possessing more occult resources. There were some confused
stories current about his having once been a daring smuggler, and
having only been reformed by the pleadings of his wife Carmen,--a
little brown woman who had followed him from Barcelona to share
his fortunes in the western world.

On hot days, when the shade was full of thin sweet scents, the
place had a tropical charm, a drowsy peace. Nothing except the
peculiar appearance of the line of oaks facing the Gulf could
have conveyed to the visitor any suggestion of days in which the
trilling of crickets and the fluting of birds had ceased, of
nights when the voices of the marsh had been hushed for fear. In
one enormous rank the veteran trees stood shoulder to shoulder,
but in the attitude of giants over mastered,--forced backward
towards the marsh,--made to recoil by the might of the ghostly
enemy with whom they had striven a thousand years,--the Shrieker,
the Sky-Sweeper, the awful Sea-Wind!

Never had he given them so terrible a wrestle as on the night of
the tenth of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six. All the
waves of the excited Gulf thronged in as if to see, and lifted up
their voices, and pushed, and roared, until the cheniere was
islanded by such a billowing as no white man's eyes had ever
looked upon before. Grandly the oaks bore themselves, but every
fibre of their knotted thews was strained in the unequal contest,
and two of the giants were overthrown, upturning, as they fell,
roots coiled and huge as the serpent-limbs of Titans. Moved to
its entrails, all the islet trembled, while the sea magnified its
menace, and reached out whitely to the prostrate trees; but the
rest of the oaks stood on, and strove in line, and saved the