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
the sea. The point had been much discussed by geologists; it

proved a godsend 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-shells,--refuse of a million feasts; earth again had been
formed over these, perhaps by the blind agency of worms working

through centuries unnumbered; and the new soil had given birth to
a luxuriantvegetation. Millennial oaks interknotted their roots

below its surface, and vouchsafed protection to many a frailer
growth of shrub or tree,--wild orange, water-willow, palmetto,

locust, pomegranate, and many trailing tendrilled things, both
green and gray. Then,--perhaps about half a century ago,--a 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 temporaryfishing station became
a permanent settlement: homes constructed of heavy timber and

plaster mixed with the trailing moss of the oaks and cypresses
took the places of the frail and fragrant huts of palmetto.

Still the population 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 remained; he always managed to do well.

He owned several luggers and sloops, which were hired out upon
excellent terms; he could make large and profitable contracts

with New Orleans fish-dealers; and he was vaguely suspected of
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 conveyed 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 rank the veteran trees stood shoulder to shoulder,
but in the attitude of giants over mastered,--forced backward

towards the 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 themselves, but every
fibre of their knotted thews was strained in the unequal contest,

and two of the giants were overthrown, 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 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 darkness, and on either side a kneeling angel with folded
wings. And beneath this rudelywroughtsymbol 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 frightened. 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. Carmen 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 only

boat at the settlement, the Carmencita, 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 unusual 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 cheniere.

With a scream Carmen aroused Feliu. He raised himself upon his
elbow, rubbed his eyes, and asked her, with exasperating

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 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!" 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 impressions of the storm, and more than once made

her heart stop, and start again at its own stopping. One of
these fancies she never could forget--a dream about little

Concha,--Conchita, her firstborn, who now slept far away in the
old churchyard at Barcelona. She had tried to become

resigned,--not to think. But the child would come back night
after night, though the earth lay heavy upon her--night after

night, through long distances of Time and Space. Oh! the fancied
clinging of infant-lips!--the thrilling 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