronounce the/; and the 
 songs of the cane-fields, strangely pleas 
 ing, full of quaverings and long plaintive 
 notes, like the call of the cranes. . . . Tou\ 
 tod pays blanc / . . . Afterward Cama- 
 niere had leased the place; everything 
 must have been changed ; even the songs 
 could not be the same. Tou\ ton pays 
 blanc ! Dani e qui commande. . . . 
 
 And then Paris ; and the university, 
 with its wild under-life, some debts, some 
 follies ; and the frequent fond letters from 
 home to which he might have replied so 
 much oftener ; Paris, where talent is me 
 diocrity ; Paris, with its thunders and its 
 splendors and its seething of passion; 
 Paris, supreme focus of human endeavor, 
 with its madnesses of art, its frenzied striv 
 ing to express the Inexpressible, its spas 
 modic strainings to clutch the Unattain- 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 123 
 
 able, its soarings of soul-fire to the heaven 
 of the Impossible. . . . 
 
 What a rejoicing there was at his re 
 turn ! how radiant and level the long 
 Road of the Future seemed to open before 
 him ! everywhere friends, prospects, fe 
 licitations. Then his first serious love ; 
 and the night of the ball at St. Martins- 
 ville, the vision of light ! Gracile as a 
 palm, and robed at once so simply, so ex 
 quisitely in white, she had seemed to him 
 the supreme realization of all possible 
 dreams of beauty. . . . And his passionate 
 jealousy ; and the slap from Laroussel ; 
 and the humiliating two-minute duel with 
 rapiers in which he learned that he had 
 found his master. The scar was deep. 
 Why had not Laroussel killed him then ? 
 . . . Not evil - hearted, Laroussel ; they 
 used to salute each other afterward when 
 they met ; and Laroussel s smile was kind- 
 
1 24 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 ly. Why had he refrained from return 
 ing it ? Where was Laroussel now ? 
 
 For the death of his generous father, 
 who had sacrificed so much to reform him ; 
 for the death, only a short while after, of 
 his all-forgiving mother, he had found one 
 sweet woman to console him with her ten 
 der words, her loving lips, her delicious 
 caress. She had given him Zouzoune, 
 the darling link between their lives, Zou 
 zoune, who waited each evening with black 
 Eglantine at the gate to watch for his com 
 ing, and to cry through all the house like 
 a bird, "Papa, lap e vini ! -papa Zulien 
 ape vini T . . . And once that she had 
 made him very angry by upsetting the 
 ink over a mass of business papers, and 
 he had slapped her (could he ever forgive 
 himself?) she had cried, through her 
 sobs of astonishment and pain : " To lai- 
 min moin ? to batt e moin /" (Thou lovest 
 
Out of the Sea s Strength. 125 
 
 me ? thou beatest me !) Next month she 
 would have been five years old. To lai- 
 min moin ? to batt e moin / . . . 
 
 A furious paroxysm of grief convulsed 
 him, suffocated him ; it seemed to him 
 that something within must burst, must 
 break. He flung himself down upon his 
 bed, biting the coverings in order to stifle 
 his outcry, to smother the sounds of his 
 despair. What crime had he ever done, 
 oh God ! that he should be made to suffer 
 thus ? was it for this he had been per 
 mitted to live ? had been rescued from the 
 sea and carried round all the world un 
 scathed ? Why should he live to remem 
 ber, to suffer, to agonize ? Was not Ra 
 mirez wiser ? 
 
 How long the contest within him lasted, 
 he never knew ; but ere it was done, he 
 had become, in more ways than one, a 
 changed man. For the first, though not 
 
126 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 indeed for the last time, something of 
 the deeper and nobler comprehension of 
 human weakness and of human suffering 
 had been revealed to him, something of 
 that larger knowledge without which the 
 ense of duty can never be fully acquired, 
 nor the understanding of unselfish good 
 ness, nor the spirit of tenderness. The 
 suicide is not a coward ; he is an egotist. 
 
 A ray of sunlight touched his wet pil 
 low, awoke him. He rushed to the win 
 dow, flung the latticed shutters apart, and 
 looked out. 
 
 Something beautiful and ghostly filled 
 all the vistas, frost-haze ; and in some 
 queer way the mist had momentarily 
 caught and held the very color of the sky. 
 An azure fog ! Through it the quaint and 
 checkered street as yet but half illumined 
 by the sun, took tones of impossible col- 
 
Out of the Seas Strength. 1 2 7 
 
 or; the view paled away through faint 
 bluish tints into transparent purples ; all 
 the shadows were indigo. How sweet the 
 morning ! how well life seemed worth liv 
 ing ! Because the sun had shown his face 
 through a fairy-veil of frost ! . . . 
 
 Who was the ancient thinker? was it 
 Hermes ? who said : 
 
 " The Sun is Laughter ; for tis He who 
 maketh joyous the thoughts of men, and 
 gladdeneth the infinite world . . . 
 
PART III. 
 
 The Shadow of the Tide. 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE TIDE. 
 
 I. 
 
 CARMEN found that her little pet 
 had been taught how to pray; for 
 each night and morning when the devout 
 woman began to make her orisons, the 
 child would kneel beside her, with little 
 hands joined, and in a voice sweet and 
 clear murmur something she had learned 
 by heart. Much as this pleased Carmen, 
 it seemed to her that the child s prayers 
 could not be wholly valid unless uttered 
 in Spanish ; for Spanish was heaven s 
 own tongue, la lengua de Dios, el idioma 
 de Dios ; and she resolved to teach her to 
 say the Salve Maria and the Padre Nues- 
 tro in Castilian, also her own favorite 
 
132 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 prayer to the Virgin, beginning with the 
 words, " Madre santisima, toda dulce y 
 hermosa? . . . 
 
 So Conchita for a new name had been 
 given to her with that terrible sea-christen 
 ing received her first lessons in Spanish ; 
 and she proved a most intelligent pupil. 
 Before long she could prattle to Feliu ; 
 she would watch for his return of even 
 ings, and announce his coming with "Aqui 
 viene mi papacito /" she learned, too, 
 from Carmen, many little caresses of 
 speech to greet him with. Feliu s was 
 not a joyous nature ; he had his dark 
 hours, his sombre days ; yet it was rarely 
 that he felt too sullen to yield to the little 
 one s petting, when she would leap up to 
 reach his neck and to coax his kiss, with 
 " Dame un beso, papa / asi ; -y otro ! 
 otro ! otro /" He grew to love her like his 
 own ; was she not indeed his own, since 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 133 
 
 he had won her from death ? And none 
 had yet come to dispute his claim. More 
 and more, with the passing of weeks, 
 months, seasons, she became a portion of 
 his life a part of all that he wrought for. 
 At the first, he had had a half-formed 
 hope that the little one might be reclaimed 
 by relatives generous and rich enough to 
 insist upon his acceptance of a handsome 
 compensation ; and that Carmen could 
 find some solace in a pleasant visit to 
 Barceloneta. But now he felt that no 
 possible generosity could requite him 
 for her loss ; and with the unconscious 
 selfishness of affection, he commenced 
 to dread her identification as a great 
 calamity. 
 
 It was evident that she had been brought 
 up nicely. She had pretty prim ways of 
 drinking and eating, queer little fashions 
 of sitting in company, and of addressing 
 
1 34 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 people. She had peculiar notions about 
 colors in dress, about wearing her hair; 
 and she seemed to have already imbibed 
 a small stock of social prejudices not al 
 together in harmony with the republican 
 ism of Viosca s Point. Occasional swarthy 
 visitors, men of the Manilla settlements, 
 she spoke of contemptuously as negues- 
 marrons ; and once she shocked Carmen 
 inexpressibly by stopping in the middle 
 of her evening prayer, declaring that she 
 wanted to say her prayers to a white Vir 
 gin ; Carmen s Senora de Guadalupe was 
 only a negra ! Then, for the first time, 
 Carmen spoke so crossly to the child as 
 to frighten her. But the pious woman s 
 heart smote her the next moment for that 
 first harsh word ; and she caressed the 
 motherless one, consoled her, cheered her, 
 and at last explained to her I know not 
 how something very wonderful about 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 135 
 
 the little figurine, something that made 
 Chita s eyes big with awe. Thereafter 
 she always regarded the Virgin of Wax 
 as an object mysterious and holy. 
 
 And, one by one, most of Chita s little 
 eccentricities were gradually eliminated 
 from her developing life and thought. 
 More rapidly than ordinary children, be 
 cause singularly intelligent, she learned 
 to adapt herself to all the changes of her 
 new environment, retaining only that 
 indescribable something which to an ex 
 perienced eye tells of hereditary refine 
 ment of habit and of mind : a natural 
 grace, a thorough-bred ease and elegance 
 of movement, a quickness and delicacy 
 of perception. 
 
