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