billowing waxed mightier, and faster and faster overhead flew the
tatters of torn cloud. The gray morning of the 9th wanly lighted
a surf that appalled the best swimmers: the sea was one wild
agony of foam, the gale was rending off the heads of the waves
and veiling the horizon with a fog of salt spray. Shadowless and
gray the day remained; there were mad bursts of lashing rain.
Evening brought with it a sinister apparition, looming through a
cloud-rent in the west--a scarlet sun in a green sky. His
sanguine disk, enormously magnified, seemed barred like the body
of a belted planet. A moment, and the crimson spectre vanished;
and the moonless night came.

Then the Wind grew weird. It ceased being a breath; it became a
Voice moaning across the world,--hooting,--uttering nightmare
sounds,--Whoo!--whoo!--whoo!--and with each stupendous owl-cry
the mooing of the waters seemed to deepen, more and more
abysmally, through all the hours of darkness. From the northwest
the breakers of the bay began to roll high over the sandy slope,
into the salines;--the village bayou broadened to a bellowing
flood ... So the tumult swelled and the turmoil heightened until
morning,--a morning of gray gloom and whistling rain. Rain of
bursting clouds and rain of wind-blown brine from the great
spuming agony of the sea.

The steamer Star was due from St. Mary's that fearful morning.
Could she come? No one really believed it,--no one. And
nevertheless men struggled to the roaring beach to look for her,
because hope is stronger than reason ...

Even today, in these Creole islands, the advent of the steamer is