CHAPTER XIV.

Doctor McCall had been five minutes too late for the first train, and so had been delayed for the express in which Kitty started on her adventure. Commonplace accidents determine commonplace lives, was a favorite maxim of the Berrytown Illuminati. The Supreme Intelligence whom they complimented with respect could not be expected to hold such petty trifles or petty lives in His controlling hand.

Doctor McCall had seen Catharine when she first entered the station. Her very manner had the air of flight and secresy. Puzzled and annoyed, he sat down in the rear of the car, himself unseen. When they reached Philadelphia it was not yet dawn. The passengers rushed out of the cars: Kitty sat quiet. She had never slept outside of the Book-house before. She looked out at the dim-lighted depot, at the slouching dark figures that stole through it from time to time, the engines, with their hot red eyes, sweeping back and forward in the distance, breaking the night with portentous shrieks. Where should she go? She had never been in a hotel in her life: she had no money. If she ventured into the night she would be arrested, no doubt, as a vagrant. She had a gallant heart to take care of Hugh Guinness's life, but her poor little woman's body was quaking in deadly fear for herself. In a moment a decent mulatto woman, whom McCall had sent, came from the waiting-room into the deserted car.

"There is a room for ladies, where you can be comfortable until daybreak, madam," she said respectfully.

"I am much obliged to you," said Catharine.

When she saw how young she was, the mulatto, a motherly body, took her into a little inner snuggery used to store packages: "You can turn the key, and sleep if you will until morning."

"I'll not close my eyes until my errand is done," thought Kitty, and sat down in a rocking-chair, placing her satchel beside her. In five minutes she was fast asleep. McCall, pacing up and down the platform, could see her through the open window. He forgot to wonder why she had come. There was a certain neatness and freshness about her which he thought he had never observed in other women. After her night's travel her dress fell soft and gray as though just taken from the fold, her petticoat, crisp and white, peeped in one place to sight. How dainty and well-fitting were the little boots and gloves! Where the hair was drawn back, too, from her forehead he could see the blue veins and pink below the skin, like a baby's. He did not know before what keen eyes he had. But this was as though a breath of the old home when he had been a child, one of the dewy Bourbon roses in his father's garden, had followed him to the stifling town. It made the station different—even the morning. Fresh damp winds blew pleasantly from the reddening sky. The white marble steps and lintels of the street shone clean and bright; the porters going by to the freight depot gave him good-day cheerfully. In the window the old mulatto had some thriving pots of ivy and fragrant geraniums. Even a dog that came frisking up the sidewalk rubbed itself in a friendly fashion against his legs.

McCall suddenly remembered a journey he had made long ago, and a companion whose breath was foul with opium as her head at night rested on his shoulder.

But there was no need that one woman's breath should sicken him even now with the whole world; and again he stopped in his walk to look at Kitty.

The fresh wind blowing on her wakened her presently. The mulatto was anxious to serve her: it was always the case with people of her class after Kitty had once spoken to them.

"I should like fresh water and towels," she said coolly, as though toilet appurtenances were to be found at every street corner. The woman paused, and then with a queer smile brought them. In a a few moments McCall saw her come out fresher than before.

"Where is this house?" showing a name and number to the mulatto, who read it once or twice, and then looked steadily at Kitty.

"Are you going alone to that place?"

"Certainly."

The woman gave her the directions without further parley, adding that it was about six miles distant, and turned away. Catharine followed her to thank her, and put a dollar note in her hand. It was all the money she had.

She walked on down the rapidly filling streets—for miles, as she thought. The hurry and rush of the day had begun. The sense of nothingness in the midst of this great multitude came upon Kitty. The fear, the excitement began to tell on her: yesterday she had eaten but little in her pity for Muller. "Which was very foolish of me," she said to herself. "Now I've no money to buy anything to eat. I have acted in this matter without common sense." The sun lighted up the yellow leaves of the maples along the sidewalk. The wind blew strongly up from the rivers. She passed a stand with some withered apples and stale cakes, and put her hand in her pocket, then with a wistful look went on.

It was late in the morning before she reached her journey's end. Showing her paper now and then, she had noticed the curious inquiring look which both men and women gave her on reading it. She found herself at last under a long gray stone wall pierced by an iron-knobbed gate. By the side of it a man was setting out on an eating-stand a half-eaten ham, chaffy rolls and pies yellow with age. The man was an old, cleanly shaven fellow, whose aquiline nose reminded her with a twinge of conscience of Mr. Muller.

"Am I near to this house?" showing her paper.

"Here," nodding back at the stone wall, cutting his pies.

"This! What is this place, sir?"

"Moyamensing Prison." He finished cutting the pies carefully, and then, wiping the knife, looked up at her, and suddenly came from behind the stand:

"You're not well?" pushing a seat toward her. "Here's some water. Or coffee?"

She sat down: "Oh, it's nothing. Only I've traveled a long way, and I did not know it was a prison I was coming to."

"Won't you have some coffee? You don't look rugged."

"No, thank you."

"Well, it's not what you've been used to, of course. But hot." He put the water within her reach and drew aside, looking at her now and then. He was used to the pale faces and tears of women at that gate. "Though she's different from them as has friends here," he thought, silencing one or two noisy customers by a look. Presently he came up to her: "You're afeard to go in there alone, young lady?"

"Yes, I am. What shall I do?"

"I thought as much. Yonder comes the chaplain. I'll speak to him," going to meet two gentlemen who crossed the street.

"You wished to see a prisoner?" one of them said, coming up to her.

Kitty was herself again. She stood up and bowed with her old-fashioned, grave politeness: "I do not know. It was this that brought me here," handing him the telegram.

"Ah? I remember," glancing at it. "Number 243 sent it, you recollect?" to his companion. "But this is addressed to Hugh Guinness?" turning inquiringly to Kitty.

"I am a—a member of his family. He was not at home, and I came to receive the message for him."

"Will you go in with us, doctor?" The chaplain turned to his companion.

"Presently. There is a man coming up the street I want to see."

The chaplain motioned her to follow him, casting a curious glance back at her. They passed up into the long stone corridors, tier over tier, with the lines of square iron doors, each with its slate dangling outside, with a name scrawled on it. He stopped at one, opened it and drew back, motioning her to enter.

Kitty caught sight of the damp wall of a cell, and stopped.

"Shall I go in with you?" seeing her shiver.

"No: Mr. Guinness might wish the message kept as private as possible."

"It is very probable. The prisoner is very ill, or you could not have a private interview."

She went in, and the door closed behind her. It was a moment before she could distinguish any object in the dimly lighted cell. Then she saw the square window, the cobwebbed walls, and close at hand a narrow pallet, on which lay a woman in a coarse and soiled night-dress. She was tall and gaunt: one arm was thrown over her head, framing a heavy-jawed, livid face, with dull black eyes fixed on Catharine.

"Who are you?" she said.

Kitty went straight up to her. The foul smell made her head reel. But this was only a woman, after all; and one in great bodily need—dying, she thought. Kitty was a born nurse. She involuntarily straightened the wretched pillows and touched the hot forehead before she spoke: "I came instead of Hugh Guinness. You had a message for him."

"I don't know. It doesn't matter for that," her eyes wandering. The soft touch and the kind face bending over her were more to her just now than all that had gone before in her life. "It is here the pain is," moving Kitty's hand to her side. The pain filled the dull eyes with tears. "This is a poor place to die in," trying to smile.

"Oh, you are not going to die," cheerfully. "Let me lift you up higher on the pillows. Put your arm about me—so. You're not too heavy for me to lift."

The woman, when she was arranged, took Kitty's fingers and feebly held them to her side. "It is so long since anybody took care of me. I sha'n't live till to-morrow. Don't leave me—don't go away."

"I'll not go away," said Kitty.

* * * * *

The man whom the prison physician had waited to meet was Doctor McCall. He had followed Kitty so far, unwilling to interfere by speaking to her. But when he saw her enter Moyamensing he thought that she needed a protector. "Ha, Pollard, is this you?" stopping to shake hands. They were old acquaintances, and managed, in spite of their profession, to see something of each other every year. McCall ran up to town once or twice through the winter, and stayed at Pollard's house, and Pollard managed to spend a week or two with him in peach season.

"I thought I knew your swing, McCall, two squares off. Looking for me?"

"No: I followed a lady, a friend of mine, who has just gone in at the gate."

"You know her, eh?" eagerly. "A most attractive little girl, I thought: She went in with the chaplain to see one of the prisoners."

McCall paused, his hand on the gate. A horrible doubt stopped his heart-beating for an instant. But how utterly absurd it was! Only because this black shadow pursued him always could such a fancy have come to him. "The prisoner is a woman?" with forced carelessness.

"Yes. A poor wretch brought here last spring for shoplifting. Her term's out next week. She has had a sharp attack of pneumonia, and has not much strength to bear it: she is a miserable wreck from opium-eating."

"Opium-eating? Can I go in?" said McCall.

"Certainly."

When the woman heard their steps on the corridor she said to Catharine, "I hear my husband coming now."

