The Tupelo journal., 1903-03-13
On the Batture.
BY s. Rhett Roman.

yETHEN the river came creeping
Wy up and driftwood and great
tree trunks from the caving banks
of the hill region along the upper
river, torn up and borne away by
the rushing waters of the Atchafal-
ava and the Red, went by, Delphine
always grew anxious.
She would stop singing those sweet,
plaintive fishermen songs, brought
over long g from the Normandy
coast of France by her grandfather,
who told strange and fascinating
tales of the 'peches a grands cours"
he went on when young.
He loved to describe the fishing
feet of the small village, perched
high among the cliffs, as it fitted
out of the narrow mouth of the har-
Dor steering for the mackerel banks
of the North sea to come back six,
perhaps eight, months later.
Delphine and the old man were the
only occupants of the little dwelling
built outside the levee on high stills,
like many others lining the river
front along the outskirts of the city.
That of the old Norman fisherman
vas the largest and most preten-
tious of those occupied by the queer
cosmopolitan population scattered
along the batture, and old jean
Pierre Durant, stern-looking, pow
erful and taciturn, much-liked and
somewhat feared, was considered the
most prosperous of all the jewellers
of the river settlement.
Delphine had no recollection of
any parent but old Pierre.
1t was he who had watched over
her and taken care of her, and had
brought her, when she was old
enough, to the Convent of the Sacred
Heart to be there educated.
Delphine had wept disconsolate
tears when he left her in charge of
the pale, sweet-faced mother supe-
rior. But how happy those years
had been. How she had romped and
played in the big shady garden of
the old convent, and how pleasant it
was in the high-ceiled, quiet class
rooms.
How she had loved to sing in the
choir of the chapel while the set
ting sum-, through the stained glass
windows east violet and golden and
crimson patches on the spotless white
floor.
Delphine had to admit to herself,
although never to Jean-Pierre, that
she greatly missed her light-hearted
companions of the convent and the
care of the gentle nuns
Her studies, at first irksome, how
absorbingly delighted they became.
1t had been no effort, Delphine re-
membered, to win prizes and keep at
the head of her classes.
She had more than once wondered
mes would watch her with a troubled
gaze and sigh, a~nxiously, when Civ
ing her first honors.
Then she came back to live in the
little house on the batture, among
the shrimpers and fishermen, the ST.
cilians and Italians and the shifting,
changing population, leading their
strange lives along the bend of the
river, where a small ferry boat went
back and forth and tied up at night
at it's wharf, when it's restless days
work was over.
Two rooms had been added by Jean
Pierre and bright colored awnings
shaded the small porch. The boat,
rmoored to a stake when the river
was low and to the front step when
the tide was gurgling around the pill
ing and among the thick swaying
willows around behind, had been re-
painted when Delphine came back.
There were days when Delphine, in
spite of her bright spirit and de-
termination to be CHEEKY for jean
Pierre's sake, felt a strange fear come
over her, and an uncomfortable dread
of the great rolling yellow tide
sweeping down to the gulf and rush
ing in foaming, murmuring counter
currents around the little home, now
$50 pretty, with it's boxes of flowers,
white curtains and gay awnings, and
she felt that some day it would be
swept into the tossing current by
the hoarse gurgling eddies swirling
so cruelty around. E
Jean-Pierre, the Norman fisherman,
had given up his seafaring life to
watch over the baby girl whose love-
Illness had grown with each added
year
There had been times when jean
Pierre missed the dash of the salt
lspume of the North sea in his face,
and the roll of it's pillows under the
keel of his boat, and the boat songs