That sail up the Buffalo Bayou was well worth while. No one taking it in those early days can ever forget it. Certainly it is part of my everlasting remembrances. We reached the Bayou shortly before dark, at least it was light enough to see the famous plain of San Jacinto, on which Houston and his eight hundred gentlemen, wiped out the Spanish army under Santa Anna, and gave to the American settlers in Texas that religious and civic liberty which was their right. I noticed that the captain bared his head as he passed it, and, during the evening, he told me the gallant, stirring story, which I have retold in my novel, “Remember the Alamo.” It made a wonderful impression on me, and I thought how grand it would be to live among men who had at least once in their lives scorned the mean god Mammon, and, for the faith of their fathers, and the civil liberty 181 without which life was of no value, offered themselves willingly for their God and their country.
“We are going to live among heroes,” I said; “and, O Robert, after a life among weavers and traders, will not that be a great experience?”
Robert, who had been listening to the same story, answered, “I suppose it may, Milly, but there are heroes at the loom and at the counter both. I have known them.”
Then we were actually in the dense shadows of the Buffalo Bayou, and no one felt like talking. It was a narrow, very narrow, still, black water. A thick growth of trees on both banks of it met above our heads, and shut out all light, but that from the pine flambeaus, burning not only on board, but at intervals along the shore, showing us, with lurid, smoky lights, that we were forging our way through a water full of alligators. Their ugly black eyes dotted it, and they lay along the banks of the stream, barking at us, as we passed. It was the most unearthly sail the imagination can picture, in no way made more human by the half-clothed negroes managing the flaming torches, and the hot, heavy atmosphere, sickly with the scent of magnolias.
Landing at Harrisburg, we found there was fever in every house. Under the very roof which sheltered us from the poisonous night air, a man was dying of the vomìto. Though he was at the other end of the long building, we could only too distinctly hear the awful struggle of the suffering soul to escape from its tortured body. I know not how it was, but I had not then the slightest fear of the sickness. The children slept soundly, and Robert and I sat by them, talking in whispers, and praying silently for the poor soul crying out in its piteous extremity. Soon after midnight a dreadful silence stole through the house, and we fell asleep. For I knew, and was sure, that the agony of the strong man was over; that
“Pale from the Passion of Death,
Cold from the cold, dark River,
Staggering blind with Death,
With trembling steps yet fleet,
Over the stones of darkness,