Some one shrieked in the midst of the revels;--some girl who found her pretty slippers wet. What could it be? Thin streams of water were spreading over the level planking,--curling about the feet of the dancers ... What could it be? All the land had begun to quake, even as, but a moment before, the polished floor was trembling to the pressure of circling steps;--all the building shook now; every beam uttered its groan. What could it be? ...
There was a clamor, a panic, a rush to the windy night. Infinite darkness above and beyond; but the lantern-beams danced far out over an unbroken circle of heaving and swirling black water.
Stealthily, swiftly, the measureless sea-flood was rising.
--" Messieurs--mesdames, ce n'est rien. Nothing serious, ladies, I assure you ... Mais nous en avons vu bien souvent, les inondations comme celle-ci; ca passe vite! The water will go down in a few hours, ladies;--it never rises higher than this; il n'y a pas le moindre danger, je vous dis! Allons! il n'y a--My God! what is that?" ...
For a moment there was a ghastly hush of voices. And through that hush there burst upon the ears of all a fearful and unfamiliar sound, as of a colossal cannonade rolling up from the south, with volleying lightnings. Vastly and swiftly, nearer and nearer it came,--a ponderous and unbroken thunder-roll, terrible as the long muttering of an earthquake.
The nearest mainland,--across mad Caillou Bay to the sea-marshes,--lay twelve miles north; west, by the Gulf, the nearest solid ground was twenty miles distant. There were boats, yes!--but the stoutest swimmer might never reach them now!
Then rose a frightful cry,--the hoarse, hideous, indescribable cry of hopeless fear,--the despairing animal-cry man utters when suddenly brought face to face with Nothingness, without preparation, without consolation, without possibility of respite ... Sauve qui peut! Some wrenched down the doors; some clung to the heavy banquet-tables, to the sofas, to the billiard. tables:--during one terrible instant,--against fruitless heroisms, against futile generosities,--raged all the frenzy of selfishness, all the brutalities of panic. And then--then came, thundering through the blackness, the giant swells, boom on boom!
One crash!--the huge frame building rocks like a cradle, seesaws, crackles. What are human shrieks now?--the tornado is shrieking! Another!--chandeliers splinter; lights are dashed out; a sweeping cataract hurls in: the immense hall rises,--oscillates,--twirls as upon a pivot,--crepitates,--crumbles into ruin. Crash again!--the swirling wreck dissolves into the wallowing of another monster billow; and a hundred cottages overturn, spin in sudden eddies, quiver, disjoint, and melt into the seething.
So the hurricane passed,--tearing off the heads of the prodigious waves, to hurl them a hundred feet in air,--heaping up the ocean against the land,--upturning the woods. Bays and passes were swollen to abysses; rivers regorged; the sea-marshes were changed to raging wastes of water. Before New Orleans the flood of the mile-broad Mississippi rose six feet above highest water-mark. One hundred and ten miles away, Donaldsonville trembled at the towering tide of the Lafourche. Lakes strove to burst their boundaries. Far-off river steamers tugged wildly at their cables,--shivering like tethered creatures that hear by night the approaching howl of destroyers. Smoke-stacks were hurled overboard, pilot-houses torn away, cabins blown to fragments.
And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass,--over the agony of Caillou Bay,--the billowing tide rushed unresisted from the Gulf,--tearing and swallowing the land in its course,--ploughing out deep-sea channels where sleek herds had been grazing but a few hours before,--rending islands in twain,--and ever bearing with it, through the night, enormous vortex of wreck and vast wan drift of corpses ...
But the Star remained. And Captain Abraham Smith, with a long, good rope about his waist, dashed again and again into that awful surging to snatch victims from death,--clutching at passing hands, heads, garments, in the cataract-sweep of the seas,--saving, aiding, cheering, though blinded by spray and battered by drifting wreck, until his strength failed in the unequal struggle at last, and his men drew him aboard senseless, with some beautiful half-drowned girl safe in his arms. But well-nigh twoscore souls had been rescued by him; and the Star stayed on through it all.
Long years after, the weed-grown ribs of her graceful skeleton could still be seen, curving up from the sand-dunes of Last Island, in valiant witness of how well she stayed.
