Richland beacon. [volume] (Rayville, La.) 1869-1890, 1873-07-12


ripe womanhOod, with all the skill
and courage of successful life in them,
not tithe was, saved.- The ghastly
nav of the waters covered and swal-
lowed them. A few sprang, among
crashing timbers, or floor laden with
impetuous water; the many perhaps
never walked 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 storm, and to know its
sudden destruction once, to see a low,
broad, shelving farmhouse disappear to
the ground timbers before my eyes, rs
if its substance had vanished into air,
while great globes of electric fire burst
down and sunk into the ground once,
to see pine forest of centuries growth
cut down us grass by the mowers
scythe. I DO not think it possible to
see a third and survive, and I do not
wish my soul to be wbifled-away in the
vortex of such storm.
At noon or later, after the ruin of
Last Island, gentleman Of name re-
nowned in southwestern story found
himself clinging to bush in the wild
waters, lashed by the long whips of
branches, half dead with fatigue and
fear For a time the hurlyburly Blinded
and hid everything, and the long roll
rocked snI tore him in desperate zen
deavor 20 wrench loose has bleeding
fingers. The impulse of the wind and
storm at s,ieh q time is as OF a solid
body, and there is fook Of soiidity in
the very appearance OF the magnificent
force. But as il alr,te,l he thohght he
heard faint cry, and looking around
he saw poor girl in the ribbons of her
night-dless cinGipS to a brapch. and
slipping from her feeble hold, Tired
as he wss, and Wild and dangerous as
the attempt might be, he did not dare
to leave her to perish. Choosing his
time in a lull, he strucA out to the bush,
and reached it. just as her ebbing
strength gave way. He took her in
his sturdy arms, and, clinging with
tooth and nail,,- stayed them both to
their strange anchorage. Faint, half
conscious, disrobed as she was, in the
sweet, delicate features, the curve of
the lip, and the raven tresses clothed
in seaweed. he recognized the Creole
belle of last nights hop. He Scheered
and encouraged ber, pointing ont that
the storm was 'Nbating, had abated. 1t
could not be long antil seaach-boats
came, and while he had strength to
live she should s1lare it. Itproved true.
Generous and hardy fishers and ships
had coma at once to The scene of dis
aster, and were busy picking up the few
spared by wind and wave. They found
the two clinging together and to that
slight bush, and took them of, wrap
ping them in ready, rough fishermen's
coats. The reader can sec the end of
the story. A meeting 50 appointed had
its predestined end in love match. So
we leave it and them the rest Of their
lives belongs to them, not us.
The pair found by our fisMng- smack
were a wealthy planter and his wife.
For nine days of starvation and danger
they had clung together. When think
of the husbands manly care IN thus
abiding by the wife, find it hard to
reconcile it with the fact that he only
valued his life and Hers at only a few
dollars, not enough to compensate the
traveller for the loss incurred as demur-
rage to the fishermen.
Now Last Island is but low sandy
reef, on which few struggling fruit
trees try to keep the remembrance OF
it's by-gone beauty. 1t is as bare and
desoiate az the bones of those who filled
it's halls in the cataclysm of that dread
full night, bones which now waste to
whiteness Oh sterile shores, or are
wrought into coral in the under sea-
VIII Wallace Harvey, LippincoHs
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