 She became strong again and active^ 1 " 
 active enough to play a great deal on the 
 beach, when the sun was not too fierce ; 
 and Carmen made a canvas bonnet to 
 
136 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 shield her head and face. Never had she 
 been allowed to play so much in the sun 
 before ; and it seemed to do her good, 
 though her little bare feet and hands be 
 came brown as copper. At first, it must 
 be confessed, she worried her foster-moth 
 er a great deal by various queer misfor 
 tunes and extraordinary freaks; getting 
 bitten by crabs, falling into the bayou 
 while in pursuit of "fiddlers," or losing 
 herself at the conclusion of desperate ef 
 forts to run races at night with the moon, 
 or to walk to the " end of the world." If 
 she could only once get to the edge of 
 the sky, she said, she "could climb up." 
 She wanted to see the stars, which were 
 the souls of good little children ; and she 
 knew that God would let her climb up. 
 "Just what I am afraid of!" thought 
 Carmen to herself ; " He might let her 
 climb up, a little ghost !" But one day 
 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 137 
 
 naughty Chita received a terrible lesson, 
 a lasting lesson, which taught her the 
 value of obedience. 
 
 She had been particularly cautioned 
 not to venture into a certain part of the 
 swamp in the rear of the grove, where the 
 weeds were very tall ; for Carmen was 
 afraid some snake might bite the child. 
 But Chita s bird-bright eye had discerned 
 a gleam of white in that direction; and 
 she wanted to know what it was. The 
 white could only be seen from one point, 
 behind the furthest house, where the 
 ground was high. " Never go there," said 
 Carmen ; " there is a Dead Man there, 
 will bite you !" And yet, one day, while 
 Carmen was unusually busy, Chita went 
 there. 
 
 In the early days of the settlement, a 
 Spanish fisherman had died ; and his com 
 rades had built him a little tomb with the 
 
1 38 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 surplus of the same bricks and other ma 
 terial brought down the bayou for the 
 construction of Viosca s cottages. But 
 no one, except perhaps some wandering 
 duck hunter, had approached the sepul 
 chre for years. High weeds and grasses 
 wrestled together all about it, and render 
 ed it totally invisible from the surround 
 ing level of the marsh. 
 
 Fiddlers swarmed away as Chita ad 
 vanced over the moist soil, each uplifting 
 its single huge claw as it sidled off ; then 
 frogs began to leap before her as she 
 reached the thicker grass; and long- 
 legged brown insects sprang showering 
 to right and left as she parted the tufts 
 of the thickening verdure. As she went 
 on, the bitter-weeds disappeared ; jointed 
 grasses and sinewy dark plants of a taller 
 growth rose above her head : she was 
 almost deafened by the storm of insect 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 139 
 
 shrilling, and the mosquitoes became very 
 wicked. All at once something long and 
 black and heavy wriggled almost from 
 under her naked feet, squirming so hor 
 ribly that for a minute or two she could 
 not move for fright. But it slunk away 
 somewhere, and hid itself ; the weeds it 
 had shaken ceased to tremble in its wake ; 
 and her courage returned. She felt such 
 an exquisite and fearful pleasure in the 
 gratification of that naughty curiosity ! 
 Then, quite unexpectedly oh ! what a 
 start it gave her ! the solitary white ob 
 ject burst upon her view, leprous and 
 ghastly as the yawn of a cotton-mouth. 
 Tombs ruin soon in Louisiana ; the one 
 Chita looked upon seemed ready to top 
 ple down. There was a great ragged 
 hole at one end, where wind and rain, and 
 perhaps also the burrowing of crawfish 
 and of worms, had loosened the bricks, 
 
140 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 and caused them to slide out of place. 
 It seemed very black inside; but Chita 
 wanted to know what was there. She 
 pushed her way through a gap in the thin 
 and rotten line of pickets, and through 
 some tall weeds with big coarse pink 
 flowers; then she crouched down on 
 hands and knees before the black hole, 
 and peered in. It was not so black in 
 side as she had thought ; for a sunbeam 
 slanted down through a chink in the roof; 
 and she could see ! 
 
 A brown head without hair, without 
 eyes, but with teeth, ever so many teeth ! 
 seemed to laugh at her ; and close to it 
 sat a Toad, the hugest she had ever seen ; 
 and the white skin of his throat kept puff 
 ing out and going in. And Chita scream 
 ed and screamed, and fled in wild terror, 
 screaming all the way, till Carmen ran 
 out to meet her and carry her home. 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 141 
 
 Even when safe in her adopted mother s 
 arms, she sobbed with fright. To the 
 vivid fancy of the child there seemed to 
 be some hideous relation between the 
 staring reptile and the brown death s-head, 
 with its empty eyes, and its nightmare- 
 smile. 
 
 The shock brought on a fever, a fever 
 that lasted several days, and left her very 
 weak. But the experience taught her to 
 obey, taught her that Carmen knew best 
 what was for her good. It also caused 
 her to think a great deal. Carmen had 
 told her that the dead people never fright 
 ened good little girls who stayed at home. 
 
 " Madrecita Carmen," she asked, " is 
 my mamma dead ?" 
 
 " Pobrecita / ... Yes, my angel. God 
 called her to Him, your darling mother." 
 
 "Madrecita," she asked again, her 
 young eyes growing vast with horror, 
 
142 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 " is my own mamma now like That ?" . . . 
 She pointed toward the place of the white 
 gleam, behind the great trees. 
 
 " No, no, no ! my darling !" cried 
 Carmen, appalled herself by the ghastly 
 question, "your mamma is with the 
 dear, good, loving God, who lives in the 
 beautiful sky, above the clouds, my dar 
 ling, beyond the sun !" 
 
 But Carmen s kind eyes were full of 
 tears; and the child read their meaning. 
 He who teareth off the Mask of the Flesh 
 had looked into her face one unutterable 
 moment : she had seen the brutal Truth, 
 naked to the bone ! 
 
 Yet there came to her a little thrill of 
 consolation, caused by the words of the 
 tender falsehood ; for that which she had 
 discerned by day could not explain to her 
 that which she saw almost nightly in her 
 slumber. The face, the voice, the form of 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 143 
 
 her loving mother still lived somewhere, 
 could not have utterly passed away; since 
 the sweet presence came to her in dreams, 
 bending and smiling over her, caressing 
 her, speaking to her, sometimes gently 
 chiding, but always chiding with a kiss. 
 And then the child would laugh in her 
 sleep, and prattle in Creole, talking to 
 the luminous shadow, telling the dead 
 mother all the little deeds and thoughts 
 of the day. . . . Why would God only let 
 her come at night ? 
 
 . . . Her idea of God had been first de 
 fined by the sight of a quaint French pict 
 ure of the Creation, an engraving which 
 represented a shoreless sea under a black 
 sky, and out of the blackness a solemn and 
 bearded gray head emerging, and a cloudy 
 hand through which stars glimmered. 
 God was like old Doctor de Coulanges, 
 who used to visit the house, and talk in 
 
1 44 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 a voice like a low roll of thunder. ... At 
 a later day, when Chita had been told 
 that God was "everywhere at the same 
 time" without and within, beneath and 
 above all things, this idea became some 
 what changed. The awful bearded face, 
 the huge shadowy hand, did not fade from 
 her thought ; but they became fantasti 
 cally blended with the larger and vaguer 
 notion of something that filled the world 
 and reached to the stars, something di 
 aphanous and incomprehensible like the 
 invisible air, omnipresent and everlasting 
 like the high blue of heaven. . . . 
 
 II. 
 
 . . . She began to learn the life of the 
 coast. 
 
 With her acquisition of another tongue, 
 there came to her also the understanding 
 of many things relating to the world of 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 145 
 
 the sea. She memorized with novel de 
 light much that was told her day by day 
 concerning the nature surrounding her, 
 many secrets of the air, many of those 
 signs of heaven which the dwellers in 
 cities cannot comprehend because the at 
 mosphere is thickened and made stagnant 
 above them cannot even watch because 
 the horizon is hidden from their eyes by 
 walls, and by weary avenues of trees with 
 whitewashed trunks. She learned, by 
 listening, by asking, by observing also, 
 how to know the signs that foretell wild 
 weather : tremendous sunsets, scuddings 
 and bridgings of cloud, sharpening and 
 darkening of the sea-line, and the shriek 
 of gulls flashing to land in level flight, 
 out of a still transparent sky, and halos 
 about the moon. 
 