"That will be pleasant for you," kindly, wondering to herself what sort of a ruffian had chosen this creature for a mate and had the burden of her to carry.

"Yes, I know his step," turning dully to the door. It opened, and Hugh Guinness stood on the threshold.

He halted one brief moment. It seemed to Catharine that he was an older man than she had known him.

"It is you, then, Louise?" he said calmly, going up to the bed and looking down on her, his hands clasped, as usual, behind him.

"Yes, it is I. I thought you would like to see me and talk things over before I died, Hugh." She held out her hand, but he did not touch it. Looking at her a moment from head to foot as she lay in her unclean garments, he turned to where the other woman stood, a ray of light from the window shining on her fair hair and innocent face: "Do you know that I am Hugh Guinness, Kitty?"

"I knew that long ago."

"This," nodding down at the pallet, "is my wife. Now do you know why I could not go home to my father or to you?"

"God help us!" ejaculated Pollard. The next moment, remembering himself, he put his hand on McCall's shoulder: "I understand. When you were a boy, eh? Never mind: every man has his own trouble to carry."

"I've been a very real trouble to you, Hugh," whined Louise. "But I always loved you: I always meant to come back to you."

"When her later husbands had abandoned her." McCall laughed savagely, turning away.

She started up on the pallet, clenching her bony, dirty hands: "There were faults on both sides. I never would have been the woman I am if you had loved me. What will you do with me now?"

There was a dead silence in the cell, broken only by the heavy breathing of the woman. McCall stood dumb, looking first at Catharine and then at his wife.

"This is what he will do," said Kitty's clear, quiet tones. "You shall be washed and dressed, and taken home as his wife, to live or die as suits God's will."

"Never," muttered McCall.

"How soon can she leave this—this place?" she said, turning as if he had not spoken to Pollard.

"As soon as she is able to be moved. But," hesitating, with a doubtful look at McCall, "is that plan best?"

"Why, she's his wife!" with her innocent eyes wide. "He has no right to desert her. She will die if she is not properly cared for," turning to McCall.

"Do you stay with me: don't leave me," holding Kitty's sleeve. "If you would nurse me, I should get well."

"It is impossible that the lady should nurse you," said Pollard.

Kitty sat down: she began to tremble and turn white. "She has nobody but me. I'll stay," she said quietly.

McCall beckoned his fellow-physician out into the corridor.

"My dear fellow—" Pollard began.

"No: I know you sympathize with me. But we will not talk of this matter. Is that woman dying?"

"I'm afraid—that is, I think not. She is decidedly better to-day than she was last night. With care she may recover."

Kitty came out and stood with them in the corridor. McCall looked at her with amazement. The shy, silly school-girl, afraid to find her way about Berrytown, bore herself in this desperate juncture like the sagest of matrons.

"Is there no hospital to which she can be taken?" she said to Pollard.

"Yes, of course, of course."

"I'll go with her there, then. You know," laying her hand on McCall's arm, "you did marry her. You ought to try to help her poor body and soul as long as she lives."

"Would you have me take her as my wife again?"

"Not for an hour!" cried Kitty vehemently. She went into the cell, but came back in a moment: "Will you bring me some breakfast? I shall not be of much use here until it comes."

"She has more of the angel in her than any woman I ever knew," muttered McCall.

"She has a good deal of common sense, apparently," rejoined Pollard.

* * * * *

Kitty went with McCall's wife to the hospital, and helped to nurse her for a week. Pains and chills and nausea she could help, but for the deeper disease of soul, for the cure of which Kitty prayed on her knees, often with tears, there was little hope in her simple remedies, unless the cure and its evidence lay deep enough for only God's eye to see.

The woman's nature, of a low type at birth, had grown more brutal with every year of drunkenness and vice. She died at last, alone with Kitty.

"She said, the last thing, 'God be merciful to me a sinner!'" Kitty told the chaplain. "But I am afraid she hardly understood the meaning."

"He understood, my dear child. We can leave her with Him, You must go home now: you have done all you could. Doctor McCall will go with you?"

"No, I shall go alone: I came alone."

"He will follow you home to Berrytown, then?" for the chaplain was but a man, and his curiosity was roused to know the exact relation between McCall and this old-fashioned, lovable girl.

Kitty hesitated: "I think he will come to Berrytown again. There is some business there which his wife's death will leave him free now to attend to."

She went to a sofa and sat down: "I shall be glad to be at home," beginning to cry. "I want to see father."

"Broke down utterly," the chaplain told his wife, "as soon as her terrible work was done."

As for Kitty, it seemed to her that her work in life and death was over for ever.

"You must come back," she said when McCall put her in the cars, looking like a ghost of herself. "Your father will be wanting to see you. And—and Maria."

"Maria? What the deuce is Maria to me?"

It was no ghost of Kitty that came home that evening. The shy, lively color came and went unceasingly, and her eyes sparkled.

"Poor Maria!" she whispered to her pillow as she went to bed—"poor Maria!"



CHAPTER XV.

It was a long time before he came. Months afterward, one evening when the express-train rushed into the depot, Catharine went down through the walnut trees into the garden. She stopped in the shadow as a man's figure crossed the fields. The air was cool—it was early spring. The clouds in the west threw the Book—house into shadow. Hugh Guinness, coming home, could see the narrow-paned windows twinkling behind the walnut boughs. It was just as he had left it when he was a boy. There was the cow thrusting her head through a break in the fence he had made himself; the yellow-billed ducks quacked about the pond he had dug in the barnyard; the row of lilacs by the orchard fence were just in blossom: they were always the latest on the farm, he remembered. He saw Kitty, like the heart of his old home, waiting for him. Her white dress and the hair pushed back from her face gave her an appearance of curious gentleness and delicacy.

When he came to her he took both her hands in his.

"You will come to your father now?" she said, frightened and pale.

They walked side by side down the thick rows of young saplings. There was a cool bank overgrown with trumpet-creeper. Inside, he caught sight of a little recess or cave, and a gray old bench on which was just room for two.

"Will you stop here and sit down one moment?" she said.

It was nothing to him but a deserted spring-house. It was the one enchanted spot of Kitty's life.

Half an hour afterward they found old Peter playing on his violin at the doorstep. Kitty had often planned an effective bringing back of Hugh to him, but she forgot it all, and creeping up put her hands about his neck. "Father! look there, father!" she whispered.

The Book-house still stands among its walnuts in Berrytown. But a shrewd young fellow from New York has charge of it now, who deals principally in school-books and publications relative to Reforms and raspberries. Old Peter Guinness still holds an interest in it, although his chief business is that of special agent for libraries in buying rare books and pamphlets. He comes down for two or three weeks in winter to look into matters. But since his wife died he makes his home in Delaware with his son, who married, as all Berrytown knows, Kitty Vogdes after she behaved so shamefully to Mr. Muller.

Mrs. Guinness died in high good-humor with her son-in-law. "Doctor McCall," she assured her neighbors, "was exactly the man she should have chosen for Catharine. She had known him from a boy, and knew that his high social position and wealth were only his deserts. A member—vestryman indeed—of St. Luke's Church, the largest in Sussex county."

The farm-people in the sleepy, sunny Delaware neighborhood have elected Kitty a chief favorite. "A gentle, good-natured little woman, with no opinions of her own. A bit too fond of dress perhaps, and a silly, doting mother, but the most neighborly, lovable creature alive, after all."

Miss Muller was down in St. George's lecturing last fall, and made her mark, as she always does. But the Guinness men were now hopelessly conservative. She made her home with Kitty.

"A fine woman," old Peter said the morning after she was gone.

"Never knew a woman with a finer mind," said Hugh. "Nor many men."

"She nurses that dog as if it were a baby," said Kitty sharply. "It's silly! It's disgusting!"

Peter twanged his bow on the porch, looking down over the great farm-slopes stretching away in the morning light.

"We have everything to make life good to us, Hugh," he said after Kitty had gone. "And the best thing, to my notion, is an old-fashioned woman in the house, with no notion of ruling, like that Muller girl and her set."

Hugh was romping with his boy: "Do you know your first business in this world, sir? To take care of your mother," glancing at the garden, where Kitty, in her pretty white dress, was clipping chrysanthemums.

She rules him and the house and their lives absolutely, with but little regard for justice. But he has never suspected it. She hardly knows herself that she does it.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.



STRANGE SEA INDUSTRIES AND ADVENTURES.

The wrecker on the Florida reefs, who steps from the Peninsula into the marine world, will tell you there is nothing so like the land as the water. The crystal atmosphere of this land of meridional spring, the masses of tawny green in forests of the pine, and the deeper foliage of the live-oak and wild-orange, even that fire of flower in phaenogamous plants peculiar to the Peninsula, have their fellowship and counterparts in the lustrous scenery of the submarine world. Even the beauty of moon-like lakes and river springs is realized in the salt envelope of the under-world. Washing the keel of the submerged vessel, or bursting with a sudden chill through the tepid waters of the Gulf, with a sensible difference to feeling and to sight, the diver recognizes a river in the strata, a wayside spring in the mid-sea fountain.

