The sea-sand, in its industrious zeal in covering up memorials of man's art and industry, is often curiously assisted by the zoophytes and vegetation of the ocean, as well as guarded in its labor by abnormal monsters of piscine creation. An example of this occurred in an amusing venture after Lafitte's gold. While the Gulf coast of Western Louisiana is fortified, in its immature terre tremblante, by the coral reefs and islets, it has the appearance of having been torn into ragged edges by the hydrostatic pressure of the Gulf Stream. On one of these little islets or keys, hard by Caillon Bay, the rumor went that the buccaneer had sunk a Spanish galleon laden with pieces of eight and ingots of despoiled Mexico. The people thereabout are a simple, credulous race of Spanish Creoles, speaking no English, keeping the saints' days, and watching the salt-pans of the more energetic but scarcely more thrifty Americans with curious wonder. They chanced in their broken tongue to commit the story of the treasure to a diver of an equally simple faith, who set about putting it to more practical use than to gild an hour with an old legend. They told how the spook of the Spanish captain haunted the wreck, and that the gold was guarded by a dragon in the shape of a monstrous horned and mottled frog, or some other devil of the sea, to which the diver did seriously incline, but not to make him give up the undertaking. He prudently, however, consulted with an old Indian witch, and so received the devil's good word, and piously got a bottle of holy water from the priest, and thus was well fenced in above and below.
But his coadjutors were inexperienced, and perhaps his own courage was of that saccharine character that gets oozy and slushy in moist perils. When descending with his leaded boots on the dark green outline of sea mosses that in the clear Gulf invested the vessel in a verdurous coat, by some mistake he was let down with a slip, and went hurtling through the rotten planks, losing his holy water and sending his witch's wand—well, to its original owner. He crushed through, and the infinite dust of infusoriae and diatomaceae choked his vision. The Teredo navalis, whose labors are so destructive in southern seas, had perforated the old hulk, and converted the vessel into a spongy mass of wood, clay and lime. Innumerable algae and curious fungi of the sea, hydroids, delicate-frost formed emerald plumuluria and campanuluna, bryozoa, mollusks, barnacles and varieties of coral had used it as a builder's quarry and granary. As the geologist finds atom by atom of an organism converted into a stony counterfeit, these busy existences had preserved the vessel's shape, but converted the woody fibre to their own uses. He could see nothing at first but a mixture of green and ochreous dust, through which tiny electric fires went quivering and shaking. In the confusion he lost the signal line, and had no way of making his condition known. Plunging about as the sea dust began to settle, and already more intent on finding the life-line and getting out of that than of securing Lafitte's gold, he observed some spectators not pleasant to look upon. A lobster or a crab is much pleasanter upon the table than in the sea, and there were other things he knew, and some he believed, might not take his hasty visit pleasantly. There was the horseshoe-fish with ugly strings hanging from his base, disagreeable arachnides, strange star fish and their parasites, and, curiously, a large wolfish fish that had built a nest and was watching it and him—watching him with no agreeable or timid expression in its angry eyes. He was just expecting Victor Hugo's devil fish to complete his horror when a sudden, sharp, bone-breaking shock struck him from an electrical eel or marine torpedo. This was a real and sensible danger, and as he struggled to ascend the hulk to the rotten half-deck, the spongy substance gave way, the treacherous quicksand, with its smooth, tenacious throat-clutch, slid down and caught him. The danger was real and imminent, when his companions above, observing the slide, drew him up. And that, I believe, was the first and last attempt to levv on Lafitte's gold.
But the experience of Pharaoh and the danger of our rambling wrecker are not the only instances of the wall of waters or the destruction it causes. Nine days after a storm in the Gulf, a traveler, finding his way from the salt-pans of Western Louisiana, took a little fishing-craft. There was that fresh purity in the air and the sea which follows the bursting of the elements. The numerous "bays" and keys that indent the shore looked fresher and brighter, and there was that repentant beauty in Nature which aims to soothe us into forgetfulness of its recent angry passions. The white-winged sea-birds flew about, and tall water-fowl stood silently over their shadows like a picture above and below. The water sparkled with salt freshness, and the roving winds sat in the shoulder of the sail, resting and riding to port.
