of these two were close enough to be almost recognizable: Miguel
first discerned them. They were rising and falling where the
water was deepest--well out in front of the mouth of the bayou,
beyond the flooded sand-bars, and moving toward the shell-reef
westward. They were drifting almost side by side. One was that
of a negro, apparently well attired, and wearing a white
apron;--the other seemed to be a young colored girl, clad in a
blue dress; she was floating upon her face; they could observe
that she had nearly straight hair, braided and tied with a red
ribbon. These were evidently house-servants,--slaves. But from
whence? Nothing could be learned until the luggers should
return; and none of them was yet in sight. Still Feliu was not
anxious as to the fate of his boats, manned by the best sailors
of the coast. Rarely are these Louisiana fishermen lost in
sudden storms; even when to other eyes the appearances are most
pacific and the skies most splendidly blue, they divine some
far-off danger, like the gulls; and like the gulls also, you see
their light vessels fleeing landward. These men seem living
barometers, exquisitely sensitive to all the invisible changes of
atmospheric expansion and compression; they are not easily caught
in those awful dead calms which suddenly paralyze the wings of a
bark, and hold her helpless in their charmed circle, as in a
nightmare, until the blackness overtakes her, and the
long-sleeping sea leaps up foaming to devour her.

--"Carajo!"

The word all at once bursts from Feliu's mouth, with that
peculiar guttural snarl of the "r" betokening strong
excitement,--while he points to something rocking in the ebb,