As the huge volume of many Florida springs, and their peculiar characteristic of sudden sinking, give them a distinguishable quality, so the like may be recognized in the fresh-water outbursts of the neighboring seas. Silver Spring in Marion county tosses out three hundred million gallons per day; Manatee Spring discharges a less volume, but is noted for the presence of the sea-cow (Trichecus muriatus); Santa Fe, Econfinna, Chipola and Oscilla are rivers which, like classic Acheron, descend and disappear with a full head—lost rivers, as they are aptly named. Pass to the marine world, and south-west of Bataban, in the Gulf of Xagua (Cuba), a river-fountain throws up a broad white disk like a flower of water on a liquid stem, visible on the violet phosphorescence of the Caribbean Sea. Its impetuous force makes it dangerous to unwary crafts; and, to add to its recognizable characteristics, in its pure waters is to be found the sea-cow—found there and in Manatee Bay and Spring alone. To the geologist such rivers are not mysteries. The lower strata of the limestone formation are hollowed out into vast cavernous channels and chambers, through which rolls for ever the hoarse murmur of multitudinous waters. It would require the conception of a Milton or the stern Florentine who pictured Malebolge to depict those hollow passages and lofty galleries, wrought into fantastic shapes by carbon chisels, and all pure snow-white, yet unrecognizable in the sublime horror of great darkness.

It is to the animal and vegetable coral the sea owes its arborescent and floriform scenery, the counterpart of the forest and phaenogamous beauty that adorns the land. The home of these wonderful creatures must be visited to realize the beauty of their dwellings and the wonderful structures they produce. A diver who explored the serene sea about the Hayti banks gives a beautiful description of the splendors of the under-world. The white, chalky bottom is visible from the surface at a depth of one hundred feet. Over that brilliant floor the filtered sunshine spreads a cloth of gold continually flecked with sailing shadows and fluctuating tints. The singular clearness of the medium removes that lovely violet drapery which surrounds like a pavilion the submarine palace, and allows a wider scope of vision. But the scene here is not the play of sunbeams or the magic glory of the prismal waters. Form adds its grace to the loveliness of color and the play of light and shadow. The structures, the work of astraea, madrepores, andreas and meandrinas, bear a singular resemblance to fabrications of the architect. One massive dome or archway, a hundred feet in diameter, rises to the surface. Its front is carved in elaborate tracery and crusted with serpulae, looking like the fret-and flower-work that covers Saracenic architecture. Looking through this into the violet ambuscade, the eye falls upon colonnades, light slender shafts a foot in diameter, that seem to support the paly-golden, lustrous roof. It is curiously like a vast temple, spreading every way in vault and colonnade, on which religious enthusiasm or barbaric royalty has worked with a reckless waste of art and labor. Nor is it the cold and shapely beauty of the stone: it seems to be a temple built of many-colored glass. To understand the magnificence of the wonderful structure, the reader must have in mind the laws affecting light in transmission through water—the frangibility of the rays, the frequent alternations in dispersion, reflection, interference and accidental and complementary color. He must recollect that every indentation, every twist of stony serpulae or fluting of the zoophyte catches the light and divides and splinters it into radiance, burning with a fringe of silver fire or flashing steel. When the mind has conceived of that, there is to add the vivid beauty of the living coral, its hue of molten colored glass spreading a radiant mucus over the stony skeleton.

But he has not yet entered into an entire conception of its loveliness. The arborescent and phaenogamous forms of the coral are to be noticed. Here is a plant: it has a pale, gray-blue stalk, and all over it are delicate green leaves, fronds or tentacles, as you please to call them. There is a fan-shaped shrub whose starry fronds recall the Chaemerops serrulata of the adjacent shore. The ament, so to speak, of the Parasmilia centralis, the catkin of the sea, recalls its terrene counterpart. There are other flowers in fascicles and corymbs. The rose is not lacking, but glows with the radiant beauty of its petaliferous sister; the columnar trunks of stony trees, covered with green, flossy mosses, are scattered about; and fresh fountains gush from the rocks, the white water as clearly distinguishable from the ultramarine as in the upper atmosphere.[1]

But some varieties of beauty in the coral belong to calmer seas: among others, the Red Sea is noticed for the exquisite loveliness of its coralline formations. An American explorer, well known in submarine diving, once visited that gulf sacred in history, and for a purpose certainly as singular as anything he found there. It was, to use his own words, "to fish for Pharaoh's golden chariot-wheels," lost in that famous pursuit. Is it possible, in the nature of things, for such an expedition to be made by any but an American? It takes a strong Bible faith, allied to a simple but strong self-confidence, to start a man on such an adventure. The curious transforming magic of the sea had its effect on the Arab dragoman he had engaged to assist him. Having settled on the exact spot, the swart Arabian descended, but signaled to return almost immediately, and was brought to the surface in open-eyed wonder. With all the hyperbole of Oriental imagination he swore positively to the finding of the chariot-wheels, and added the jewelry of Pharaoh's household. He was so earnest and so exact in the matter of the golden wheel, set with precious stones, that, though the captain dryly asked if he did not meet King Pharaoh himself, taking a moist throne and keeping court with the fishes, he none the less had the line attached and drew up—the rude wheel of a Tartar wagon, transformed under water, but plain and ugly enough above.

"The djin did it," explained the Arab. "It is a palace of the djins, howadji."

Though the adventurous explorer failed in his design on the defunct Egyptian, he was rewarded by some compensating views and discoveries. He saw there the Xenia elongata, a shrub-like coral distinguished for the beauty of its colors, having stellar tentacles, rose-colored, blue and lilac, an inch in diameter, and looking like flowers of living jewelry; another with a long cue, like a tress of hair, and others of allied beauty.

The coral-stone is seen and admired on centre-tables and in jewelry, but this is really the least pleasing beauty in the organism. The animal, subjected to exposure, is a brown mucus that dissipates in the sun and air, but clothed in its native element this glutinous substance is instinct with radiant life, the bodies being rose-color and the arms a pure white. Sometimes they grow in clusters and corymbs, gleaming with a pure, translucent color that fluctuates and changes in the light

Like colors of a shell, That keep the hue and polish of the wave.

Our searcher found one unexpected verification of the story in Exodus. The passage in the Bible does not leave altogether in mystery the natural means by which the transit was effected. We are told of the strong east wind and the wall of waters. At the point near Suez a shoal extends quite across the sea. For several days this wind had borne back the shallow waters, descending as it did from the rugged mountain-slopes, and opening or sweeping back the deep as it were. Then the tide came, thrust forward in accumulated volume, until it made a real wall of waters that stood up in a huge crested, angry foam. It was sufficiently like to cause the explorer to apprehend the possibility of finding Pharaoh by traveling the same watery road. Another question that has puzzled scholars found a solution in the American's observation. Smith's Bible Dictionary discusses learnedly the name of this curious gulf, written [Greek: ae eruthra thalassa] in the Septuagint. The Dictionary surmises that the name was derived from the red western mountains, red coral zoophytes, etc., and appears to give little weight to the real and natural reason which came under our American's notice. On one occasion the diver observed, while under sea, that the curious wavering shadows, which cross the lustrous golden floor like Frauenhofer's lines on the spectrum, began to change and lose themselves. A purple glory of intermingled colors darkened the violet curtains of the sea-chambers, reddening all glints and tinges with an angry fire. Instead of that lustrous, golden firmament, the thallassphere darkened to crimson and opal. The walls grew purple, the floor as red as blood: the deep itself was purpled with the venous hue of deoxidized life-currents.

The view on the surface was even more magnificent. The sea at first assumed the light tawny or yellowish red of sherry wine. Anon this wine-color grew instinct with richer radiance: as far as eye could see, and flashing in the crystalline splendor of the Arabian sun, was a glorious sea of rose. The dusky red sandstone hills, with a border of white sand and green and flowered foliage, like an elaborately wrought cup of Bohemian glass enameled with brilliant flowers, held the sparkling liquid petals of that rosy sea. The surface, on examination, proved to be covered with a thin brickdust layer of infusoriae slightly tinged with orange. Placed in a white glass bottle, this changed to a deep violet, but the wide surface of the external sea was of that magnificent and brilliant rose-color. It was a new and pleasing example of the lustrous, ever-varying beauty of the ocean world. It was caused by diatomaceae, minute algae, which under the microscope revealed delicate threads gathered in tiny bundles, and containing rings, like blood-disks, of that curious coloring-matter in tiny tubes.