 She learned where the sea-birds, with 
 white bosoms and brown wings, made their 
 
146 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 hidden nests of sand, and where the 
 cranes waded for their prey, and where 
 the beautiful wild -ducks, plumaged in 
 satiny lilac and silken green, found their 
 food, and where the best reeds grew to 
 furnish stems for Feliu s red-clay pipe, 
 and where the ruddy sea-beans were most 
 often tossed upon the shore, and how 
 the gray pelicans fished all together, like 
 men moving in far- extending semicir 
 cles, beating the flood with their wings to 
 drive the fish before them. 
 
 And from Carmen she learned the fa 
 bles and the sayings of the sea, the prov 
 erbs about its deafness, its avarice, its 
 treachery, its terrific power. especially 
 one that haunted her for all time there 
 after : Si quieres aprender a orar, entra 
 en el mar (If thou wouldst learn to pray, 
 go to the sea). She learned why the sea 
 is salt, how " the tears of women made 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 147 
 
 the waves of the sea," and how the sea 
 has " no friends," and how the cat s eyes 
 change with the tides. 
 
 What had she lost of life by her swift 
 translation from the dusty existence of 
 cities to the open immensity of nature s 
 freedom ? What did she gain ? 
 
 Doubtless she was saved from many of 
 those little bitternesses and restraints and 
 disappointments which all well-bred city 
 children must suffer in the course of their 
 training for the more or less factitious life 
 of society: obligations to remain very 
 still with every nimble nerve quivering in 
 dumb revolt ; the injustice of being found 
 troublesome and being sent to bed early 
 for the comfort of her elders ; the cruel 
 necessity of straining her pretty eyes, for 
 many long hours at a time, over grimy 
 desks in gloomy school - rooms, though 
 birds might twitter and bright winds flut- 
 
148 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 ter in the trees without ; the austere con- 
 straint and heavy drowsiness of warm 
 churches, filled with the droning echoes 
 of a voice preaching incomprehensible 
 things; the progressively augmenting 
 weariness of lessons in deportment, in 
 dancing, in music, in the impossible art of 
 keeping her dresses unruffled and unsoil- 
 ed. Perhaps she never had any reason 
 to regret all these. 
 
 She went to sleep and awakened with 
 the wild birds ; her life remained as un 
 fettered by formalities as her fine feet by 
 shoes. Excepting Carmen s old prayer- 
 book, in which she learned to read a lit 
 tle, her childhood passed without books, 
 also without pictures, without dainties, 
 without music, without theatrical amuse 
 ments. But she saw and heard and felt 
 much of that which, though old as the 
 heavens and the earth, is yet eternally 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 149 
 i 
 
 new and eternally young with the holiness 
 of beauty, eternally mystical and divine, 
 eternally weird: the unveiled magnifi 
 cence of Nature s moods, the perpetual 
 poem hymned by wind and surge, the 
 everlasting splendor of the sky. 
 
 She saw the quivering pinkness of wa- ( 
 ters curled by the breath of the morning 
 under the deepening of the dawn like a 
 far fluttering and scattering of rose-leaves 
 of fire ; 
 
 Saw the shoreless, cloudless, marvellous 
 double-circling azure of perfect summer 
 days twin glories of infinite deeps inter- 
 reflected, while the Soul of the World lay 
 
 * / 
 
 still, suffused with a jewel-light, as of va 
 porized sapphire ; 
 
 Saw the Sea shift color, "change 
 sheets," when the viewless Wizard of the 
 Wind breathed upon its face, and made it 
 green ; 
 
1 50 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Saw the immeasurable panics, noise 
 less, scintillant, which silver, summer 
 after summer, curved leagues of beach 
 with bodies of little fish the yearly mas 
 sacre of migrating populations, nations of 
 sea-trout, driven from their element by 
 terror ; and the winnowing of shark-fins, 
 and the rushing of porpoises, and the 
 rising of the grande-ecaille, like a pillar 
 of flame, and the diving and pitching 
 and fighting of the frigates and the gulls, 
 and the armored hordes of crabs swarm 
 ing out to clear the slope after the carnage 
 and the gorging had been done ; 
 
 Saw the Dreams of the Sky, scudding 
 mockeries of ridged foam, and shadowy 
 stratification of capes and coasts and 
 promontories long-drawn-out, and im 
 ageries, multicolored, of mountain frond- 
 age, and sierras whitening above sierras, 
 and phantom islands ringed around 
 with lagoons of glory; 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 1 5 1 
 
 Saw the toppling and smouldering of 
 cloud-worlds after the enormous confla 
 gration of sunsets, incandescence ruin 
 ing into darkness ; and after it a moving 
 and climbing of stars among the black 
 nesses, like searching lamps ; 
 
 Saw the deep kindle countless ghostly 
 candles as for mysterious night-festival, 
 and a luminous billowing under a black 
 sky, and effervescences of fire, and the 
 twirling and crawling of phosphoric 
 foam ; 
 
 Saw the mesmerism of the Moon; saw 
 the enchanted tides self -heaped in mut 
 tering obeisance before her. 
 
 Often she heard the Music of the Marsh 
 through the night : an infinity of flutings 
 and tinklings made by tiny amphibia, 
 like the low blowing of numberless little 
 tin horns, the clanking of billions of little 
 bells ; and, at intervals, profound tones, 
 
1 5 2 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 vibrant and heavy, as of a bass-viol the 
 orchestra of the great frogs ! And inter 
 weaving with it all, one continuous shrill 
 ing, keen as the steel speech of a saw, 
 the stridulous telegraphy of crickets. 
 
 But always, always, dreaming or awake, 
 she heard the huge blind Sea chanting 
 that mystic and eternal hymn, which none 
 may hear without awe, which no musician 
 can learn ; 
 
 Heard the hoary Preacher, El Prego- 
 nador, preaching the ancient Word, the 
 word " as a fire, and as a hammer that 
 breaketh the rock in pieces," the Elohim- 
 Word of the Sea ! . . . 
 
 Unknowingly she came to know the 
 immemorial sympathy of the mind with 
 the Soul of the World, the melancholy 
 wrought by its moods of gray, the rev 
 erie responsive to its vagaries of mist, 
 the exhilaration of its vast exultings 
 
71te Shadow of the Tide. 153 
 
 days of windy joy, hours of transfigured 
 light. 
 
 She felt, even without knowing it, 
 the weight of the Silences, the solemnities 
 of sky and sea in these low regions where all 
 things seem to dream waters and grasses 
 with their momentary wavings, woods 
 gray-webbed with mosses that drip and 
 drool, horizons with their delusions of 
 vapor, cranes meditating in their marsh 
 es, kites floating in the high blue. . . . 
 Even the children were singularly quiet ; 
 and their play less noisy though she 
 could not have learned the difference 
 than the play of city children. Hour after 
 hour, the women sewed or wove in silence. 
 And the brown men, always barefooted, 
 always wearing rough blue shirts, seemed, 
 when they lounged about the wharf on 
 idle days, as if they had told each other 
 long ago all they knew or could ever 
 
154 Chita A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 know, and had nothing more to say. 
 They would stare at the flickering of the 
 current, at the drifting of clouds and buz 
 zards seldom looking at each other, and 
 always turning their black eyes again, in 
 a weary way, to sky or sea. Even thus 
 one sees the horses and the cattle of the 
 coast, seeking the beach to escape the 
 whizzing flies ; all watch the long waves 
 rolling in, and sometimes turn their heads 
 a moment to look at one another, but al 
 ways look back to the waves again, as if 
 wondering at a mystery. . . . 
 
 How often she herself had wondered 
 wondered at the multiform changes of 
 each swell as it came in transformations 
 of tint, of shape, of motion, that seemed 
 to betoken a life infinitely more subtle 
 than the strange cold life of lizards and of 
 fishes, and sinister, and spectral. Then 
 they all appeared to move in order, ac- 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 155 
 
 cording to one law or impulse ; each had 
 its own voice, yet all sang one and the 
 same everlasting song. Vaguely, as she 
 watched them and listened to them, there 
 came to her the idea of a unity of will in 
 their motion, a unity of menace in their 
 utterance the idea of one monstrous and 
 complex life! The sea lived: it could 
 crawl backward and forward ; it could 
 speak! it only feigned deafness and 
 sightlessness for some malevolent end. 
 Thenceforward she feared to find herself 
 alone with it. Was it not at her that it 
 strove to rush, muttering, and showing 
 its white teeth, . . . just because it knew 
 that she was all by herself ? . . . Si 
 quieres aprender a orar, entra en el mar / 
 And Concha had well learned to pray. 
 But the sea seemed to her the one Power 
 which God could not make to obey Him 
 as He pleased. Saying the creed one 
 
1 56 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 day, she repeated very slowly the open 
 ing words, " Creo en un Dios, padre 
 todopoderoso, Criador del cielo y de la 
 tierra" and paused and thought. Cre 
 ator of Heaven and Earth ? " Madrecita 
 Carmen," she asked, " quien entonces 
 hizb el mar?" (who then made the sea?). 
 
