The Portland daily press., 1891-01-10


It was once the fashionable watering
place of the aristocratic south. Today
1t is a desolate waste, visited only by
fishermen.
Thirty years ago, Last Island lay
stepped in the light of magical days.
July was dying; for weeks no feck of
cloud bad broken the heavens blue
dream of eternity; winds held their
breath; slow wavelets caressed the bland
brown beach with a sound as of kisses
and whispers.
The wind began to blow with the pass
ing of July. 1t blew from the northeast,
clear and cool 1t blew in enormous
signs, dying away at regular intervals,
as if pausing to draw breath. All night
it blew, and in each pause could bel heard
the answering moan of the rising surf
as if the rhythm of the sea nodded itself
after the rhythm of the air, as if the
waving of the water responded precisely
to the waving of the wind, billow for
every puff, a surge for every sigh.
The August morning broke In a bright
rky; the breeze still came cool and clear
from the northeast. The waves were
running now at sharp angle to the
shore; they began to carry fieeces, an
innumerable flock of vague green shapes,
wind driven to be despoiled of their
ghostly wool. Far as the eye could
follow the line of the beach all the slope
was white with the great shearing of
them. Clouds came, flew as in panic
against the face of the sun, and passed.
All that day and through the night and
into the morning again the breeze con-
tinued from the northeast, blowing like
an equinoctial gale.
Then day by day the vast breath fresh
ened steadily, and the waters heightened.
A week later sea bathing had become
perilous; colossal breakers were herding
in, like moving leviathan backs, twice
the height of a man. Still the gale
grew, and the billowing waxed mightier,
and faster and faster overhead flew the
tatters of torn cloud. The gray morn
ing of the 9th wanly lighted surf that
appalled, the best swimmers; the sea was
one wild agony of foam, the gale was
rending off the heads of the waves and
yelling the horizon with fog of salt
spray. Shadowless and gray the day
remained; there were mad bursts of lash
ing rain. Evening brought with it sim
lister apparition, looming through a
cloud rent in the west-a scarlet sun in
green sky. His sanguine disc, enormous
" niagnified, seemed barred like the
body of belted planet. A moment, and
the crimson specter vanished; and the
moonless night came.
Then the wind grew weird. 1t ceased
being breath; it became voice moan
ing across the world; hooting, uttering
nightmare sounds = hool = WHO'D! -
whoo!-and with each stupendous owl
cry the mooing of the waters seemed to
deepen, more and more abyssmally,
through all the hours of darkness. From
the northwest the breakers of the bay
began to roll high over the sandy slope,
into the salines; the bayou broadened to
believing food. So the tumult swelled
and the turmoil heightened until morn
ing-a morning of gray gloom and whist
ling rain. Rain of bursting clouds and
rain of wind blown brine from the great
spuming agony Of the sea.
The steamer Star was due from ST..
H<~s.-,s +i..ss. saa-f..l Ga,sId sha
saIa s! gssMEa g29N AZ sp e ~. aFs5J PUP
ing beach to look for her, because hope
is stronger than reason.
Even today, in these Creole islands,
the advent of the steamer is the great
event of the week. There are no tele-
graph lines, no telephones; the mail
packet is the only trustworthy medium
Of communication with the outer world,
bringing friends, news, letters. Even
during the deepest sleep of waves and
winds there will come betimes to soiourn-
ers in this unfamiliar archipelago feel
ing of lonesomeness that is fear,
feeling of isolation from the world of
men, totally unlike that sense Of solitude
which haunts one in the silence Of
mountain heights, or amid the eternal
tumult of lofty granite coasts--a sense
of helpless insecurity.
The land seems but an undulation of
the sea bed; its highest ridges do not
rise more than the height Of man
above the salines on either side; the
salines themselves lie almost level with
the level of the flood tides; the tides are
variable, treacherous, mysterious. But
when all around and above these ever
changing shores the twin vastness Of
heaven and sea begin to utter the ire
mendous revelation of themselves as in
finite forces in contention, then, indeed,
this sense of separation from humanity
appalls. Perhaps it was such
feeling which forced men, on the 10th
day of August, 1856, to hope against hope
for the coming of the Star, and to strain
their eyes anxiously toward far-off Terre-
bonnie. SIT was wind you could lie
down on" said my friend, the pilot.
Great Godr shrieked a voice above
the shouting of the storm, "she is COM
ing" 1t was true. Down the Atchafa-
laya, and thence through strange mazes
Of bayou, lakelet and pass, by rear
route familiar only to the best of pilots,
the frail river craft had toiled into
Gallon bay, running close to the main
shore; and now she was heading right
for the island, with the wind aft, over
the monstrous sea. On she came, sway
ing, rocking, plunging, with a great
whiteness wrapping her about like
cloud. and moving with her moving,A
tempest whirl of spray; ghost white and
like a ghost she came, for her smoke
stacks exhaled no visible smoke - the
wind devoured it! The excitement on
shore became wild; men shouted them
selves hoarse, women laughed and cried
Every telescope and opera glass was
directed upon the apparition; all Won
dered how the pilot kept his feet; all
marveled at the madness of the captain.
But Capt. Abraham Smith was not
mad. A veteran American sailor, he
had learned to know the great Gulf as
scholars know deep books by heart; he
knew the birthplace of its tempests, the
mystery of its tides, the omens of its
hurricanes. While lying at Brashear
City he felt the storm had not yet reach
ed its highest, vaguely foresaw mighty
peril, and resolved to wait no longer for
a lull. "Boys," he said, Twelve got to
take her out in spite of hell" And they
"took her out" Through all the peril,
his men stayed by him and obeyed him.
By mid-morning the wind had deepened
to roar, lowering sometimes to rum
BILE, sometimes bursting upon the ears
like measureless and deafening crash.
Then the captain knew the Star was run
ming race with death. "She'll win it."
he muttered; "shell stand 1t.
Perhaps they'll have need of me to-
night"
She wont With sonorous steam chant