This miracle of beauty is not without its analogies in other seas. The medusae of the Arctic seas, an allied existence, people the ultramarine blue of the cold, pure sea with vivid patches of living green thirty miles in diameter. These minute organisms are doubly curious from their power of astonishing reproduction and the strange electric fire they display. Minute as these microscopic creatures are, every motion and flash is the result of volition, and not a mere chemic or mechanic phosphorescence. The Photocaris lights a flashing cirrus, on being irritated, in brilliant kindling sparks, increasing in intensity until the whole organism is illuminated. The living fire washes over its back, and pencils in greenish-yellow light its microscopic outline. Nor do these little creatures lack a beauty of their own. Their minute shields of pure translucent silex are elaborately wrought in microscopic symbols of mimic heraldry. They are the chivalry of the deep, the tiny knights with lance and cuirass, and oval bossy shield carved in quaint conceits and ornamental fashion. Nor must we despise them when we reflect upon their power of accretion. The Gallionellae, invisible to the naked eye, can, of their heraldic shields and flinty armor, make two cubic feet of Bilin polishing slate in four days. By straining sea-water, a web of greenish cloth of gold, illuminated by their play of self-generated electric light, has been collected. Humboldt and Ehrenberg speak of their voracity, their power of discharging electricity at will, and their sporting about, exhibiting an intelligent enjoyment of the life God has given to them. Man and his works perish, but the monuments of the infusoriae are the flinty ribs of the sea, the giant bones of huge continents, heaped into mountain-ranges over which the granite and porphyry have set their stony seal for ever. Man thrives in his little zone: the populous infusoriae crowd every nook of earth from the remote poles to the burning equatorial belt.

As the coral, in its soft, milky chalk, gives a name to tropical seas, so also it is a question to my simplicity if the Yellow Sea, Black Sea and White Sea do not owe their color and name, in part at least, to microscopic infusoriae. One of these, the Yellow Sea, is very similar in many characteristics to our beautiful southern gulf, and there is connected with it an incident or two illustrative of submarine adventure which is the partial purpose of this desultory sketch.

About the time our American was investing in Pharaoh's golden chariot-wheels an East Indiaman was trading its way from the English docks, eighteen weary weeks' sail by seamen's law, and more tedious by delays. They exchanged for bullion on the Gold Coast; for bullion and bad Cape brandy at Good Hope to sell to the Mohammedans, who are forbidden to drink it. At Bombay and Calcutta they exchanged bullion and brandy for opium to sell to the Chinese, who are forbidden to buy or use it. Whether the coolie trade was included in its iniquities or not, I cannot say. Very possibly that was the return cargo. From Ceylon they proceed to Siam, and thence to Hong-Kong, where they drop anchor in the offing, and by a special custom the cargo is sold and paid for in sycee silver before disfreighting, and the bullion is in the safe of the huge smuggler, although the opium has not yet been removed. The Chinese restrictive laws are very severe; but when we note that ninety thousand gallons of confiscated whisky were seized in godly Massachusetts in one year, we can infer the difficulties in the Maine law of the Celestials. The custom is for a hong, a smuggler in a Chinese junk, to draw up beside the English contrabandist and transfer the cargo in the outer harbor.

It is afternoon, and the great slumbering ocean breathes, but not with the quick, palpitating tide of the Atlantic. The smuggler sits on the oleaginous sea, tinged to ochreous yellow, waiting for evening and the confederate junk. The tropic twilight comes on swift red-golden wings that fan the vivid stars to brightness, and the rising tide breaks the surface into wrinkles of phosphorescent fire. High over head is the wide, unbroken canopy of the Pacific sky, and the gush of a larger moon than ours fills all the sphere with splendor as the huge ship stirs lazily in its Narcissus poise over its own reflection. There is a reddish glow in the western horizon over Hong-Kong, a fainter glimmer west by south over Macao, and farther west and north the reflected glories of the sacred city of Canton. The three make a semicircular crescent, like a great floating moon, on the horizon. A coral islet juts out between the cities under which the huge smuggler affects to play "I spy"—only affects, for she does not care for the authorities she bribes nor the laws she despises.

But the wind draws up the curtain of cloud by strands of rainy cordage, and men aloft are loosing the reefed topsail, bracing the after-yards and setting them for a run in on the larboard tack. They handle gaskets, bunt-lines, leech-lines, fix her best bib and spencer, like a country girl for a run up to town. Men are swarming about the yards and rigging. That is not all: Lascars, stevedores, supercargoes, the hong merchants, agents, are all busy breaking bulk. The India opium is covered with petals of the plant and stowed in chests lined with hides and covered with gunny; and these cases are locked in by stays, spars and bulkheads to prevent jamming. Helter-skelter and confusion alow and aloft, on the yards, rigging, deck, between decks and under hatches. The captain and purser are gloating over the sycee silver, for the Chinese government is as jealous of its exportation as of the importation of opium; and the sky and the sea are dark and angry. In a slovenly way the sails are trimmed, and she edges clumsily around the point with the bullion and opium, the full freight and gains of a year's voyaging and trading. Half an hour or an hour hence she will be free, and the junk dropping down to sea with the drugs in her. All at once a shriek or yell of "Hard aport!" and a great iron outward-bound steamer from Hong-Kong bursts into the unwieldy Chinaman, goes crunching through her like ripping pasteboard; tears her open; snarls through steamy nostrils and cindery fiery mouth, and growls over her wreck. And the sodden, stupefied merchantman, as if drunk with opium, goes yelling and staggering with her sleepy drugs to the bottom, and stays there, sycee silver and all.

From pricking his way across the Tartar plains, and probing in the Dead Sea and eating its fruits, just to know that living crustaceae could be found in one and pulpy flesh in the other, our Launfal, looking for the Sangreal in chariot-wheels, wound his devious way to the Flowery Kingdom, having tried a stroke or two at pearl-diving, and given some valuable hints, that were wasted, in Red Sea fishing and the Suez Canal. The sleepy Celestial seasons had gone flowering their way to paradise, and the opium-smuggler and her sycee silver lay safe and swallowed in ribs and jowl of quicksand. Our American proposed to have it up by the locks. Two things said Nay—the coral insect, which was using it in its architectural designs, and the hungry quicksand. Worst of all, the American could not find it. They hid the bulky vessel in hills of sand, and after two months' labor in submarine armor the speculator was beaten. "Get a coolie," said a resident China merchant, and he did.

Every seaport city of China is a twin. It is two cities—one inland, narrow-streeted, paved with rubble stones; the other at sea, floating on bamboo reeds. The amphibious inmates of the marine town never go ashore, but are a species of otter or seal. Besides, they are first-class thieves, as well as cowardly, cruel pirates and wreckers. They will steal the sheathing from a copper-bottomed vessel in broad daylight, and at night a guard-boat is necessary for protection. They will defy a sentry on shipboard—steal his ship from under him while he is wondering what he is set to guard. They are all expert divers, as familiar with the sea-bottom as with their own ugly little hovels. Such a native was found, and for a dollar spotted the submerged vessel in her matrix of sand and coral.

"Now set a guard-boat," said the Englishman, "or he will steal the line, to get another dollar for finding the smuggler again."

But the want of experts defeated the plan, after all. It was necessary to use a petard to lay bare the treasure, and no one had the necessary skill. When the American consented to lost time and defeat the cyclone threw another spoil in his way. The East like the West Indies is the brooding-place of storms, which in gyratory coils, like a lasso thrown wide and large, go twisting north by west. It caught a French frigate in the loop, and flung her poor bones on the coral reefs, and the hungry sand absorbed her. It is a peculiarity of those seas. But she was found, and the petard, like a huge axe wielded by a giant's arms, cut into her treasure-house and rescued it. The American's expenses for a journey round the world were paid.

I have heard a sufficiently incredible story of a man submerged in a Chinese junk and under water twelve hours, yet taken out alive. A Chinese junk is the nightmare of marine architecture. It is owned in partnership by a company, but there is this difference from an ordinary charter-party. Each man owns his share or allotment of the vessel, and it is divided off into actual compartments or boxes made water-proof; and each one of these pigeon-holes the hong or merchant owns and stocks to suit himself. All open out upon the upper deck, and are battened down—sometimes with a glass skylight if used as a chamber. The structure in junk form is the thing's proper registry, since any departure from the ancient model would subject her to heavy taxation as an alien vessel. [2] It is a very effectual mode of preventing any improvement in shipbuilding among the Chinese.

One of these clumsy arks went on the rocks in a typhoon, and was covered over her deck, leaving, however, the projecting skylight on or near a level with the surface. The hong was in this cuddy-hole, frantic between personal loss and personal peril. Suddenly there was a jar and a crash, and the sea beat over her. Fortunately, the skylight was closed water-tight, but, unfortunately, some of the spars and rigging blocked up the exit, even if he had dared the venture. The bolts of the sea barred him in.

But Chinese wreckers and Chinese thieves are on the alert. Wattai, or some such queer piratical Celestial with devilish propensities, went for the spoil, settling the salvage by arithmetic of his own. The wreck was removed from the skylight, and under the water, in that dense chamber, stagnant with mephitic air, the bruised, stupefied hong was found.

