Chita: A Memory of Last Island | Page 9

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
silhouette of the hotel, whose hundred windows were now all aflame.
The vast timber building seemed to defy the storm. The wind, roaring
round its broad verandas,--hissing through every crevice with the sound
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 fashionable ball.
And all those pleasure 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 dwellers in the dreamy paradises of the Teche,--mingled
joyously, knowing each other,