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 iridescent day. And the cloud-bridge
approached, 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 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 northeast, 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 waving of the
water responded precisely to the waving of the wind,--a billow

for every 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 running now at
a sharp angle to the shore: they began to carry fleeces, an

innumerable flock of vague green shapes, wind-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 gale ...
Then day by day the vast breath freshened 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 9th wanly lighted
a surf that appalled the best swimmers: the sea was one wild

agony of foam, the gale was rending off the heads 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 sinisterapparition, looming through a

cloud-rent in the west--a scarlet sun in a green sky. His
sanguine disk, enormously 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 moaning 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 slope,

into the salines;--the village bayou broadened to a bellowing
flood ... So the tumult swelled and the turmoilheightened 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,

because hope is stronger than reason ...
Even today, in these Creole islands, the advent of the steamer is

the great event of the week. There are no telegraph lines, no
telephones: the mail-packet is the only trustworthy medium of

communication with the outer world, bringing friends, news,
letters. The magic of steam has placed New Orleans nearer to New

York than to the Timbaliers, nearer to Washington than to Wine
Island, nearer to Chicago than to Barataria 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,

treacherous, mysterious. But when all around and above these
ever-changing shores the twin vastnesses of heaven and sea begin

to utter the tremendousrevelation of themselves as infinite
forces in contention, then indeed this sense of separation from

humanity appalls ... 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 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 whiteness wrapping her about
like a cloud, and moving with her moving,--a tempest-whirl of

spray;--ghost-white and like a ghost she came, for her
smoke-stacks exhaled no visible smoke--the wind devoured it! The

excitement on shore became wild;--men shouted themselves hoarse;
women laughed and cried. Every 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 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 resolved 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 midmorning the
wind had deepened to a roar,--lowering sometimes to a rumble,

sometimes bursting upon the ears like a measureless and deafening
crash. Then the captain knew the Star was running a race with

Death. "She'll win it," he muttered;--"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 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 island; and still the wind increased its paroxysmal power.
Cottages began to rock. Some slid away from the solid props upon

which they rested. A chimney fumbled. Shutters were wrenched
off; verandas demolished. 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 passing 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, shuddering, careening in her agony.
Evening fell; the sand began to move with the wind, stinging

faces like a continuous fire of fine shot; and frenzied blasts
came to buffet the steamer forward, 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