"And when it was opened—"
"Well, sir, there's curious things seen on the beach on nights of shipwreck. I'm no hand at describing. Some men stagger out of the car sick, some crying or praying, some as cool as if they'd just stepped off the train."
The captain locked the rocket-closet, hung the key on the nail and rearranged a coil of rope which had been displaced. "Things have to be shipshape when the lives of a crew may depend on a missing match or wet powder. The houses," he added as we came out of the door and he stopped to close it, "are built every three miles along the beach. From November 15 until April 15 the keeper and six surfmen live in this house, and take watches, patrolling the beach night and day, meeting halfway between the stations. Chief Kimball's plan is that there shall be an unbroken line of sentries along this dangerous coast during the six stormy months."
When the hearty old captain had left us, and we found our way again across the marshes, the solitude of the night and stormy sky and the moaning sea became oppressive again, and took on all their old meaning of death and disaster. But we looked back at the square black shadow of the little house upon the headland with its fluttering flag, and at the red light burning in the window, and felt a sense of protection and trust in the government which we had never known before.
REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
THE EUTAW FLAG.[3]
In the early spring of the year 1780 two ladies attired in morning négligé were sitting together in the parlor of a fine old country mansion in lower South Carolina. The remains of two or three huge hickory logs were smouldering on the capacious hearth, for the cool air of the early morning made fires still comfortable, though as the day wore on and the southern sun gathered power the small-paned windows which opened on the lawn had been raised to admit the soft breeze, which already whispered of opening flowers and breathed the sweet fragrance of the jessamine and magnolia. These same embers would have furnished heat enough in a house of modern construction to have made the room intolerable, but as they reposed upon their bed of ashes in the depths of the wide-mouthed chimney-place, lazily sending up their little curls of smoke, they served only to create a draught-power which cooled the apartment by the free circulation of the flower-scented air. The wide lawn was green with the fresh spring grass, amid which a lively company of field-larks were busily searching for grasshoppers and grubs, their gay yellow breasts and jetty breastpins glancing in the sunlight as they raised their heads from time to time to utter their soft whistling notes. The blackbirds puffed their feathers and sounded their singular call from the branches of the old pecan tree, and the flashing of the oriole enlivened the sombre foliage of the enormous live-oaks in the avenue. Three or four deer-hounds were stretched about under the broad benches of the piazza or snapped at the flies under the shade of the rose-bushes, already heavy with bloom, paying no attention to the tame doe which jingled her little bell over their very heads as she stretched up to browse the young shoots of "rose-candy" above them. Two mocking-birds, one perched on the chimney-stack of the house, and the other on a straggling spray of the wild-orange hedge, vied with each other in imitating the medley of bird-language which made the air vocal on every side, pouring a rich flood of melody through the open windows and into the appreciative ears of the ladies who sat within.
"What a lovely day!" exclaimed the elder of the two as she dropped her piece of embroidery and rose to look out upon the scene.
"Oh, how I wish we could take a long ride! Here have I been staying at Oaklands three whole weeks, and I have not been in the saddle once! I declare, Jane, this horrid war will never be over;" and Rebecca Stead drew a long sigh and leaned her pretty head thoughtfully against the sash.
"Well, suppose we ride over to The Willows?" answered Jane Elliott with a ringing laugh. "If you'll take the old broken-winded mare, I'll take one of the plough-mules, and Billy can go with us on the other. Wouldn't it be fun?"