CAN THEY CLOSE THE BREAK?
The towering cypresses of the far, southern swamps have a great width
of base, from which they narrow so rapidly in the first seven or eight
feet of their height, and thence upward taper so gradually, that it is
almost or quite impossible for an axe-man, standing at their roots, to
chop through the great flare that he finds abreast of him, and bring
the trees down. But when the swamps are deep in water, the swamper may
paddle up to these trees, whose narrowed waists are now within the
swing of his axe, and standing up in his canoe, by a marvel of
balancing skill, cut and cut, until at length his watchful,
up-glancing eye sees the forest giant bow his head. Then a shove, a
few backward sweeps of the paddle, and the canoe glides aside, and the
great trunk falls, smiting the smooth surface of the water with a roar
that, miles away, reaches the ear like the thunder of artillery. The
tree falls: but if the woodsman has not known how to judge and choose
wisely when the inner wood is laid bare under the first big chip that
flies, there are many chances that the fallen tree will instantly sink
to the bottom of the water, and cannot be rafted out. One must know
his craft, even in Louisiana swamps. "Knowledge is power."
When Zoséphine and Mr. Tarbox finished out that Sunday twilight walk,
they talked, after leaving the stile behind, only on business. He told
her of having lately been, with a certain expert, in the swamps of
Barataria, where he had seen some noble cypress forests tantalizingly
near to navigation and market, but practically a great way off,
because the levees of the great sugar estates on the Mississippi River
shut out all deep overflows. Hence these forests could be bought for,
seemingly, a mere tithe of their value. Now, he proposed to buy such a
stretch of them along the edge of the shaking prairie north of Lake
Cataouaché as would show on his part, he said, "caution, but not
temerity."
He invited her to participate. "And why?" For the simple reason that
the expert, and engineer, had dropped the remark that, in his opinion,
a certain levee could not possibly hold out against the high water of
more than two or three more years, and that when it should break it
would spread, from three to nine feet of water, over hundreds of
square miles of swamp forests, _prairies tremblantes_, and rice and
sugar fields, and many leagues of railway. Zoséphine had consented;
and though Mr. Tarbox had soon after gone upon his commercial travels,
he had effected the purchase by correspondence, little thinking that
the first news he should hear on returning to New Orleans would be
that the remotely anticipated "break" had just occurred.
And now, could and would the breach be closed, or must all Barataria
soon be turned into, and remain for months, a navigable yellow sea?
This, Claude knew, was what he must hasten to the crevasse to
discover, and return as promptly to report upon, let his heart-strings
draw as they might towards the studio in Carondelet Street and the
Christian Women's Exchange.