A few hours later the winds were still, the stars were out, a sweet silence had fallen upon water and wood, and from her deck the watchmen on the steamer could see in the north-eastern sky a broad, soft, illumination, and knew it was the lights of slumbering New Orleans, eighteen miles away.
By and by, farther to the east, another brightness began to grow and gather this light into its outstretched wings. In the nearest wood a soft twitter came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered it. A different note came from a third quarter; there were three or four replies; the sky turned to blue, and began to flush; a mocking-bird flew out of the woods on her earliest quest for family provision; a thrush began to sing; and in a moment more the whole forest was one choir.
What wonderful purity was in the fragrant air; what color was on the calm waters and in the deep sky; how beautiful, how gentle was Nature after her transport of passion! Shall we ever subdue her and make her always submissive and compliant? Who knows? Who knows what man may do with her when once he has got self, the universal self, under perfect mastery? See yonder huge bull-alligator swimming hitherward out of the swamp. Even as you point he turns again in alarm and is gone. Once he was man’s terror, Leviathan. The very lions of Africa and the grizzlies of the Rockies, so they tell us, are no longer the bold enemies of man they once were. “Subdue the earth”—it is being done. Science and art, commerce and exploration, are but parts of religion. Help us, brothers all, with every possible discovery and invention to complete the conquest begun in that lost garden whence man and woman first came forth, not for vengeance but for love, to bruise the serpent’s head. But as yet, both within us and without us, what terrible revolts doth Nature make! what awful victories doth she have over us, and then turn and bless and serve us again!
As the sun was rising, one of the timber-cutters from the steamer stood up in his canoe about half a mile away, near the wood and beside some willows, and halloed and beckoned. And when those on the steamer hearkened he called again, bidding them tell “de boss” that he had found a canoe adrift, an anchored boat, and a white man in her, dead.
Tarbox and St. Pierre came in a skiff.
“Is he drowned?” asked Mr. Tarbox, while still some distance off.
“Been struck by lightnin’ sim like,” replied the negro who had found the body.—“Watch out, Mistoo Tah-bawx!” he added, as the skiff drew near; “dat boat dess lousy wid snake’!”
Tarbox stood up in the skiff and looked sadly upon the dead face. “It’s our man,” he said to St. Pierre.
“Dass what I say!” exclaimed the negro. “Yes, seh, so soon I see him I say, mos’ sholy dass de same man what Mistoo Tah-bawx lookin’ faw to show him ’roun’ ’bout de swamp! Yes, seh, not-instandin’ I never see him befo’! No, seh.—Lawd! look yondeh! look dat big bahsta’d hawn-snake! He kyant git away: he’s hu’t! Lawd! dass what kill dat man! Dat man trawmp on him in de dark, and he strack him wid his hawny tail! Look at dem fo’ li’l’ spot’ on de man’ foot! Now, Mistoo Tah-bawx! You been talk’ ’bout dem ah bahsta’d hawn-snake not pizen! Well, mos’ sholy dey bite ain’t pizen; but if dat hawn on de een of his tail dess on’y tetch you, you’ gone! Look at dat man! Kill’ him so quick dey wa’n’t time for de place to swell whah he was hit!” But Tarbox quietly pointed out to St. Pierre that the tiny wounds were made by the reptile’s teeth.
“The coroner’s verdict will probably be ‘privation and exposure,’” said he softly; “but it ought to be, ‘killed by fright and the bite of a harmless snake.’”