 " Dios, mi querida," answered Car 
 men. " God, my darling. , . . All things 
 were made by Him" (todas las cosas 
 fueron hechas por El\ 
 
 Even the wicked Sea ! And He had 
 said unto it : " Thus far, and no farther." 
 . . . Was that why it had not overtaken 
 and devoured her when she ran back in 
 fear from the sudden reaching out of its 
 waves? Thus far. . . .? But there were 
 times when it disobeyed when it rushed 
 further, shaking the world ! Was it be 
 cause God was then asleep could not 
 hear, did not see, until too late ? 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 157 
 
 And the tumultuous ocean terrified her 
 more and more : it filled her sleep with 
 enormous nightmare ; it came upon her 
 in dreams, mountain-shadowing, hold 
 ing her with its spell, smothering her pow 
 er of outcry, heaping itself to the stars. 
 
 Carmen became alarmed ; she feared 
 that the nervous and delicate child might 
 die in one of those moaning dreams out 
 of which she had to arouse her, night 
 after night. But Feliu, answering her 
 anxiety with one of his favorite proverbs, 
 suggested a heroic remedy : 
 
 " The world is like the sea : those who 
 do not know how to swim in it are 
 drowned ; 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 her 
 into the water. She was less terrified 
 the first time than Carmen thought she 
 
158 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 would be ; she seemed to feel confidence 
 in Feliu; although she screamed piteous- 
 ly before her first ducking at his hands. 
 His teaching was not gentle. He would 
 carry her out, perched upon his shoulder, 
 until the water rose to his own neck ; and 
 there he would throw her from him, and 
 let her struggle to reach him again as 
 best she could. The first few mornings 
 she had to be pulled out almost at once ; 
 but after that Feliu showed her less 
 mercy, and helped her only when he saw 
 she was really in danger. He attempted 
 no other instruction until she had learned 
 that in order to save herself from being 
 half choked by the salt water, she must 
 not scream ; and by the time she became 
 habituated to these austere experiences, 
 she had already learned by instinct alone 
 how to keep herself afloat for a while, 
 how to paddle a little with her hands. 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 159 
 
 Then he commenced to train her to use 
 them, to lift them well out and throw 
 them forward as if reaching, to dip them 
 as the blade of an oar is dipped at an 
 angle, without loud splashing; and he 
 showed her also how to use her feet. She 
 learned rapidly and astonishingly well. 
 In less than two months Feliu felt really 
 proud at the progress made by his tiny 
 pupil : it was a delight to watch her lift 
 ing her slender arms above the water in 
 swift, easy curves, with the same fine 
 grace that marked all her other natural 
 motions. Later on he taught her not to 
 fear the sea even when it growled a lit 
 tle, how to ride a swell, how to face a 
 breaker, how to dive. She only needed 
 practice thereafter; and Carmen, who 
 could also swim, finding the child s health 
 improving marvellously under this new 
 discipline, took good care that Chita 
 
1 60 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 should practise whenever the mornings 
 were not too cold, or the water too rough. 
 With the first thrill of delight at find 
 ing herself able to glide over the water un 
 assisted, the child s superstitious terror of 
 the sea passed away. Even for the adult 
 there are few physical joys keener than 
 the exultation of the swimmer; how 
 much greater the same glee as newly felt 
 by an imaginative child, a child, whose 
 vivid fancy can lend unutterable value to 
 the most insignificant trifles, can trans 
 form a weed-patch to an Eden ! ... Of her 
 own accord she would ask for her morn 
 ing bath, as soon as she opened her eyes ; 
 it even required some severity to pre 
 vent her from remaining in the water too 
 long. The sea appeared to her as some 
 thing that had become tame for her 
 sake, something that loved her in a huge 
 rough way; a tremendous playmate, whom 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 161 
 
 she no longer feared to see come bound 
 ing and barking to lick her feet. And, 
 little by little, she also learned the won 
 derful healing and caressing power of 
 the monster, whose cool embrace at once 
 dispelled all drowsiness, feverishness, 
 weariness, even after the sultriest nights 
 when the air had seemed to burn, and the 
 mosquitoes had filled the chamber with a 
 sound as of water boiling in many kettles. 
 And on mornings when the sea was in 
 too wicked a humor to be played with, 
 how she felt the loss of her loved sport, 
 and prayed for calm ! Her delicate con 
 stitution changed ; the soft, pale flesh ^ 
 became firm and brown, the meagre limbs 
 rounded into robust symmetry, the thin 
 cheeks grew peachy with richer life ; for 
 the strength of the sea had entered into 
 
 / *" 
 
 her; the sharp breath of the sea had re- v 
 newed and brightened her young blood / 
 
1 62 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 . . . Thou primordial Sea, the awfulness 
 of whose antiquity hath stricken all 
 mythology dumb; thou most wrinkled 
 living Sea, the millions of whose years 
 outnumber even the multitude of thy 
 hoary motions; thou omniform and 
 most mysterious Sea, mother of the mon 
 sters and the gods, whence thine eter 
 nal youth ? Still do thy waters hold the 
 infinite thrill of that Spirit which brood 
 ed above their face in the Beginning ! 
 still is thy quickening breath an elixir 
 unto them that flee to thee for life, like 
 the breath of young girls, like the breath 
 of children, prescribed for the senescent 
 by magicians of old, prescribed unto 
 weazened elders in the books of the 
 Wizards. 
 
 III. 
 
 . . . Eighteen hundred and sixty-seven ; 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 163 
 
 midsummer in the pest-smitten city of 
 New Orleans. 
 
 Heat motionless and ponderous. The 
 steel-blue of the sky bleached from the 
 furnace-circle of the horizon ; the luke 
 warm river ran yellow and noiseless as a 
 torrent of fluid wax. Even sounds seem 
 ed blunted by the heaviness of the air ; 
 the rumbling of wheels, the reverberation 
 of footsteps, fell half-toned upon the ear, 
 like sounds that visit a dozing brain. 
 
 Daily, almost at the same hour, the con 
 tinuous sense of atmospheric oppression 
 became thickened ; a packed herd of low- 
 bellying clouds lumbered up from the 
 Gulf ; crowded blackly against the sun ; 
 flickered, thundered, and burst in torren 
 tial rain tepid, perpendicular and van 
 ished utterly away. Then, more furiously 
 than before, the sun flamed down ; roofs 
 and pavements steamed ; the streets seem- 
 
1 64 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 ed to smoke; the air grew suffocating 
 with vapor; and the luminous city filled 
 with a faint, sickly odor, a stale smell, as 
 of dead leaves suddenly disinterred from 
 wet mould, as of grasses decomposing 
 after a flood. Something saffron speckled 
 the slimy water of the gutters ; sulphur 
 some called it ; others feared even to give 
 it a name ! Was it only the wind-blown 
 pollen of some innocuous plant? I do 
 not know; but to many it seemed as if 
 the Invisible Destruction were scattering 
 visible seed ! . . . Such were the days ; and 
 each day the terror-stricken city offered 
 up its hecatomb to death ; and the faces 
 of all the dead were yellow as flame ! 
 
 "DECEDE ;" "DECEDEE ;" " FALLE- 
 
 cio;" "DiED." ... On the door-posts, 
 the telegraph-poles, the pillars of veran 
 das, the lamps, over the government 
 letter-boxes, everywhere glimmered the 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 165 
 
 white annunciations of death. All the 
 city was spotted with them. And lime 
 was poured into the gutters; and huge 
 purifying fires were kindled after sun 
 set. 
 
 The nights began with a black heat ; 
 there were hours when the acrid air seem 
 ed to ferment for stagnation, and to burn 
 the bronchial tubing ; then, toward morn 
 ing, it would grow chill with venomous 
 vapors, with morbific dews, till the sun 
 came up to lift the torpid moisture, and to 
 fill the buildings with oven-glow. And 
 the interminable procession of mourners 
 and hearses and carriages again began to 
 circulate between the centres of life and 
 of death ; and long trains and steamships 
 rushed from the port, with heavy burden 
 of fugitives. 
 