The little bark slipped along the shores and shallows, and in and out by key and inlet, seeing its shadow on the pure white sand that seemed so near its keel. The last vestige of the storm was gone, and the little Gulf-world seemed fresher and gladder for it. The tropical green grasses and water-plants hung their long, linear, hairlike sheaths in graceful curves, and patches of willow-palm and palmetto, in many an intricate curve and involution, made a labyrinth of verdure. The wild loveliness of the numerous slips and channels, where never a boat seemed to have sailed since the Indian's water-logged canoe was tossed on the shadowy banks, was enhanced by the vision of distant ships, their sails even with the water, or broken by the white buildings of a sleepy plantation in its bower of fig and olive and tall moss-clustered pines.
Suddenly the traveler fancied he heard a cry, but the fishermen said No—it was the scream of water-fowl or the shrill call of an eagle far above dropping down from the blue zenith; and they sailed on. Again he heard the distant cry, and was told of the panther in the bush and wild birds that drummed and called with almost human intonation; and they sailed on again. But again the mysterious, troubled cry arose from the labyrinth of green, and the traveler entreated them to go in quest of it. The fishers had their freight for the market—delay would deteriorate its value; but the anxious traveler bade them put about and he would bear the loss.
It was well they did. There, in the dense coverts of the sea-swamps, amid the brackish water-growths and grasses, they found a man and woman, ragged, torn, starved. For nine days they had had no food but the soft pith of the palmetto, coarse mussels or scant poison-berries, their bed the damp morass, and their drink the brackish water; and they told the wild and terrible story of Last Island.
Last Island was the Saratoga and Long Branch of the South, the southern-most watering-place in the Gulf. Situated on a fertile coral island enriched by innumerable flocks of wild-fowl, art had brought its wealth of fruit and flower to perfection. The cocoanut-palm, date-palm and orange orchards contrasted their rich foliage in the sunshine with the pineapple, banana and the rich soft turf of the mesquit-grass. The air was fragrant with magnolia and orange bloom, the gardens glittering with the burning beauty of tropical flower, jessamine thickets and voluptuous grape arbors, the golden wine-like sun pouring an intoxicating balm over it; graceful white cottages festooned with vines, with curving chalet or Chinese roofs colored red; pinnacled arbors and shadowy retreats of espaliers pretty as a coral grove; and a fair shining hotel in the midst, with arcades and porches and galleries--the very dream of ease and luxury, as delicate and trim as if made of cut paper in many forms of prettiness. Here was the nabob's retreat; in this balmy garden of delight all that luxury, art and voluptuous desire could hint or hope for was collected; and nothing harsh or poor or rugged jarred the fullness of its luxurious ease.
Ten nights before its fragrant atmosphere was broken into beautiful ripples by the clang and harmony of dancing music. It was the night of the "hop." The hotel was crowded. Yachts and pleasure-vessels pretty as the petals of a flower tossed on the water, or as graceful shells banked the shores; and the steamer at twilight came breathing short, excited breaths with the last relay, for it was the height of the summer season. In their light, airy dresses, as the music swam and sung, bright-eyed girls floated in graceful waltzes down the voluptuous waves of sound, and the gleam of light and color was like a butterflies' ball. The queenly, luscious night sank deeper, and lovers strolled in lamp-lighted arcades, and dreamed and hoped of life like that, the fairy existence of love and peace; and so till, tired of play, sleep and rest came in the small hours.
Hush! All at once came the storm, not, as in northern latitudes, with premonitory murmur and fretting, lashing itself by slow degrees into white heat and rain, but the storm of the tropics, carrying the sea on its broad, angry shoulders, till, reaching the verdurous, love-clustered little isle, it flung the bulk of waters with all its huge, brawny force right upon the cut-paper prettinesses, and broke them into sand and splinters. Of all those pretty children with blue and with opalescent eyes, arrayed like flowers of the field; of all those lovers dreaming of love in summer dalliance, and of cottages among figs and olives; of all the vigorous manhood and ripe womanhood, with all the skill and courage of successful life in them,—not a tithe was saved. The ghastly maw of the waters covered them and swallowed them. A few sprang, among crashing timbers, on a floor laden with impetuous water—the many perhaps never waked at all, or woke to but one short prayer. The few who were saved hardly knew how they were saved—the many who died never knew how they were slain or drowned.
It has twice been my fortune in life to see such a storm, and to know its sudden destruction: once, to see a low, broad, shelving farm-house disappear to the ground timbers before my eyes, as if its substance had vanished into air, while great globes of electric fire burst down and sunk into the ground; once, to see a pine forest of centuries' growth cut down as grass by the mower's scythe. I do not think it possible to see a third and survive, and I do not wish my soul to be whirled away in the vortex of such a storm.