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,
feeling in some sort akin--whether affiliated by blood,
connaturalized by caste, or simply interassociated by traditional
sympathies of class sentiment and class interest. Perhaps in the
more than ordinary merriment of that evening something of nervous
exaltation might have been discerned,--something like a feverish
resolve to oppose apprehension with gayety, to combat uneasiness
by diversion. But the hours passed in mirthfulness; the first
general feeling of depression began to weigh less and less upon
the guests; they had found reason to confide in the solidity of
the massive building; there were no positive terrors, no