 Wealth might flee ; yet even in flight 
 there was peril. Men, who might have 
 
1 66 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 been saved by the craft of experienced 
 nurses at home, hurriedly departed in ap 
 parent health, unconsciously carrying in 
 their blood the toxic principle of a malady 
 unfamiliar to physicians of the West and 
 North ; and they died upon their 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 the purity of the pine 
 forests, or in those near Gulf Islands, 
 whence the bright sea-breath kept ever 
 sweeping back the expanding poison into 
 the funereal swamps, into the misty low 
 lands. The watering-resorts became over 
 crowded ; 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 and 
 unfamiliar as it was, had a stranger to 
 shelter: a good old gentleman named 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 167 
 
 Edwards, rather broken down in health 
 who came as much for quiet as for sea- 
 air, and who had been warmly recom 
 mended to Feliu by Captain Harris. 
 For some years he had been troubled by 
 a disease of the heart. 
 
 Certainly the old invalid could not have 
 found a more suitable place so far as rest 
 and quiet were concerned. The season 
 had early given such little promise that 
 several men of the Point betook them 
 selves elsewhere ; and the aged visitor had 
 two or three vacant cabins from among 
 which to sel ect a dwelling-place. He chose 
 to occupy the most remote of all, which 
 Carmen furnished for him with a cool 
 moss bed and some necessary furniture, 
 including a big wooden rocking-chair. It 
 seemed to him very comfortable thus. He 
 took his meals with the family, spent most 
 of the day in his own quarters, spoke very 
 
1 68 Chita: A Memory of Last Island, 
 
 little, and lived so unobtrusively and in 
 conspicuously that his presence in the set 
 tlement was felt scarcely more than that 
 of some dumb creature, some domestic 
 animal, some humble pet whose relation 
 to the family is only fully comprehended 
 after it has failed to appear for several 
 days in its accustomed place of patient 
 waiting, and we know that it is dead. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Persistently and furiously, at half-past 
 two o clock of an August morning, Spari- 
 cio rang Dr. La Brierre s night-bell. He 
 had fifty dollars in his pocket, and a letter 
 to deliver. He was to earn another fifty 
 dollars deposited in Feliu s hands, by 
 bringing the Doctor to Viosca s Point. He 
 had risked his life for that money, and 
 was terribly in earnest. 
 
 Julien descended in his under-clothing, 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 169 
 
 and opened the letter by the light of the 
 hall lamp. It enclosed a check for a larg 
 er fee than he had ever before received, 
 and contained an urgent request that he 
 would at once accompany Sparicio to Vi- 
 osca s Point, as the sender was in hour 
 ly danger of death. The letter, penned 
 in a long, quavering hand, was signed, 
 " Henry Edwards? 
 
 His father s dear old friend! Julien 
 could not refuse to go, though he feared 
 it was a hopeless case. Angina pectoris, 
 and a third attack at seventy years of 
 age ! Would it even be possible to reach 
 the sufferer s bedside in time ? " Due gi- 
 orno, con vento" said Sparicio. Still, 
 he must go ; and at once. It was Friday 
 morning; might reach the Point Satur 
 day night, with a good wind He roused 
 
 his housekeeper, gave all needful instruc 
 tions, prepared his little medicine-chest; 
 
1 70 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 and long before the first rose-gold fire 
 of day had flashed to the city spires, he 
 was sleeping the sleep of exhaustion in 
 the tiny cabin of a fishing-sloop. 
 
 . . . For eleven years Julien had devoted 
 himself, heart and soul, to the exercise of 
 that profession he had first studied rather 
 as a polite accomplishment than as a fut 
 ure calling. In the unselfish pursuit of 
 duty he had found the only possible con 
 solation for his irreparable loss ; and when 
 the war came to sweep away his wealth, 
 he entered the struggle valorously, not to 
 strive against men, but to use his science 
 against death. After the passing of that 
 huge shock, which left all the imposing 
 and splendid fabric of Southern feudalism 
 wrecked forever, his profession stood him 
 in good stead; he found himself not only 
 able to supply those personal wants he 
 cared to satisfy, but also to alleviate the 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 1 7 1 
 
 misery of many whom he had known in 
 days of opulence; the princely misery 
 that never doffed its smiling mask, though 
 living in secret, from week to week, on 
 bread and orange-leaf tea; the misery 
 that affected condescension in accepting 
 an invitation to dine, staring at the face 
 of a watch (refused by the Mont-de-Piete) 
 with eyes half blinded by starvation ; the 
 misery which could afford but one robe for 
 three marriageable daughters, one plain 
 dress to be worn in turn by each of them, 
 on visiting days ; the pretty misery 
 young, brave, sweet, asking for a "treat" 
 of cakes too jocosely to have its asking 
 answered, laughing and coquetting with 
 its well-fed wooers, and crying for hunger 
 after they were gone. Often and often, 
 his heart had pleaded against his purse 
 for such as these, and won its case in the 
 silent courts of Self. But ever mysteri- 
 
172 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 ously the gift came, sometimes as if from 
 the hand of a former slave ; sometimes as 
 from a remorseful creditor, ashamed to 
 write his name. Only yellow Victorine 
 knew ; but the Doctor s housekeeper nev 
 er opened those sphinx-lips of hers, until 
 years after the Doctor s name had disap 
 peared from the City Directory. . . . 
 
 He had grown quite thin, a little gray. 
 The epidemic had burthened him with 
 responsibilities too multifarious and pon 
 derous for his slender strength to bear. 
 The continual nervous strain of abnor 
 mally protracted duty, the perpetual inter 
 ruption of sleep, had almost prostrated 
 even his will. Now he only hoped that, 
 during this brief absence from the city, 
 he might find renewed strength to do his 
 terrible task. 
 
 Mosquitoes bit savagely; and the heat 
 became thicker; and there was yet no 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 173 
 
 wind. Sparicio and his hired boy Carmelo 
 had been walking backward and forward 
 for hours overhead, urging the vessel 
 yard by yard, with long poles, through 
 the slime of canals and bayous. With ev 
 ery heavy push, the weary boy would sigh 
 out, " Santo Antonio ! Santo Anto 
 nio /" Sullen Sparicio himself at last burst 
 into vociferations of ill-humor: "Santo 
 Antonio? Ah! santissimu e santu di- 
 avulu / . . . Sacramentu pcescite vegnu un 
 asidente ! malidittu lu Signuri T All 
 through the morning they walked and 
 pushed, trudged and sighed and swore ; 
 and the minutes dragged by more wearily 
 than the shuffling of their feet. " Manag- 
 gia Cristo co tutta a croce /" ..." Santis- 
 simu e santu diavulu / /" . . . 
 
 But as they reached at last the first of 
 the broad bright lakes, the heat lifted, the 
 breeze leaped up, the loose sail flapped 
 
1 74 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 and filled; and, bending graciously as a 
 skater, the old San Marco began to shoot 
 in a straight line over the blue flood. 
 Then, while the boy sat at the tiller, Spa- 
 ricio lighted his tiny charcoal furnace be 
 low, and prepared a simple meal, deli 
 cious yellow macaroni, flavored with goats 
 cheese ; some fried fish, that smelled ap- 
 petizingly ; and rich black coffee, of Ori 
 ental fragrance and thickness. Julien 
 ate a little, and lay down to sleep again. 
 This time his rest was undisturbed by the 
 mosquitoes ; and when he woke, in the 
 cooling evening, he felt almost refreshed. 
 The San Marco was flying into Barataria 
 Bay. Already the lantern in the light 
 house tower had begun to glow like a lit 
 tle moon ; and right on the rim of the sea, 
 a vast and vermilion sun seemed to rest 
 his chin. Gray pelicans came flapping 
 around the mast; sea-birds sped hurtling 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 175 
 
 by, their white bosoms rose-flushed by the 
 western glow. . . . Again Sparicio s little 
 furnace was at work, more fish, more 
 macaroni, more black coffee ; also a 
 square-shouldered bottle of gin made its 
 appearance. Julien ate less sparingly at 
 this second meal ; and smoked a long time 
 on deck with Sparicio, who suddenly be 
 came very good-humored, and chatted vol 
 ubly in bad Spanish, and in much worse 
 English. Then while the boy took a few 
 hours sleep, the Doctor helped delight 
 edly in manoeuvring the little vessel. He 
 had been a good yachtsman in other years; 
 and Sparicio declared he would make a 
 good fisherman. By midnight the San 
 Marco began to run with a long, swinging 
 gait; she had reached deep water. Ju 
 lien slept soundly ; the steady rocking of 
 the sloop seemed to soothe his nerves. 
 " After all," he thought to himself, as 
 
1 76 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 he rose from his little bunk next morn* 
 ing, "something like this is just what I 
 needed." . . . The pleasant scent of hot 
 coffee greeted him ; Carmelo was hand 
 ing him the tin cup containing it, down 
 through the hatchway. After drinking it 
 he felt really hungry ; he ate more maca 
 roni than he had ever eaten before. Then, 
 while Sparicio slept, he aided Carmelo; 
 and during the middle of the day he rest 
 ed again. He had not had so much un 
 interrupted repose for many a week. He 
 fancied he could feel himself getting 
 strong. At supper-time it seemed to him 
 he could not get enough to eat, although 
 there was plenty for everybody. 
 
