aroused from her sleep. "Na quita mo! dalaga!--na quita
maganda!" ... Juan, the fastenings of those diamond ear-drops are
much too complicated for your peon fingers: tear them
out!--"Dispense, chulita!" ...

... Suddenly a long, mighty silver trilling fills the ears of
all: there is a wild hurrying and scurrying; swiftly, one after
another, the overburdened luggers spread wings and flutter away.

Thrice the great cry rings rippling through the gray air, and
over the green sea, and over the far-flooded shell-reefs, where
the huge white flashes are,--sheet-lightning of breakers,--and
over the weird wash of corpses coming in.

It is the steam-call of the relief-boat, hastening to rescue the
living, to gather in the dead.

The tremendous tragedy is over!



Out of the Sea's Strength

I.

There are regions of Louisiana coast whose aspect seems not of
the present, but of the immemorial past--of that epoch when low
flat reaches of primordial continent first rose into form above a
Silurian Sea. To indulge this geologic dream, any fervid and
breezeless day there, it is only necessary to ignore the