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the faces of drowned sailors: the ebb was beginning to run
strongly, and these were passing out with it on the 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 practiced 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--passing 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 appeared as

if sprinkled with them;--they vanished and became visible again
at irregular intervals, here and there--floating most thickly

eastward!--tossing, swaying patches of white or pink or blue or
black 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 discerned them. They were rising and falling where the
water was deepest--well out in front of the mouth of the bayou,

beyond 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 attired, 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 evidently house-servants,--slaves. But from
whence? Nothing could be learned until the luggers should

return; and none of 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 vessels fleeing landward. These men seem living
barometers, exquisitelysensitive 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.
--"Carajo!"

The word all at once bursts from Feliu's mouth, with that
peculiar guttural snarl of the "r" betokening strong

excitement,--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, after a moment's gazing. A
living child;--a lifeless mother. Pobrecita! No boat within

reach, and only a mighty surf-wrestler could hope to swim thither
and return!

But already, without a word, brown Feliu 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 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,--alternately 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,
occasionally 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 an emerald flash

in every ripple,--not opaque and clamorous like the Gulf today
... 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 sandbar, 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 volleying 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 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 as death,--the desperate 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 infantfirmly to

Feliu's broad shoulders,--quickly, roughly; for the ebb will not
wait ...

And now Feliu has a burden; but his style of swimming has totally
changed;--he rises from the water like a Triton, and his powerful

arms seem to spin 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, swinging 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! ...
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

preparations 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 instant

Carmen's quick, deft hands had stripped the slender little body;
and while Mateo and Feliu were finding dry clothing and

stimulants, and Miguel telling how it all happened--quickly,
passionately, with furious gesture,--the kind and vigorous woman


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