 All day long there had been exactly 
 the same wave-crease distorting the white 
 shadow of the San Marcos sail upon the 
 blue water; all day long they had been 
 skimming over the liquid level of a world 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 177 
 
 so jewel-blue that the low green ribbon- 
 strips of marsh land, the far-off fleeing 
 lines of pine -yellow sand beach, seemed 
 flaws or breaks in the perfected color of 
 the universe ; all day long had the cloud 
 less sky revealed through all its exquisite 
 transparency that inexpressible tenderness 
 which no painter and no poet can ever re- 
 image, that unutterable sweetness which 
 no art of man may ever shadow forth, 
 and which none may ever comprehend, 
 though we feel it to be in some strange 
 way akin to the luminous and unspeakable 
 charm that makes us wonder at the eyes 
 of a woman when she loves. 
 
 Evening came ; and the great dominant 
 celestial tone deepened; the circling ho 
 rizon filled with ghostly tints, spectral 
 greens and grays, and pearl -lights and 
 fish-colors. . . . Carmelo, as he crouched 
 at the tiller, was singing, in a low, clear 
 
178 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 alto, some tristful little melody. Over the 
 sea, behind them, lay, black -stretching, a 
 long low arm of island -shore; before 
 them flamed the splendor of sun -death; 
 they were sailing into a mighty glory, 
 into a vast and awful light of gold. 
 
 Shading his vision with his fingers, 
 Sparicio pointed to the long lean limb of 
 land from which they were fleeing, and 
 said to La Brierre: 
 
 " Look-a, Doct-a ! Last-a Islari /" 
 
 Julien knew it ; he only nodded his 
 head in reply, and looked the other way, 
 into the glory of God. Then, wish 
 ing to divert the fisherman s attention to 
 another theme, he asked what was Car- 
 melo singing. Sparicio at once shouted 
 to the lad : 
 
 " Ha ! . . . ho ! Carmelo ! Santu dia- 
 vulu / . . . . Sing-a loud-a ! Doct-a lik-a ! 
 Sing-a ! sing ! I" "He sing-a nicee," 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 1 79 
 
 added the boatman, with his peculiar dark 
 smile. And then Carmelo sang, loud and 
 clearly, the song he had been singing be 
 fore, one of those artless Mediterranean 
 ballads, full of caressing vowel-sounds, and 
 young passion, and melancholy beauty : 
 
 " M ama ancor, belta fulgente, 
 Come tu m amasti allor; 
 Ascoltar non det gente, 
 
 Solo inter roga il tuo cor". . . 
 
 " He sing-a nicee, mucha bueno !" 
 murmured the fisherman. And then, sud 
 denly, with a rich and splendid basso 
 that seemed to thrill every fibre of the 
 planking, Sparicio joined in the song : 
 
 " M* ama pur d amore eterno, 
 
 Ne delltto sembri a te ; 
 
 T assicuro che I inferno 
 
 Una favola sol e.". . . 
 
 ^ 
 
 All the roughness of the man was gone ! 
 To Julien s startled fancy, the fishers had 
 
l8o Chita: A Memory of Last Island 
 
 ceased to be ; lo ! Carmelo was a princely 
 page ; Sparicio, a king ! How perfectly 
 their voices married together ! they sang 
 with passion, with power, with truth, with 
 that wondrous natural art which is the 
 birthright of the rudest Italian soul. And 
 the stars throbbed out in the heaven ; 
 and the glory died in the west; and the 
 night opened its heart ; and the splendor 
 of the eternities fell all about them. Still 
 they sang; and the San Marco sped on 
 through the soft gloom, ever slightly 
 swerved by the steady blowing of the 
 southeast wind in her sail ; always wear 
 ing the same crimpling-frill of wave-spray 
 about her prow, always accompanied by 
 the same smooth-backed swells, always 
 spinning out behind her the same long 
 trail of interwoven foam. And Julien 
 looked up. Ever the night thrilled more 
 and more with silent twinklings; more 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 181 
 
 and more multitudinously lights pointed 
 in the eternities ; the Evening Star q 
 ered like a great drop of liquid white fire 
 ready to fall; Vega flamed as a pharos 
 lighting the courses ethereal, to guide 
 the sailing of the suns, and the swarming 
 of fleets of worlds. Then the vast sweet 
 ness of that violet night entered into his 
 blood, filled him with that awful joy, so 
 near akin to sadness, which the sense of 
 the Infinite brings, when one feels the 
 poetry of the Most Ancient and Most Ex 
 cellent of Poets, and then is smitten at 
 once with the contrast - thought of the 
 sickliness and selfishness of Man, of the 
 blindness and brutality of cities, where- 
 into the divine blue light never purely 
 comes, and the sanctification of the Si 
 lences never descends . . . furious cities, 
 walled away from heaven. . . . Oh ! if one 
 could only sail on thus always, always 
 
... 
 
 (ill Onpjl .IK I I .1 III-- III | hi ( Ml" li ||( h .1 
 
 l.n pi ml I. -I \ lnl< I hvl.l. .iii.l IK .n S|M 
 ii i.. .in. I < .mm I.. MI,-- , vrn llliill^h i! 
 wrti Id. n i, |,,d\ .il\\ ,i\ ., .il\\ .i\ -, (he 
 
 Jill 1 1C < >l I- 
 
 . . "S< N... I ><H I .,! I.M.l, ., ,n! |" |,, 
 lirn lirnl clown, .r I !> I >\\- lutmn, Intnrnc tl, 
 \\ "ir. iivri lir. IK .i< 1 I IK . >.; , ,//,/;, , 
 
 W.I iMiisKl,,,..- Mil.) -.|K.M , IK .i,im-.- |,.| hci 
 hotur i .n n 1 1 > 1 1 1 1 1 I .1 1 1 1 1-. * t t u K 1 1 -,| K 1 1 
 llOlN (In (I, i 1 , I ll! il in In . h|> (tiled In 
 lrcp liiii 1 . 1 , .in.! lliiiiv IN! IN! lln Niphl 
 
 (Initt .1 profound, ind 1 1 1 1 1 K 1 1 1 , IMMUN 
 
 NK. In n N l< me .A Nil i in I c | .i 1 .< | I IK n 
 
 f " 1 I \ I . I I I I I , . I . .IN ((lit* i I ( 1 1 N \ C I \ Lit 
 
 .iw.iy, .1 Iliplr I >li \\ 1 1 1-.- tcspondcd 
 
 .And .1 IOIK.- piuplc Ni.r. 1 . liMiinrti .mil 
 
 u died itid i .! lil . IK i- III. ncd, .Ipplo.U lied 
 l.ind .ind li. < I-I.K K -.|.i,l,.\\ tn-.-. .uul 
 
 ll- .iil lli.ll \\lii.-; I IK ... . ). .;-.. 
 
 j-didcd into .\ l.i\mi, nndci .1 ln-.-li \\lnil 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 183 
 
 ing of timbers, where a bearded fisher 
 man waited, and a woman. Sparicio flung 
 up a rope. 
 
 The bearded man caught it by the lan 
 tern-light, and tethered the San Marco 
 to her place. Then he asked, in a deep 
 voice : 
 
 " Has traido al Doctor ?" 
 
 "6V, sir answered Sparicio. . . . 
 "Y el viejo?" 
 
 "Aye! pobre /" responded Feliu, 
 " hace tres dias que esta muerto? 
 
 Henry Edwards was dead ! 
 
 He had died very suddenly, without a 
 cry or a word, while resting in his rock 
 ing-chair, the very day after Sparicio had 
 sailed. They had made him a grave in 
 the marsh, among the high weeds, not 
 far from the ruined tomb of the Spanish 
 fisherman. But Sparicio had fairly earned 
 his hundred dollars. 
 
1 84 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 V. 
 
