low palmettoes of the swamps,--where gorged buzzards started from
sleep, or cottonmouths uncoiled, hissing, at the coming of the
searchers. And sometimes all who had loved the lost were
themselves among the missing. The full roll call of names could
never be made out; extraordinary mistakes were committed. Men
whom the world deemed dead and buried came back, like ghosts,--to
read their own epitaphs.

... Almost at the same hour that Laroussel was questioning the
child in Creole patois, another expedition, searching for bodies
along the coast, discovered on the beach of a low islet famed as
a haunt of pelicans, the corpse of a child. Some locks of bright
hair still adhering to the skull, a string of red beads, a white
muslin dress, a handkerchief broidered with the initials
"A.L.B.,"--were secured as clews; and the little body was
interred where it had been found.

And, several days before, Captain Hotard, of the relief-boat
Estelle Brousseaux, had found, drifting in the open Gulf
(latitude 26 degrees 43 minutes; longitude 88 degrees 17
minutes),--the corpse of a fair-haired woman, clinging to a
table. The body was disfigured beyond recognition: even the
slender bones of the hands had been stripped by the nibs of the
sea-birds-except one finger, the third of the left, which seemed
to have been protected by a ring of gold, as by a charm. Graven
within the plain yellow circlet was a date,--"JUILLET--1851" ;
and the names,--"ADELE + JULIEN,"--separated by a cross. The
Estelle carried coffins that day: most of them were already
full; but there was one for Adele.