As is apparent from a previous example, the tendency of the sea-sand to absorb and conceal a sunken vessel is one of those difficulties that beset the explorer. But for that the recovery of treasure would be more frequent, the profession or business more lucrative. The number of vessels sunk annually, we learn from Lloyd's statistics, is one hundred thousand tons to the English commercial marine; and out of 551 vessels lost to the royal navy, 391 were sunk. Sir Charles Lyell estimates that there might be collected in the sea more evidences of man's art and industry than exist at any one time on the surface of the earth. But while the sea preserves, it hides. An example of the kind occurred in the wreck of the Golden Gate, a California steamer heavy with bullion. It occurred during the war, and the only expert diver within reach was an expatriated rebel. He had been a man of fortune, but, venturing too rashly in the Confederacy, he lost by confiscation and perhaps persecution. However, he was the man for the insurance companies, and a treaty was concluded, allowing him sixty per cent. salvage.

The vessel had gone down in tide water. The persistent sea had rocked and rocked it, and washed the tenacious quicksands about it, and finally concealed it. The search for it was long and tedious, and once given up or nearly given up. But as the disappointed diver was preparing to ascend his foot touched something firm, which proved to be a part of the wooden frame of the ship.

But even when found the difficulties had only begun. The tenacious, elastic sand defied all tools or leverage: no petard could blast so fickle and treacherous a substance. Wit and ingenuity can devise where ordinary art or engineering has failed. The diver took a lesson from the neighboring gold-miner, whose hydrostatic pump chisels away the mountain-side to lay bare the mother quartz. Fitted with such an engine, he swept the silted sand from the deck of the prize, and dug it out of the elastic matrix after the fashion of Macduff's birth.

By a great misfortune, incipient jealousies and the eager spirit of covetousness now showed themselves. It was at first whispered, and then asseverated, that if the bullion was once recovered the rebel might whistle for his sixty per cent. salvage. It was a bitter, bad time—a time of mistrust and suspicion—and the plan of defrauding the diver was only too feasible. He would be involved in a suit with a wealthy company at a time when prejudice, if not the form of law, regarded him as having forfeited a citizen's right. It placed him in a difficult position—more difficult because he could get no safe assurance, and was evidently suspected and watched. The diver concluded that his only way to secure his sixty per cent. salvage was to take it.

So it was that, with something of the feelings of the resurrectionists, a bold, dark party went to rob the charnel-house of the sea, to spoil it of its golden bones and wedgy ingots of silver. They chose a mirky night, when the thick air seemed too clotted and moist to break into hurly-burly of storm, and yet too heavy and dank to throw off the black envelope of fog and cloud. The black, oleaginous water seemed to slope from the muffled oar in a gluey, shining wave, and the heavy ripple at the bow of their boat parted in a long, adhesive roll, sloping away, but not breaking into froth or glisten of electric fire. The air and the sea seemed brooding in a heavy, hopeless misery, and the strange sense of plundering, not the living, but the dead, as if the sunken vessel was a huge coffin, was upon them. With that cautious sense of superstitious dread choking their muttered whispers, they reached the spot and prepared to descend. The task of sinking through that pitchy consistence, into the intricacy of that black, coffin-like hold, among the drowned corpses, to do a deed of doubtful right, must have intensified the horror of great darkness and that sublimity of silence that in the under-sea peoples the void shadows with horrible existences and fills the concave with voices. But it was done; and with trembling eagerness the weighty ingots, the unalloyed bars, were safely shipped, loading down the boat. Then louder and louder came the dash of oars. For a few moments they felt the way with muffled stroke into the shrouding shadows. But practiced ears caught the softened roll in the rollocks, and keen eyes marked the shadowy boat in the deepening gloom. It must be the skilled oar and adroit steering that saves them now, but not far away lie the long shadows of the shelving coast and its black-bearded forest. The swing of the oars became bold, open and exciting, and angry challenges passed. But the burden of the heavy gold fought against them, like the giant's harp calling Master! Master! on the shoulders of flying Jack of the Bean-stalk. The light, trim craft of the pursuers edged upon them, and the shadow of an angry struggle in the pitchy, reeking night gloomed over them. "No, no," said the leader: "no bloodshed for the cursed stuff! Here, give me a lift;" and with a heave and plunge the massy rouleaux splashed into the water, and the boat rose lighter with an easier conscience. The sea shut close-fisted over its own, while the pursuing boat paused and eddied about it, as if held to the treasure by invisible, impalpable strands. The pursuit was abandoned, and the betrayed or treacherous diver escaped. But busy rumor reports that he returned at leisure to the spot, and that the bullion of the Golden Gate went to replenish the forfeited fortune of the bold ex-rebel. Believe as you like, good reader.

The sea-sand, in its industrious zeal in covering up memorials of man's art and industry, is often curiously assisted by the zoophytes and vegetation of the ocean, as well as guarded in its labor by abnormal monsters of piscine creation. An example of this occurred in an amusing venture after Lafitte's gold. While the Gulf coast of Western Louisiana is fortified, in its immature terre tremblante, by the coral reefs and islets, it has the appearance of having been torn into ragged edges by the hydrostatic pressure of the Gulf Stream. On one of these little islets or keys, hard by Caillon Bay, the rumor went that the buccaneer had sunk a Spanish galleon laden with pieces of eight and ingots of despoiled Mexico. The people thereabout are a simple, credulous race of Spanish Creoles, speaking no English, keeping the saints' days, and watching the salt-pans of the more energetic but scarcely more thrifty Americans with curious wonder. They chanced in their broken tongue to commit the story of the treasure to a diver of an equally simple faith, who set about putting it to more practical use than to gild an hour with an old legend. They told how the spook of the Spanish captain haunted the wreck, and that the gold was guarded by a dragon in the shape of a monstrous horned and mottled frog, or some other devil of the sea, to which the diver did seriously incline, but not to make him give up the undertaking. He prudently, however, consulted with an old Indian witch, and so received the devil's good word, and piously got a bottle of holy water from the priest, and thus was well fenced in above and below.

But his coadjutors were inexperienced, and perhaps his own courage was of that saccharine character that gets oozy and slushy in moist perils. When descending with his leaded boots on the dark green outline of sea mosses that in the clear Gulf invested the vessel in a verdurous coat, by some mistake he was let down with a slip, and went hurtling through the rotten planks, losing his holy water and sending his witch's wand—well, to its original owner. He crushed through, and the infinite dust of infusoriae and diatomaceae choked his vision. The Teredo navalis, whose labors are so destructive in southern seas, had perforated the old hulk, and converted the vessel into a spongy mass of wood, clay and lime. Innumerable algae and curious fungi of the sea, hydroids, delicate-frost formed emerald plumuluria and campanuluna, bryozoa, mollusks, barnacles and varieties of coral had used it as a builder's quarry and granary. As the geologist finds atom by atom of an organism converted into a stony counterfeit, these busy existences had preserved the vessel's shape, but converted the woody fibre to their own uses. He could see nothing at first but a mixture of green and ochreous dust, through which tiny electric fires went quivering and shaking. In the confusion he lost the signal line, and had no way of making his condition known. Plunging about as the sea dust began to settle, and already more intent on finding the life-line and getting out of that than of securing Lafitte's gold, he observed some spectators not pleasant to look upon. A lobster or a crab is much pleasanter upon the table than in the sea, and there were other things he knew, and some he believed, might not take his hasty visit pleasantly. There was the horseshoe-fish with ugly strings hanging from his base, disagreeable arachnides, strange star fish and their parasites, and, curiously, a large wolfish fish that had built a nest and was watching it and him—watching him with no agreeable or timid expression in its angry eyes. He was just expecting Victor Hugo's devil fish to complete his horror when a sudden, sharp, bone-breaking shock struck him from an electrical eel or marine torpedo. This was a real and sensible danger, and as he struggled to ascend the hulk to the rotten half-deck, the spongy substance gave way, the treacherous quicksand, with its smooth, tenacious throat-clutch, slid down and caught him. The danger was real and imminent, when his companions above, observing the slide, drew him up. And that, I believe, was the first and last attempt to levv on Lafitte's gold.

But the experience of Pharaoh and the danger of our rambling wrecker are not the only instances of the wall of waters or the destruction it causes. Nine days after a storm in the Gulf, a traveler, finding his way from the salt-pans of Western Louisiana, took a little fishing-craft. There was that fresh purity in the air and the sea which follows the bursting of the elements. The numerous "bays" and keys that indent the shore looked fresher and brighter, and there was that repentant beauty in Nature which aims to soothe us into forgetfulness of its recent angry passions. The white-winged sea-birds flew about, and tall water-fowl stood silently over their shadows like a picture above and below. The water sparkled with salt freshness, and the roving winds sat in the shoulder of the sail, resting and riding to port.

The little bark slipped along the shores and shallows, and in and out by key and inlet, seeing its shadow on the pure white sand that seemed so near its keel. The last vestige of the storm was gone, and the little Gulf-world seemed fresher and gladder for it. The tropical green grasses and water-plants hung their long, linear, hairlike sheaths in graceful curves, and patches of willow-palm and palmetto, in many an intricate curve and involution, made a labyrinth of verdure. The wild loveliness of the numerous slips and channels, where never a boat seemed to have sailed since the Indian's water-logged canoe was tossed on the shadowy banks, was enhanced by the vision of distant ships, their sails even with the water, or broken by the white buildings of a sleepy plantation in its bower of fig and olive and tall moss-clustered pines.

Suddenly the traveler fancied he heard a cry, but the fishermen said No—it was the scream of water-fowl or the shrill call of an eagle far above dropping down from the blue zenith; and they sailed on. Again he heard the distant cry, and was told of the panther in the bush and wild birds that drummed and called with almost human intonation; and they sailed on again. But again the mysterious, troubled cry arose from the labyrinth of green, and the traveler entreated them to go in quest of it. The fishers had their freight for the market—-delay would deteriorate its value; but the anxious traveler bade them put about and he would bear the loss.

It was well they did. There, in the dense coverts of the sea-swamps, amid the brackish water-growths and grasses, they found a man and woman, ragged, torn, starved. For nine days they had had no food but the soft pith of the palmetto, coarse mussels or scant poison-berries, their bed the damp morass, and their drink the brackish water; and they told the wild and terrible story of Last Island.

Last Island was the Saratoga and Long Branch of the South, the southern-most watering-place in the Gulf. Situated on a fertile coral island enriched by innumerable flocks of wild-fowl, art had brought its wealth of fruit and flower to perfection. The cocoanut-palm, date-palm and orange orchards contrasted their rich foliage in the sunshine with the pineapple, banana and the rich soft turf of the mesquit-grass. The air was fragrant with magnolia and orange bloom, the gardens glittering with the burning beauty of tropical flower, jessamine thickets and voluptuous grape arbors, the golden wine-like sun pouring an intoxicating balm over it; graceful white cottages festooned with vines, with curving chalet or Chinese roofs colored red; pinnacled arbors and shadowy retreats of espaliers pretty as a coral grove; and a fair shining hotel in the midst, with arcades and porches and galleries—the very dream of ease and luxury, as delicate and trim as if made of cut paper in many forms of prettiness. Here was the nabob's retreat; in this balmy garden of delight all that luxury, art and voluptuous desire could hint or hope for was collected; and nothing harsh or poor or rugged jarred the fullness of its luxurious ease.

Ten nights before its fragrant atmosphere was broken into beautiful ripples by the clang and harmony of dancing music. It was the night of the "hop." The hotel was crowded. Yachts and pleasure-vessels pretty as the petals of a flower tossed on the water, or as graceful shells banked the shores; and the steamer at twilight came breathing short, excited breaths with the last relay, for it was the height of the summer season. In their light, airy dresses, as the music swam and sung, bright-eyed girls floated in graceful waltzes down the voluptuous waves of sound, and the gleam of light and color was like a butterflies' ball. The queenly, luscious night sank deeper, and lovers strolled in lamp-lighted arcades, and dreamed and hoped of life like that, the fairy existence of love and peace; and so till, tired of play, sleep and rest came in the small hours.

Hush! All at once came the storm, not, as in northern latitudes, with premonitory murmur and fretting, lashing itself by slow degrees into white heat and rain, but the storm of the tropics, carrying the sea on its broad, angry shoulders, till, reaching the verdurous, love-clustered little isle, it flung the bulk of waters with all its huge, brawny force right upon the cut-paper prettinesses, and broke them into sand and splinters. Of all those pretty children with blue and with opalescent eyes, arrayed like flowers of the field; of all those lovers dreaming of love in summer dalliance, and of cottages among figs and olives; of all the vigorous manhood and ripe womanhood, with all the skill and courage of successful life in them,—not a tithe was saved. The ghastly maw of the waters covered them and swallowed them. A few sprang, among crashing timbers, on a floor laden with impetuous water—the many perhaps never waked at all, or woke to but one short prayer. The few who were saved hardly knew how they were saved—the many who died never knew how they were slain or drowned.

It has twice been my fortune in life to see such a storm, and to know its sudden destruction: once, to see a low, broad, shelving farm-house disappear to the ground timbers before my eyes, as if its substance had vanished into air, while great globes of electric fire burst down and sunk into the ground; once, to see a pine forest of centuries' growth cut down as grass by the mower's scythe. I do not think it possible to see a third and survive, and I do not wish my soul to be whirled away in the vortex of such a storm.

At noon or later, after the ruin of Last Island, a gentleman of a name renowned in South-western story found himself clinging to a bush in the wild waters, lashed by the long whips of branches, half dead with fatigue and fear. For a time the hurly-burly blinded and hid everything, and the long roll rocked and tore at him in desperate endeavor to wrench loose his bleeding fingers. The impulse of the wind and storm at such a time is as of a solid body, and there is a look of solidity in the very appearance of the magnificent force. But as it abated he thought he heard a faint cry, and looking around he saw a poor girl in the ribbons of her night-dress clinging to a branch, and slipping from her feeble hold. Tired as he was, and wild and dangerous as the attempt might be, he did not dare to leave her to perish. Choosing his time in a lull, he struck out to the bush, and reached it just as her ebbing strength gave way. He took her in his sturdy arms, and, clinging with tooth and nail, stayed them both to their strange anchorage. Faint, half conscious, disrobed as she was, in the sweet, delicate features, the curve of the lip, and the raven tresses clothed in seaweed, he recognized the Creole belle of last night's hop. He cheered and encouraged her, pointing out that the storm was abating, had abated. It could not be long until search-boats came, and while he had strength to live she should share it. It proved true. Generous and hardy fishers and ships had come at once to the scene of disaster, and were busy picking up the few spared by wind and wave. They found the two clinging together and to that slight bush, and took them off, wrapping them in ready, rough fishermen's coats. The reader can see the end of that story. A meeting so appointed had its predestined end in a love-match. So we leave it and them: the rest of their lives belongs to them, not to us.

The pair found by our fishing-smack were a wealthy planter and his wife. For nine days of starvation and danger they had clung together. When I think of the husband's manly care in thus abiding by the wife, I find it hard to reconcile it with the fact that he only valued his life and hers at a few dollars—not enough to compensate the traveler for the loss incurred as demurrage to the fishermen.

Now Last Island is but a low sandy reef, on which a few straggling fruit trees try to keep the remembrance of its bygone beauty. It is as bare and desolate as the bones of those who filled its halls in the cataclysm of that dreadful night—bones which now waste to whiteness on sterile shores or are wrought into coral in the under-sea.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

[Footnote 1: The difficulty, I am aware, in venturing on a description is, that it will appear rather a fever of fancy than an accurate chromoscope. I can only point to the fact that the revelation of the intense beauty of the sea has in recent years fallen rather to the naturalist than the poet, the accurate and scientific prose of the former surpassing the idealization of the latter.]

[Footnote 2: By recent provision the Chinese are allowed to buy foreign vessels.]



POSEY'S NUGGET.

When the California "gold fever" broke out in the spring of 1849, Doctor Hanchett was living at Clarksville in Southern Indiana. Doctor Hanchett, it should be stated, had received his professional title not by the favor of any medical college or other learned institution, but through the simpler and less formal method that obtains among the free and generous people amongst whom his lines were cast. The process may be explained in a few words. In the fall of 1846 a recruiting station was established at Vicksburg to enlist volunteers for the war with Mexico, and Hanchett, at that time a resident of Vicksburg, and laboring in a profession—the saltatorial, to wit—a shade less illustrious than that to which he was so soon to attain, was the first man in the city to enlist. This momentous circumstance procured for him not only the prompt recognition of a patriotic press, which blazoned his name abroad with so many eccentricities of spelling that he came near losing his identity, but also gave him a claim in courtesy to such a position in the organization of his company, within the grasp of the mere high private, as he might select. After due deliberation he chose that of company commissary—an office unknown, I think, to the United States Army Regulations, but none the less familiar to our volunteer service. To this post he was promptly appointed by his captain; and, thus placed in the line of promotion, he rose rapidly till he attained the rank of hospital steward. The thing was done. Hanchett was Doctor Hanchett from that day, and the title was very much the larger part of the man ever after. How he had lived for forty years or more without it is still a mystery.

When the war was over, Doctor Hanchett stranded upon the northern bank of the Ohio, in the State of Indiana. As a returning brave he was, naturally, quite warmly received. As a veteran not unwilling to recount his adventures by flood and field, he speedily became famous as the hero of many deeds of valor and of blood. He had been assistant surgeon of his regiment, it appeared, but nevertheless had fought in the ranks in every important engagement of the war from Monterey to Churubusco, and the number of men who had fallen by his own hand from first to last he could not undertake to estimate. Though traces of a somewhat lively imagination might be detected in most of the doctor's stories, there is really no good reason to doubt that he spoke the simple truth when he averred that with his red right hand he had mowed down men like grass, for he actually retained the position of hospital steward throughout the whole term of his service.

Finding himself after the lapse of a few weeks not without honor in this Indiana town, he struck out suddenly one day a brilliant idea: he would devote his remaining years to the practice of the profession into which Fortune had so kindly inducted him. He hired a house, hung out his banner, and wrote to his wife and daughter, who had remained at Vicksburg, to come on immediately to his new home, as his fortune was now made.

Hanchett had married, at an early stage in his original career, the only daughter of a bankrupt Vicksburg storekeeper. This young woman, who had doubtless found ample opportunity for the practice of domestic economy in the paternal home, soon proved herself to be a most excellent housekeeper on her own account. She was a jewel indeed to her improvident husband, who, finding that she made shift by one means or another to keep the family larder supplied, whether he kept her purse supplied or not, dismissed a great care from his mind at once and for ever, and thenceforth to the end of his days never exerted himself beyond his natural bent. As the daughter, Dora Hanchett, grew to womanhood, she divided her mother's burden with her, and ultimately, as the mother's health failed, relieved her of it almost entirely.

The family once reunited and domiciled in their new home, it soon became evident to the most casual observer that Dora exercised the functions of commander-in-chief of that force, and that the doctor, notwithstanding his brilliant record in the field, had been incontinently reduced to the ranks, and subjected to a rather rigid discipline. Let it not be inferred, however, that Dora ruled with a high hand or with a rod of iron. Far from it. She was the quietest and meekest of tyrants, controlling not by conscious will or effort, but by divine commission, as many a woman does.

Not only was Dora the head of the household in the sense of directing its internal affairs, but she likewise soon proved herself to be its mainstay as bread-winner. The doctor under her hands became a dignified and not unornamental figure-head to the concern, in whom she took a certain filial pride. His banner was still allowed to hang upon the outer wall, and, as some slight justification of the legend borne upon it, the semblance of an office was maintained for him, where he spent many solitary and irksome hours daily in the semblance of professional study and work. But his income did not amount even to a semblance, and upon Dora, therefore, devolved the task of maintaining the cuisine as well as the character of the establishment. She had been accustomed to this duty indeed ever since, upon becoming a schoolteacher at the age of sixteen, she had proved her capacity to perform it. She early found her place in the public schools of Clarksville, and so the pot was soon boiling merrily, and the demands of the doctor's magnificent appetite were duly honored at sight.

Thus, Doctor Hanchett was enabled to live a life of elegant leisure, devoid of care and fruitful of enjoyment to a man of his temperament, for some fourteen months. Then he was suddenly smitten with the "gold fever," and went raging through the town, seeking whom he might infect. It was one of the curiosities of this singular epidemic that it claimed not only those youthful and adventurous spirits who were by common consent held to be its legitimate victims, but carried off also old and infirm men, chronic invalids, and, stranger still, such shiftless, incompetent and altogether worthless cumberers of the ground as this Doctor Hanchett; thus proving itself to be, like most other contagions, a not entirely unmixed evil.

Not wholly through the efforts of Doctor Hanchett, it is safe to say, but in due process of time and events, a company was mustered in Clarksville to go overland to California, as so many other companies were mustered in hundreds of other towns all over the country in that memorable spring of '49. This company, composed principally of men from the surrounding country, and containing only two or three residents of the village proper, regarded itself as peculiarly fortunate in being able to count among its members a gentleman like Doctor Hanchett, who, besides being a physician, was an old campaigner, and thus likely to prove doubly desirable as a comrade in an expedition like that upon which they were embarked.

It being definitely settled that the doctor was to march with his company upon a certain day not far distant, it devolved upon his chancellor of the exchequer to provide the sinews of war. Whether Dora found this duty an agreeable one or not, she performed it promptly and cheerfully. The little hoard that by the sharpest economy the frugal girl had contrived to save from her earnings was placed in the doctor's hands without reserve, to be appropriated, first to the purchase of an outfit, and next to the defrayment of the general expenses of the campaign.

Proverbially careful and judicious in the expenditure of money, as may be supposed, in the purchase of his supplies on this occasion Doctor Hanchett quite outshone himself. Besides the indispensable pans and shovels and picks with which every man provided himself, Doctor Hanchett laid in an assortment of miscellaneous drugs and surgical instruments, that added a new lustre to his distinction in the eyes of his comrades. But it was in the compilation of his wardrobe and his deadly weapons that he displayed an individuality of taste altogether unique. It being now the month of May, and the journey across the Plains being expected to occupy about three months, the doctor, who was a small man, bought first a great—uncommonly great—coat, that fitted him about as snugly as a sentry-box might have done; secondly, a pair of cavalry boots, the tops of which towered almost to his eyebrows; and thirdly, a silk hat of the very finest and very tallest description to be found in the market. Then he purchased a pair of large Colt's revolvers, handsomely mounted in silver, and had his name engraved on the plate in bold letters—"ELIAS HANCHETT, M.D.;" and his armory was completed by the addition of numerous and various knives of vast length and breadth of blade, into the hasp of each of which was let a neat silver plate, upon which was engraved his name—"ELIAS HANCHETT, M.D." Thus clad and thus arsenaled, he bore down upon Dora with much elation as she was returning home from her school, and proudly challenged her admiration. Of course the loving girl responded heartily, notwithstanding her thrifty and methodical soul was racked to see such few of her hardly-earned coins as remained unexpended falling to the ground and rolling away in all directions as the doctor turned pocket after pocket inside out in search of yet another and another knife to surprise her withal.

At last the company got off, going by river to Council Bluffs, and thence striking out upon the almost interminable trail, that, however surely it might lead to fortune, was far from being a royal road thereto. It was two months later when a member of the party, compelled by ill-health to abandon the tedious journey and return home, brought to Clarksville the first intelligence of the achievements of Doctor Hanchett in the capacity of a physician and surgeon in actual practice. These achievements cannot be recorded here, but a single incident may be mentioned as indicating the estimation in which the doctor's skill speedily came to be held by his companions. Before the expedition had been three weeks upon the march his surviving comrades, taking alarm at the rapidly augmenting number of lonely graves with which they were dotting the dreary trail, hastily formed a conspiracy to despoil him of his enginery of death. Under the silent stars, what time the doctor was sleeping the deep sleep of the overworked practitioner, his medicine-case and his miscellaneous assortment of cutlery were quietly spirited away, and were never seen again. The doctor proclaimed his loss upon waking in the morning, and felt it keenly. He declared, however, that he deplored the casualty chiefly in the interest of his companions, who were thus deprived, at one fell blow, of his further services; and he cursed very heartily, in the same interest, the "dastardly red-skins," whom he assumed to be guilty of the theft.

Dora and her mother waited long and anxiously for a letter from the doctor's own hand, and after many months it came. It was dated from "the Heart of the Gold Region," and, after asking them to join him in due ascriptions of thanks to the Almighty Powers for his deliverance from many perils and his safe arrival in the promised land, and after passing lightly over the invaluable services he had been able to render to his companions in his professional capacity—it was not for a modest man to dwell upon these—the doctor proceeded to state frankly that his success in the gold fields had far exceeded his most sanguine hopes; that, indeed, he might even then call himself an opulent man, inasmuch as nothing but the necessary papers were wanting to confirm him in the possession of a half interest in the Big Grizzly Claim—a claim that promised an enormously rich yield as soon as arrangements could be perfected for developing it. He advised his daughter to give up her school at once, and to begin to prepare herself for that happy change in her circumstances which was now so near at hand; and he closed by requesting her to send him by return of mail fifty dollars, and more if she could possibly spare more, as he urgently required a little money for "present needs."

Is it necessary to say how this clear-headed and conscientious girl acted upon reading this transparent balderdash? She knew, as well as you and I know, that the whole thing was a clumsy game of her worthy sire to deplete once more the little hoard that had been slowly growing during his absence. She knew that her mother, who had worn her life out trying to support an ornamental husband, was fast failing in health, and might very soon require such attendance as nothing but money could procure. And of course she went directly to the bank, drew out her entire deposit, and sped it on its way to Elias Hanchett, M.D., before the sun went down.

It was nearly a year after the arrival of his first letter when another epistle was received from the absent doctor. Bad news this time—the worst of bad news. He had been stricken down by a terrible malady at a most critical moment in his affairs, and the consequence was that his interests had suffered irretrievably. He might call himself, in short, a ruined man. He felt that his distress of mind, together with the physical anguish of his disease, was more than he could bear up against for many hours longer. It was hard for an old man to die thus among strangers, far from his own hearthstone and the gentle influences that clustered round it. But he should be consoled in his last hour by the reflection that he had always maintained his family liberally, and had tried to be a kind and indulgent husband and father; and he hoped that his daughter, thus left alone in the world without any earthly protector, would not wholly despair, but would strive for his sake to bear up against adversity, and prove herself worthy of the father who had lost his life in trying to serve her in his old age. And so farewell! His eyes were now about to close for the last time upon the scenes of this earth. Signed ELIAS HANCHETT, M.D., with the customary flourish beneath the name, as bravely executed as if the writer might have twenty years of life ahead of him yet. But stay! P.S. Would not his dear daughter, for whom he had sacrificed so much, grant him one last little favor? He had not means enough left out of the sad wreck of his fortune to procure him decent burial. Would she not send him a small sum for that purpose? She might direct it to his own address, for if he were gone it would be received by a friend, who would apply it faithfully according to the directions he should leave. "And now again farewell! And may we meet above!" Signed ELIAS HANCHETT, M.D. Flourish as usual.