 So there was nothing to do at Viosca s 
 Point except to rest. Feliu and all his 
 men were going to Barataria in the morn 
 ing on business ; the Doctor could ac 
 company them there, and take the Grand 
 Island steamer Monday for New Orleans. 
 With this intention Julien retired, not 
 sorry for being able to stretch himself at 
 full length on the good bed prepared for 
 him, in one of the unoccupied cabins. But 
 he woke before day with a feeling of in 
 tense prostration, a violent headache, and 
 such an aversion for the mere idea of food 
 that Feliu s invitation to breakfast at five 
 o clock gave him an internal qualm. Per 
 haps a touch of malaria. In any case he 
 felt it would be both dangerous and use 
 less to return to town unwell ; and Feliu, 
 observing his condition, himself advised 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 185 
 
 against the journey. Wednesday he would 
 have another opportunity to leave; and 
 in the meanwhile Carmen would take good 
 care of him. . . . The boats departed, and 
 Julien slept again. 
 
 The sun was high when he rose up and 
 dressed himself, feeling no better. He 
 would have liked to walk about the place, 
 but felt nervously afraid of the sun. He 
 did not remember having ever felt so 
 broken down before. He pulled a rock 
 ing-chair to the window, tried to smoke a 
 cigar. It commenced to make him feel 
 still sicker, and he flung it away. It 
 seemed to him the cabin was swaying, as 
 the San Marco swayed when she first 
 reached the deep water. 
 
 A light rustling sound approached, a 
 sound of quick feet treading the grass: 
 then a shadow slanted over the threshold. 
 In the glow of the open doorway stood a 
 
1 86 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 young girl, gracile, tall, with singular 
 ly splendid eyes. brown eyes peeping at 
 him from beneath a golden riot of loose 
 hair. 
 
 " M sieit-le-Docteur, maman cTmande 
 si vous riavez bisoin d queque chose?" 
 . . . She spoke the rude French of the 
 fishing villages, where the language lives 
 chiefly as a baragouin, mingled often with 
 words and forms belonging to many other 
 tongues. She wore a loose -falling dress 
 of some light stuff, steel-gray in color ; 
 boys shoes were on her feet. 
 
 He did not reply ; and her large eyes 
 grew larger for wonder at the strange 
 fixed gaze of the physician, whose face 
 had visibly bleached, blanched to corpse- 
 pallor. Silent seconds passed ; and still 
 the eyes stared flamed as if the life of 
 the man had centralized and focussed 
 within them. 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 187 
 
 His voice had risen to a cry in his 
 throat, quivered and swelled one passion 
 ate instant, and failed as in a dream 
 when one strives to call, and yet can only 
 moan. . . . She! Her unforgotten eyes, her 
 brows, her lips ! the oval of her face ! the 
 dawn-light of her hair! . . . Adele s own 
 poise, her own grace! even the very 
 turn of her neck, even the bird-tone of 
 her speech ! . . . Had the grave sent forth 
 a Shadow to haunt him ? could the per 
 fidious Sea have yielded up its dead ? For 
 one terrible fraction of a minute, memo 
 ries, doubts, fears, mad fancies, went puls 
 ing through his brain with a rush like 
 the rhythmic throbbing of an electric 
 stream ; then the shock passed, the Rea 
 son spoke : " Fool ! count the long years 
 since you first saw her thus ! count the 
 years that have gone since you looked 
 upon her last ! And Time has never 
 
1 88 Chita i A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 halted, silly heart! neither has Death 
 stood still !" 
 
 . . . "P/tfzV-z//" the clear voice of the 
 young girl asked. She thought he had 
 made some response she could not dis 
 tinctly hear. 
 
 Mastering himself an instant, as the 
 heart faltered back to its duty, and the 
 color remounted to his lips, he answered 
 her in French : 
 
 " Pardon me ! I did not hear . . . 
 you gave me such a start !". . . But even 
 then another extraordinary fancy flashed 
 through his thought; and with the tu- 
 toiement of a parent to a child, with an ir 
 resistible outburst of such tenderness as 
 almost frightened her, he cried : " Oh ! 
 merciful God ! how like her ! . . . Tell 
 me, darling, your name ; tell me who 
 you are ?" (Dis-moi qui tu es, mignonne; 
 dis-moi ton nom.) 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 1 89 
 
 . . . Who was it had asked her the same 
 question, in another idiom ever so long 
 ago ? The man with the black eyes and 
 nose like an eagle s beak, the one who 
 gave her the compass. Not this man 
 no! 
 
 She answered, with the timid gravity of 
 surprise : 
 
 " Chita Viosca." 
 
 He still watched her face, and repeated 
 the name slowly, reiterated it in a tone 
 of wonderment : " Chita Viosca ? Chita 
 Viosca !" 
 
 " Cest a dire . . ." she said, looking 
 down at her feet, " Concha Conchita." 
 His strange solemnity made her smile, 
 the smile of shyness that knows not what 
 else to do. But it was the smile of dead 
 Adele. 
 
 " Thanks, my child," he exclaimed of 
 a sudden, in a quick, hoarse, changed 
 
1 90 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 tone. (He felt that his emotion would 
 break loose in some wild way, if he looked 
 upon her longer.) " I would like to see 
 your mother this evening; but I now 
 feel too ill to go out. I am going to try 
 to rest a little." 
 
 " Nothing I can bring you ?" She 
 asked; "some fresh milk?" 
 
 " Nothing now, dear : if I need any 
 thing later, I will tell your mother when 
 she comes." 
 
 " Mamma does not understand 
 French very well." 
 
 "No importa, Conchita ; le hablar e 
 en Espanol? 
 
 " Bien, entoncesT she responded, with 
 the same exquisite smile. " Adios, 
 senor /" . . . 
 
 But as she turned in going, his piercing 
 eye discerned a little brown speck below 
 the pretty lobe of her right ear, just in 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 1 9 1 
 
 the peachy curve between neck and cheek. 
 . . . His own little Zouzoune had a birth 
 mark like that ! he remembered the faint 
 pink trace left by his fingers above and 
 below it the day he had slapped her for 
 overturning his ink-bottle. . . . " To laimin 
 moin? to batt e moinT 
 -"Chita! Chita!" 
 
 She did not hear. . . . After all, what a 
 mistake he might have made ! Were not 
 Nature s coincidences more wonderful 
 than 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, and 
 the fair hair. Zouzoune had always re 
 sembled Adele so strangely ! That golden 
 hair was a Scandinavian bequest to the 
 Florane family; the tall daughter of a 
 Norwegian sea-captain had once become 
 
1 92 Chita: A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 the wife of a Florane. Viosca? who 
 ever knew a Viosca with such hair ? Yet 
 again, these Spanish emigrants sometimes 
 
 married blonde German girls Might be 
 
 a case of atavism, too. Who was this 
 Viosca ? If that was his wife, the little 
 brown Carmen, whence Chita s sunny 
 hair?... 
 
 And this was part of that same desolate 
 shore whither the Last Island dead had 
 been drifted by that tremendous surge ! 
 On a clear day, with a good glass, one 
 might discern from here the long blue 
 streak of that ghastly coast. . . . Some 
 where between here and there. . . . Mer 
 ciful God ! . . . 
 
 . . . But again ! That bivouac-night be 
 fore the fight at Chancellorsville, Larous- 
 sel had begun to tell him such a singular 
 story . . . Chance had brought them, the 
 old enemies, together ; made them dear 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 193 
 
 friends in the face of Death. How little 
 he had comprehended the man ! what a 
 brave, true, simple soul went up that day 
 to the Lord of Battles ! . . . What was it 
 that story about the little Creole girl 
 saved from Last Island, that story which 
 was never finished ? . . . Eh ! what a pain ! 
 
 Evidently he had worked too much, 
 slept too little. A decided case of ner 
 vous prostration. He must lie down, and 
 try to sleep. These pains in the head 
 and back were becoming unbearable. 
 Nothing but rest could avail him now. 
 
 He stretched himself under the mos 
 quito curtain. It was very still, breath 
 less, hot ! The venomous insects were 
 thick; they filled the room with a con 
 tinuous ebullient sound, as if invisible 
 kettles were boiling overhead. A sign 
 of storm. . . . Still, it was strange! he 
 could not perspire. . . . 
 
1 94 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Then it seemed to him that Laroussel 
 was bending over him Laroussel in his 
 cavalry uniform. " Bon jour, camarade! 
 nous allons avoir un bien mauvais 
 temps, mon pauvre Julien" How! bad 
 weather? " Comment un mauvais temps?" 
 . . . He looked in Laroussel s face. There 
 was something so singular in his smile. 
 Ah ! yes, he remembered now : it was 
 the wound ! . . . " Un vilain temps /" whis 
 pered Laroussel. Then he was gone. . . . 
 Whither? 
 
 "CkeriT. .. 
 
