... Almost every evening throughout the season there had been dancing
in the great hall;--there was dancing that night also. The population
of the hotel had been augmented by the advent of families from other
parts of the island, who found their summer cottages insecure places of
shelter: there were nearly four hundred guests assembled. Perhaps it
was for this reason that the entertainment had been prepared upon a
grander plan than usual, that it assumed the form of a fashionable
ball. And all those pleasure seekers,--representing the wealth and
beauty of the Creole parishes,--whether from Ascension or Assumption,
St. Mary's or St. Landry's, Iberville or Terrebonne, whether
inhabitants of the multi-colored and many-balconied Creole quarter of
the quaint metropolis, or dwellers in the dreamy paradises of the
Teche,--mingled joyously, knowing each other, feeling in some sort
akin--whether affiliated by blood, connaturalized by caste, or simply
interassociated by traditional sympathies of class sentiment and class
interest. Perhaps in the more than ordinary merriment of that evening
something of nervous exaltation might have been discerned,--something
like a feverish resolve to oppose apprehension with gayety, to combat
uneasiness by diversion. But the hours passed in mirthfulness; the
first general feeling of depression began to weigh less and less upon
the guests; they had found reason to confide in the solidity of the
massive building; there were no positive terrors, no outspoken fears;
and the new conviction of all had found expression in the words of the
host himself,--"Il n'y a rien de mieux a faire que de s'amuser!" Of
what avail to lament the prospective devastation of cane-fields,--to
discuss the possible ruin of crops? Better to seek solace in
choregraphic harmonies, in the rhythm of gracious motion and of perfect
melody, than hearken to the discords of the wild orchestra of
storms;--wiser to admire the grace of Parisian toilets, the eddy of
trailing robes with its fairy-foam of lace, the ivorine loveliness of
glossy shoulders and jewelled throats, the glimmering of
satin-slippered feet,--than to watch the raging of the flood without,
or the flying of the wrack ...
So the music and the mirth went on: they made joy for
themselves--those elegant guests;--they jested and sipped rich
wines;--they pledged, and hoped, and loved, and promised, with never a
thought of the morrow, on the night of the tenth of August, eighteen
hundred and fifty-six. Observant parents were there, planning for the
future bliss of their nearest and dearest;--mothers and fathers of
handsome lads, lithe and elegant as young pines, and fresh from the
polish of foreign university training;--mothers and fathers of splendid
girls whose simplest attitudes were witcheries. Young cheeks flushed,
young hearts fluttered with an emotion more puissant than the
excitement of the dance;--young eyes betrayed the happy secret
discreeter lips would have preserved. Slave-servants circled through
the aristocratic press, bearing dainties and wines, praying permission
to pass in terms at once humble and officious,--always in the excellent
French which well-trained house-servants were taught to use on such
occasions.
... Night wore on: still the shining floor palpitated to the feet of
the dancers; still the piano-forte pealed, and still the violins
sang,--and the sound of their singing shrilled through the darkness, in
gasps of the gale, to the ears of Captain Smith, as he strove to keep
his footing on the spray-drenched deck of the Star.
--"Christ!" he muttered,--"a dance! If that wind whips round south,
there'll be another dance! ... But I guess the Star will stay." ...
Half an hour might have passed; still the lights flamed calmly, and the
violins trilled, and the perfumed whirl went on ... And suddenly the
wind veered!
Again the Star reeled, and shuddered, and turned, and began to drag all
her anchors. But she now dragged away from the great building and its
lights,--away from the voluptuous thunder of the grand piano, even at
that moment outpouring the great joy of Weber's melody orchestrated by
Berlioz: l'Invitation a la Valse,--with its marvellous musical swing!
--"Waltzing!" cried the captain. "God help them!--God help us all now!
... The Wind waltzes to-night, with the Sea for his partner!" ...
O the stupendous Valse-Tourbillon! O the mighty Dancer!
One--two--three! From northeast to east, from east to southeast, from
southeast to south: then from the south he came, whirling the Sea in
his arms ...
... Some one shrieked in the midst of the revels;--some girl who found
her pretty slippers wet. What could it be? Thin streams of water were
spreading over the level planking,--curling about the feet of the
dancers ... What could it be? All the land had begun to quake, even
as, but a moment before, the polished floor was trembling to the
pressure of circling steps;--all the building shook now; every beam
uttered its groan. What could it be? ...
There was a clamor, a panic, a rush to the windy night. Infinite
darkness above and beyond; but the lantern-beams danced far out over an
unbroken circle of heaving and swirling black water. Stealthily,
swiftly, the measureless sea-flood was rising.
--"Messieurs--mesdames, ce n'est rien. Nothing serious, ladies, I
assure you ... Mais nous en avons vu bien souvent, les inondations
comme celle-ci; ca passe vite! The water will go down in a few hours,
ladies;--it never rises higher than this; il n'y a pas le moindre
danger, je vous dis! Allons! il n'y a--My God! what is that?" ...
For a moment there was a ghastly hush of voices. And through that hush
there burst upon the ears of all a fearful and unfamiliar sound, as of
a colossal cannonade rolling up from the south, with volleying
lightnings. Vastly and swiftly, nearer and nearer it came,--a
ponderous and unbroken thunder-roll, terrible as the long muttering of
an earthquake.
The nearest mainland,--across mad Caillou Bay to the sea-marshes,--lay
twelve miles north; west, by the Gulf, the nearest solid ground was
twenty miles distant. There were boats, yes!--but the stoutest swimmer
might never reach them now!
Then rose a frightful cry,--the hoarse, hideous, indescribable cry of
hopeless fear,--the despairing animal-cry man utters when suddenly
brought face to face with Nothingness, without preparation, without
consolation, without possibility of respite ... Sauve qui peut! Some
wrenched down the doors; some clung to the heavy banquet-tables, to the
sofas, to the billiard-tables:--during one terrible instant,--against
fruitless heroisms, against futile generosities,--raged all the frenzy
of selfishness, all the brutalities of panic. And then--then came,
thundering through the blackness, the giant swells, boom on boom! ...
One crash!--the huge frame building rocks like a cradle, seesaws,
crackles. What are human shrieks now?--the tornado is shrieking!
Another!--chandeliers splinter; lights are dashed out; a sweeping
cataract hurls in: the immense hall rises,--oscillates,--twirls as
upon a pivot,--crepitates,--crumbles into ruin. Crash again!--the
swirling wreck dissolves into the wallowing of another monster billow;
and a hundred cottages overturn, spin in sudden eddies, quiver,
disjoint, and melt into the seething.
... So the hurricane passed,--tearing off the heads of the prodigious
waves, to hurl them a hundred feet in air,--heaping up the ocean
against the land,--upturning the woods. Bays and passes were swollen
to abysses; rivers regorged; the sea-marshes were changed to raging
wastes of water. Before New Orleans the flood of the mile-broad
Mississippi rose six feet above highest water-mark. One hundred and
ten miles away, Donaldsonville trembled at the towering tide of the
Lafourche. Lakes strove to burst their boundaries. Far-off river
steamers tugged wildly at their cables,--shivering like tethered
creatures that hear by night the approaching howl of destroyers.
Smoke-stacks were hurled overboard, pilot-houses torn away, cabins
blown to fragments.
And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass,--over the agony of Caillou Bay,--the
billowing tide rushed unresisted from the Gulf,--tearing and swallowing
the land in its course,--ploughing out deep-sea channels where sleek
herds had been grazing but a few hours before,--rending islands in
twain,--and ever bearing with it, through the night, enormous vortex of
wreck and vast wan drift of corpses ...
But the Star remained. And Captain Abraham Smith, with a long, good
rope about his waist, dashed again and again into that awful surging to
snatch victims from death,--clutching at passing hands, heads,
garments, in the cataract-sweep of the seas,--saving, aiding, cheering,
though blinded by spray and battered by drifting wreck, until his
strength failed in the unequal struggle at last, and his men drew him
aboard senseless, with some beautiful half-drowned girl safe in his
arms. But well-nigh twoscore souls had been rescued by him; and the
Star stayed on through it all.
Long years after, the weed-grown ribs of her graceful skeleton could
still be seen, curving up from the sand-dunes of Last Island, in
valiant witness of how well she stayed.