I do not believe that Dora Hanchett's honest estimate of this letter was very far different from our own. I am persuaded that she was mentally incapable of being seriously deceived by it. But the heart of woman is the mystery of the universe. In the face of her honest judgment, in the truth of that clear common sense that constituted the strongest trait in her character, this absurd girl went about bemoaning in dead earnest and in the bitterest grief the death of her father. This lasted a week; by which time she had succeeded in convincing her mother, at least, that the affliction was a real one; and that good lady, being finally, as she believed, released from her responsibility, and having no occasion to live longer, quietly and peacefully passed away. And Dora, by the light of this actual sorrow, came after a while to acknowledge to herself that she had been breaking her heart over a fictitious one.

Of course the money had gone on before this time, and she was far from wishing to recall it now. If her father was alive, he was welcome to it, she said, for he could not possibly put it to a worse use than that to which it had been dedicated.

A girl as good as Dora could not be left friendless, whatever domestic affliction she might suffer; and so with all her trouble she had no opportunity to become absorbed in her sorrow. It would have pained her unspeakably if she had been aware that her friends generally, however, so far from inclining to grieve with her grief at the possibility of her father's death, were quite unanimous in the view that such a dispensation would be "the best thing for Dory that ever turned up." For her part, she could not, after all, rid her mind of the apprehension that her father might possibly have been in as serious extremity as his letter represented. And if so, and she neglected to do her utmost to succor him in his need, what peace could she ever find in this world again? In this way she dwelt upon the subject, until at last she convinced herself that her whole duty lay in nothing less than an immediate effort to go to him. If, fortunately, she should find him alive and well, she would gladly share his fortune, however hard it might be, and would never leave him so long as he lived. But if, as she feared, he should prove to be indeed sick and near his end in that wild region, where, she asked, should his daughter be but at his side?

This is the ridiculous way in which such headstrong creatures as this Dora Hanchett are accustomed to meet you when you seek to point out to them the unreasonableness of a line of conduct on which they have set their hearts.

Deaf to all arguments, therefore, Dora shut up her house and set about making preparations for her journey. In the adjoining county, as she had learned, a company of gold-hunters had been organized, and was then on the point of starting for the Sacramento Valley, in which was situated the little town from which her father had last written. Of this company of sixty men she knew but one, and he was a mere boy in years, the youngest of the party. This was Hiram Bridge, familiarly termed Posey in honor of his native county, who four years before had been one of Dora's first pupils in her Clarksville school. She was little more than a girl herself at that time, and Hiram was her biggest boy; and her recollection now of the bond of good-fellowship that soon grew up between herself and the shy, overgrown but not overbright lad relieved her of any hesitation she might otherwise have felt in applying to him to obtain permission for her to accompany his party to its destination.

"Yes, you can go, Miss Hanchett," Posey quietly replied to her appeal.

"But will the rest of the men be willing?" she suggested.

"Doesn't signify," said Posey.

She did prevail on him, however, as a matter of form, to mention the subject to his comrades; but as he never took the trouble to report to her what action, if any, they took in the matter, she started at last, relying altogether on his single friendship for protection. That was no mean reliance, though, as she soon began to realize. He was an immense fellow, six feet two in height, and broad in proportion; and he soon proved to Dora that, however readily he had undertaken her safe conduct, he did not lightly esteem that charge, but was determined to aid and befriend her in every way possible. Thus at the outset she found herself relieved of much of the embarrassment and annoyance she had believed to be inseparable from such a journey in such companionship. Posey himself she did not find to be companionable in the ordinary sense of that word, notwithstanding his constant kindness. He was of a quiet turn, reserved; of speech, rather forbidding of countenance, and did not wear his excellent heart upon his sleeve. There were few surface indications of the gold that was in him. Dora was not long, however, in finding the auriferous vein; and, to drop metaphor, she soon became conscious of a very warm sentiment of gratitude growing up in her heart toward her uncouth guide, philosopher and friend.

Posey's outfit consisted of a pair of powerful mules and a covered wagon, with the usual mining and cooking utensils, and the provisions necessary for the journey. In the forward part of this wagon, while the expedition was on the march, Dora sat enthroned; and in its dusky recesses she made her couch at night. Not only did the loyal Posey devote himself to her guardianship by day, but he kept watch and ward by night, sitting bolt upright within a couple of yards of his precious charge until the stars grew pale in the dawn. Then, if opportunity offered, he would snatch a surreptitious nap, still disdaining to lie down, however; and it frequently occurred that the earlier risers in the camp would discover Posey sitting on the ground, embracing his nether limbs with his long arms, while his head, with its close-cut, sandy hair, sank slumberous between his towering knees, like the sun going down between two mountain-peaks. To such a length did he carry these romantic vigils that he shortly came to look as gaunt and hollow-eyed as Famine. In addition to which he had to endure no end of raillery from his not too considerate or fastidious companions, who, so far from inclining to harm a hair of Dora's head, were generally wholly indifferent to her presence, and could not enter into Posey's solicitude on her behalf.

Just here, also, Jake Savage, who had spent a year in the mines and was piloting the present expedition, was reminded of a story, which he obligingly related to Posey, apropos.

"You see, Posey," said Jake, "me and Hooker—Hooker was my chum—had been scratchin' and washin' for about seven or eight dollars a day down there to McCracken's Bend, till we got disgusted, and we made up our minds that if we couldn't make more'n that we might as well give up and strike for the States. But just then who should come along but little Bill Skinner, bound all so fast for up the gulch? Bill had been prospectin' around all summer on his own hook, but hadn't struck nothin' yet, and was so much worse off than we was that Hooker and me concluded to stay by a while longer. A day or two afore, we found out, little Bill had run across a Digger somewhere that had told him—the Lord knows how, for I never see a Digger that, could talk English more'n a mule,—but this Digger told little Bill that up the gulch there was rich diggin's. And so Bill was on the rampage to get there. Of course me and Hooker we didn't take no stock in that yarn, and little Bill went off alone.

"A couple of months after that me and Hooker see we'd got to do something pretty quick or starve, and so we made up our minds to prospect a little. We headed up the gulch, but without ever thinkin' of little Bill, and as indications was good, we kept on in the same direction for a couple of days. It was on the third day out, and we'd got about twenty miles from the Bend, and hadn't struck nothin' yet to bet on, when all of a sudden Hooker yells out, 'Holy Moses, Jake! look-a there!' and what do you s'pose we see?

"About as fur as from here to that mule there, leanin' ag'in a tree, sot little Bill Skinner—what was left of him, I mean, for he was as dead as a dornick. And what do you s'pose he was a-settin' on? A nugget of the pure metal worth forty thousand dollars! Yes, sir! We could see in a minute how it was. Bill had found this nugget, and bein' weak for want of grub, of course he couldn't carry it. So he had sot down on it to guard it. And there he sot and sot. He dassent go to sleep for fear somebody'd hook it, and he couldn't leave it to get any grub for the same reason. We could see he'd browsed 'round on the bushes as fur as he could reach, but that couldn't keep him alive long, and so there he'd sot and sot till finally he'd pegged out.

"And that's what's the matter with Posey. I wakes up in the night and sees him a-settin' thar by that wagon, and says I to myself, 'Thar sets Posey on his nugget!' And one of these fine mornin's we'll find nothin' but Posey's bones a-settin' there, and his buttons and such like."

About this time, as they were now nearing the region where danger from Indian raids was apprehended, Savage's company and another party hailing from Illinois joined forces for mutual protection, and all proceeded thenceforward under Savage's direction. Accompanying this Illinois party was a woman going out to the diggings to join her husband, who was prospering, and had sent for her to come on. The two women thereafter keeping constantly together, Posey felt his responsibility so far lightened that he occasionally indulged himself in a "square" night's sleep, while Dora and her new-found friend slumbered beneath his ample wagon-cover.

His partial separation from Dora, occasioned by the advent of this other woman on the scene, soon opened Posey's eyes to the fact that a total separation from her would take the ground entirely from under his feet, and leave him in a condition that he felt disinclined to contemplate so long as there might be a chance to avert such a calamity. He accordingly improved the first opportunity that offered, and cast himself at the feet of Dora—literally, mind you, on the lee side of a sage bush—and lisped his love. On this sacred ground let us tread as lightly as may be. Suffice it that Posey's suit prospered, and that presently a little programme came to be agreed upon between the contracting parties to this effect: They would go on for the present precisely as if nothing had happened—Dora to seek her father and Posey to seek his fortune. As soon, however, as Dora should have succeeded in restoring the doctor to health, or had haply buried him, Posey should be notified, and they would thereupon be married. Then Dora would open a school somewhere, wherever she might chance to find the indispensable children, while Posey, accompanied by his newly-fledged father-in-law, if perchance that worthy individual should be spared, would launch into the mines and conquer Fortune at the point of the pick.