 The whisper roused him with a fearful 
 start. . . . Adele s whisper! So she was 
 wont to rouse him sometimes in the old 
 sweet nights, to crave some little atten 
 tion for ailing Eulalie, to make some 
 little confidence she had forgotten to ut 
 ter during the happy evening. . . . No, no! 
 It was only the trees. The sky was cloud- 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 195 
 
 ing over. The wind was rising. . . . How 
 his heart beat ! how his temples pulsed ! 
 Why, this was fever! Such pains in the 
 back and head ! 
 
 Still his skin was dry, dry as parch 
 ment, burning. He rose up ; and a 
 bursting weight of pain at the base of the 
 skull made him reel like a drunken man. 
 He staggered to the little mirror nailed 
 upon the wall, and looked. How his eyes 
 glowed; and there was blood in his 
 mouth! He felt his pulse spasmodic, 
 terribly rapid. Could it possibly ? . . . 
 No: this must be some pernicious mala 
 rial fever! The Creole does not easily 
 fall a prey to the great tropical malady, 
 unless after a long absence in other cli 
 mates. True! he had been four years in 
 the army! But this was 1867. ... He 
 hesitated a moment; then, opening his 
 medicine-chest, he measured out and swal 
 lowed thirty grains of quinine. 
 
1 96 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Then he lay down again. His head 
 pained more and more; it seemed as if 
 the cervical vertebrae were filled with 
 fluid iron. And still his skin remained 
 dry as if tanned. Then the anguish grew 
 so intense as to force a groan with almost 
 every aspiration. . . . Nausea, and the 
 stinging bitterness of quinine rising in 
 his throat ; dizziness, and a brutal wrench 
 ing within his stomach. Everything be 
 gan to look pink; the light was rose- 
 colored. It darkened more, kindled 
 with deepening tint. Something kept 
 sparkling and spinning before his sight, 
 like a firework. . . . Then a burst of 
 blood mixed with chemical bitterness 
 filled his mouth ; the light became scar 
 let as claret. . . . This this was . . . not 
 malaria. . 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 197 
 
 VI. 
 
 . . . Carmen knew what it was ; but the 
 brave little woman was not afraid of it. 
 Many a time before she had met it face 
 to face, in Havanese summers ; she knew 
 how to wrestle with it; she had torn 
 Feliu s life away from its yellow clutch, 
 after one of those long struggles that 
 strain even the strength of love. Now 
 she feared mostly for Chita. She had 
 ordered the girl under no circumstances 
 to approach the cabin. 
 
 Julien felt that blankets had been 
 heaped upon him, that some gentle hand 
 was bathing his scorching face with vine 
 gar and water. Vaguely also there came 
 to him the idea that it was night. He 
 saw the shadow-shape of a woman mov 
 ing against the red light upon the wall; 
 he saw there was a lamp burning. 
 
1 98 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 Then the delirium seized him : he 
 moaned, sobbed, cried like a child, talked 
 wildly at intervals in French, in English, 
 in Spanish. 
 
 "Mentira! you could not be her 
 mother. . . . Still, if you were And she 
 must not come in here, -jamas! . . . Car 
 men, did you know Adele, Adele Flo- 
 rane ? So like her, so like, God only 
 knows how like ! . . . Perhaps I think I 
 know ; but I do not do not know justly, 
 fully how like ! . . . Si/ si! es el vbmi- 
 to! -yo lo conozco, Carmen / ... She must 
 not die twice. ... I died twice. ... I am 
 going to die again. She only once. Till 
 the heavens be no more she will not rise. 
 . . . Moi, au contraire, il faut que je me 
 leve toujours! They need me so much; 
 the slate is always full; the bell will 
 never stop. They will ring that bell for 
 me when I am dead. , . So will I rise 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 1 99 
 
 again ! resurgam / . . . How could I save 
 him? could not save myself. It was a 
 bad case, at seventy years ! . . . There ! 
 
 He saw Laroussel again, reaching out 
 a hand to him through a whirl of red 
 smoke. He tried to grasp it, and could 
 not. ..." N importe, mon ami" said La 
 roussel, " tu vas la voir bientbtr Who 
 was he to see soon ? " qui done, Larous 
 sel?" But Laroussel did not answer. 
 Through the red mist he seemed to smile ; 
 then passed. 
 
 For some hours Carmen had trusted 
 she could save her patient, desperate as 
 the case appeared to be. His was one of 
 those rapid and violent attacks, such as 
 often despatch their victims in a single 
 day. In the Cuban hospitals she had seen 
 many and many terrible examples : strong 
 
2OO Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 young men, soldiers fresh from Spain, 
 carried panting to the fever wards at sun 
 rise ; carried to the cemeteries at sunset. 
 Even troopers riddled with revolutionary 
 bullets had lingered longer. . . . Still, she 
 had believed she might save Julien s life: 
 the burning forehead once began to bead, 
 the burning hands grew moist. 
 
 But now the wind was moaning ; the 
 air had become lighter, thinner, cooler. 
 A storm was gathering in the east; and 
 to the fever-stricken man the change 
 meant death. . . . Impossible to bring the 
 priest of the Caminada now ; and there 
 was no other within a day s sail. She 
 colild only pray ; she had lost all hope in 
 her own power to save. 
 
 Still the sick man raved ; but he talked 
 to himself at longer intervals, and with 
 longer pauses between his words ; his 
 voice was growing more feeble, his speech 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 201 
 
 more incoherent. His thought vacillated 
 and distorted, like flame in a wind. 
 
 Weirdly the past became confounded 
 with the present ; impressions of sight 
 and of sound interlinked in fastastic affin 
 ity, the face of Chita Viosca, the mur 
 mur of the rising storm. Then flickers 
 of spectral lightning passed through his 
 eyes, through his brain, with every throb 
 of the burning arteries ; then utter dark 
 ness came, a darkness that surged and 
 moaned, as the circumfluence of a shad 
 owed sea. And through and over the 
 moaning pealed one multitudinous hu 
 man cry, one hideous interblending of 
 shoutings and shriekings. ... A wom 
 an s hand was locked in his own. . . . 
 " Tighter," he muttered, " tighter still, dar 
 ling ! hold as long as you can !" It was 
 the tenth night of August, eighteen hun 
 dred and fifty-six. . . . 
 
202 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 -" Chili!". . . 
 
 Again the mysterious whisper startled 
 him to consciousness, the dim knowl 
 edge of a room filled with ruby-colored 
 light, and the sharp odor of vinegar. 
 The house swung round slowly; the 
 crimson flame of the lamp lengthened 
 and broadened by turns; then every 
 thing turned dizzily fast, whirled as if 
 spinning in a vortex. . . . Nausea unutter 
 able ; and a frightful anguish as of teeth 
 devouring him within, tearing more and 
 more furiously at his breast. Then one 
 atrocious wrenching, rending, burning, 
 and the gush of blood burst from lips and 
 nostrils in a smothering deluge. Again 
 the 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 to the red sky ! Red black-red 
 
The Shadow of the Tide. 203 
 
 heated iron when its vermilion dies. So, 
 too, the frightful flood ! And noiseless. 
 Noiseless because heavy, clammy, thick, 
 warm, sickening . . . blood ? Well might 
 the land quake for the weight of such a 
 tide ! . . . Why did Adele speak Spanish ? 
 Who prayed for him ? . . . 
 
 "Alma de Cristo santisima santi- 
 ficame ! 
 
 " 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 
 
 the sweet blue mist Voiceless 
 
 the City and white ; crooked and weed- 
 grown its narrow ways ! Old 
 
 streets of tombs, these Eh ! how 
 
 odd a custom! a Night-bell at every 
 door. Yes, of course ! a nightk&\ \ the 
 Dead are Physicians of Souls : they may 
 
204 Chita : A Memory of Last Island. 
 
 be summoned only by night, called up 
 from the darkness and silence. . . . Yet 
 she? might he not dare to ring for 
 
 her even by day ? Strange he 
 
 had deemed it day ! why, it was black, 
 starless. . . . And it was growing queer- 
 
 ly cold How should he ever 
 
 find her now ? It was so black ... so 
 cold! ... 
 
 "CKeri !" 
 
 All the dwelling quivered with the 
 mighty whisper. 
 
 Outside, the great oaks were trembling 
 to their roots ; all the shore shook and 
 blanched before the calling of the sea. 
 
 And Carmen, kneeling at the feet of the 
 dead, cried out, alone in the night : 
 
 " O Jesus misericordioso ! tened com- 
 pasion de el!" 
 
 THE END. 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $I.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 DEC 31 1937 
 
 im 
 
 -T 
 
 . 
 
 REC D LD 
 
 MAY 3 1962 
 
 JUN 11 194! 
 
 
 REG. C!R.JUN 
 
 Z7 
 
 o n 
 
 987 
 
 
 LD 21-95W-7/37 
 
GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY