Chita: A Memory of Last Island Page 4

mainland,--across mad Caillou Bay to the sea-marshes,--laytwelve miles north; west, by the Gulf, the nearest solid ground wastwenty miles distant. There were boats, yes!--but the stoutest swimmermight never reach them now!

  Then rose a frightful cry,--the hoarse, hideous, indescribable cry ofhopeless fear,--the despairing animal-cry man utters when suddenlybrought face to face with Nothingness, without preparation, withoutconsolation, without possibility of respite ... Sauve qui peut! Somewrenched down the doors; some clung to the heavy banquet-tables, to thesofas, to the billiard-tables:--during one terrible instant,--againstfruitless heroisms, against futile generosities,--raged all the frenzyof selfishness, 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!--chandeliers splinter; lights are dashed out; a sweepingcataract hurls in: the immense hall rises,--oscillates,--twirls asupon a pivot,--crepitates,--crumbles into ruin. Crash again!--theswirling 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 prodigiouswaves, to hurl them a hundred feet in air,--heaping up the oceanagainst the land,--upturning the woods. Bays and passes were swollento abysses; rivers regorged; the sea-marshes were changed to ragingwastes of water. Before New Orleans the flood of the mile-broadMississippi rose six feet above highest water-mark. One hundred andten miles away, Donaldsonville trembled at the towering tide of theLafourche. Lakes strove to burst their boundaries. Far-off riversteamers tugged wildly at their cables,--shivering like tetheredcreatures that hear by night the approaching howl of destroyers.Smoke-stacks were hurled overboard, pilot-houses torn away, cabinsblown to fragments.

  And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass,--over the agony of Caillou Bay,--thebillowing tide rushed unresisted from the Gulf,--tearing and swallowingthe land in its course,--ploughing out deep-sea channels where sleekherds had been grazing but a few hours before,--rending islands intwain,--and ever bearing with it, through the night, enormous vortex ofwreck and vast wan drift of corpses ...

  But the Star remained. And Captain Abraham Smith, with a long, goodrope about his waist, dashed again and again into that awful surging tosnatch 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 hisstrength failed in the unequal struggle at last, and his men drew himaboard senseless, with some beautiful half-drowned girl safe in hisarms. But well-nigh twoscore souls had been rescued by him; and theStar stayed on through it all.

  Long years after, the weed-grown ribs of her graceful skeleton couldstill be seen, curving up from the sand-dunes of Last Island, invaliant witness of how well she stayed.

  VII.

  Day breaks through the flying wrack, over the infinite heaving of thesea, over the low land made vast with desolation. It is a spectraldawn: a wan light, like the light of a dying sun.

  The wind has waned and veered; the flood sinks slowly back to itsabysses--abandoning its plunder,--scattering its piteous waifs over barand dune, over shoal and marsh, among the silences of the mango-swamps,over the long low reaches of sand-grasses and drowned weeds, for morethan a hundred miles. From the shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to theshallows of Pelto Bay the dead lie mingled with the high-heapeddrift;--from their cypress groves the vultures rise to dispute a shareof the feast with the shrieking frigate-birds and squeaking gulls. Andas the tremendous tide withdraws its plunging waters, all the piratesof air follow the great white-gleaming retreat: a storm of billowingwings and screaming throats.

  And swift in the wake of gull and frigate-bird the Wreckers come, theSpoilers of the dead,--savage skimmers of the sea,--hurricane-riderswont to spread their canvas-pinions in the face of storms; Sicilian andCorsican outlaws, Manila-men from the marshes, deserters from manynavies, Lascars, marooners, refugees of a hundrednationalities,--fishers and shrimpers by name, smugglers byopportunity,--wild channel-finders from obscure bayous and unfamiliarchenieres, all skilled in the mysteries of these mysterious watersbeyond the comprehension of the oldest licensed pilot ...

  There is plunder for all--birds and men. There are drowned sheep inmultitude, heaped carcasses of kine. There are casks of claret andkegs of brandy and legions of bottles bobbing in the surf. There arebilliard-tables overturned upon the sand;--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 offine stamped leather stored with precious apparel. There are objets deluxe innumerable. There are children's playthings: French dolls inmarvellous toilets, and toy carts, and wooden horses, and woodenspades, and brave little wooden ships that rode out the gale in whichthe great Nautilus went down. There is money in notes and in coin--inpurses, in pocketbooks, and in pockets: plenty of it! There are silks,satins, laces, and fine linen to be stripped from the bodies of thedrowned,--and necklaces, bracelets, watches, finger-rings and finechains, brooches and trinkets ... "Chi bidizza!--Oh! chi beddamughieri! Eccu, la bidizza!" That ball-dress was made in Parisby--But you never heard of him, Sicilian Vicenzu ... "Che bellasposina!" Her betrothal ring will not come off, Giuseppe; but thedelicate 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 wovenhair--"Caya manan!"

  And it is not your quadroon bondsmaid, sweet lady, who now disrobes youso roughly; those Malay hands are less deft than hers,--but sheslumbers very far away from you, and may not be aroused from her sleep."Na quita mo! dalaga!--na quita maganda!" ... Juan, the fastenings ofthose diamond ear-drops are much too complicated for your peon fingers:tear them out!--"Dispense, chulita!" ...

  ... Suddenly a long, mighty silver trilling fills the ears of all:there is a wild hurrying and scurrying; swiftly, one after another, theoverburdened luggers spread wings and flutter away.

  Thrice the great cry rings rippling through the gray air, and over thegreen sea, and over the far-flooded shell-reefs, where the huge whiteflashes are,--sheet-lightning of breakers,--and over the weird wash ofcorpses coming in.

  It is the steam-call of the relief-boat, hastening to rescue theliving, to gather in the dead.

  The tremendous tragedy is over!