A Terrible Twenty-Four Hours

DR. DRENNON was a guest at our cabin in the Florida backwoods for several weeks on two occasions in the year 1871. The good people of the neighborhood were rather puzzled about his pursuits at first, and opinion long wavered as to whether he was a bee-hunter or a “yarb doctor.” He certainly was attentive to that insect which improves each shining hour, but he did not limit his attention to that single insect; the spendthrift butterfly was quite as attractive as his thrifty rival with the golden thighs.

Also he was a “yarb doctor,” and of the potency of certain herbs, such as black-weed, snake-root, hoarhound, hemlock, dog’s-bane, poke-root, wild cherry, and the like, no pioneer dame of seventy was better informed. Yet his interest did not stop there. It increased over a leaf and culminated in ecstasy over a flower. The doctor was a sad puzzle to us all, in his queer pursuits and passions. But he was a lively little fellow, fond of a joke, and spirited as a wire-grass pony. He would go at anything or everything, and always contrived to come out tolerably even, in one way or another. He left us in May or June, 1871. I am afraid his queer propensity for bugs did not enhance his popularity. A man who is charmed at catching a Florida red - bug — a vile, odorous sort of vermin, in smell and shape like certain bedfellows at bad inns — cannot look for sympathetic applause from the unlearned, outside world. He had little paper boxes of all sorts of odd things of the insect kind, including several splendid butterflies, and a little green and gold spider, like an emerald with a spark of yellow flame in it. He explored drops of water, leaves, petals, and stamens of flowers, flies, bugs, spiders; and would talk in quite an interesting way about them when we would let him.

It was at his second visit, in August, that the incidents occurred which I am about to report as well as I can remember them. He returned from his expedition to the St. John’s and Indian rivers, and indeed had a very choice collection of rare fauna and flora from those prolific regions. For two weeks after his return he was wholly occupied in classifying, labeling, and arranging his collection of specimens, and digesting his theories thereon. I believe these were subsequently delivered in lecture form before more than one institution of learning; but the adventures I am about to narrate, I am satisfied, have been withheld, to this day. After he had concluded his ’abors, he hung about for a day or so, trying to get up a party for an excursion to the Cross Prairie. After various vain endeavors, on the 15th of August, he rather impatiently ridiculed our reluctance, and set out afoot with his gun and dog, to make the trip, notwithstanding the warning that the rainy season was at hand.

The afternoon and night of the 15 th the terrible cyclone that swept over this region of South Florida came upon us, with all its terrors; and we were occupied enough with our own losses and dangers to forget the little professor. But on the next day, the 16th, the fury of the cyclone not yet having abated, he returned to us in a pitiable plight. His coat, pantaloons, boxes, and satchel were gone. He had on nothing but light linen drawers and a check undershirt, and these were much torn and scratched. The dog Bragg, which he had taken with him, had also disappeared. He was welcomed and provided for as well as was possible in the midst of a driving hurricane, when food and fuel had become necessaries not easily accessible; and a few days later he gave a full account of all his adventures and singular escapes. The weather had cleared, and our lovely little Galilean Sea, with border of pine and palm and orange grove, shone like a jeweled picture, so that he could point a finger to the scene of every incident on that lively chart before him.

“I intended,” said he, “to go by the Ranche to pick up one of the younguns for company. I had H#emdash;’s long rifle, a splendid gun, especially to sell by the weight, a satchel, some boxes for specimens, and a short crow-bar with a sharp hook blade, that served at once for hatchet and pruning-knife. I thought to get provision of my young friends for the day, and supposed we would reach Cross Prairie by the afternoon. But the rifle was heavy, and I had not gone half a mile before I resolved to limit my hunt to botany and entomology. My purpose was to leave the gun at the Ranche, but meeting the captain at the neck of Wilcomb Holm Peninsula, I ha nded it to him, with the request to turn it over to the owner. Bragg, doglike, wished to follow the piece, and well for him and worse for me if he had; but I would not consent to that. I urged him and called him, and he followed, rather reluctantly. I had been thinking over the excursion, the impending rainy season, the improbability of my finding company at the Ranche, and before I had gone fifty steps, I was willing to give up the plan.

“ It then occurred to me that the hummock ¹ at the farther extremity of the peninsula on which I stood, was a treasury of entomological and floral curiosities. It was there I found my emerald spider, and I remembered hearing some of you say that the epiphyte, the wild pine, was about to bear a second blossom. This last determined me. The pitcher-plant grows, as you know, in a bowl around a hollow centre of long, flag-like leaves, fixed to the bark of the live-oak, and draws its entire nutriment from the air. The hollow of the leaves will contain a quart of water, and it is much sought for by the thirsty traveler. The flower is a marvel of beauty. Imagine a clear ruby as long as your fore - finger, an inch and a half wide at the calyx and three inches at the salver of the corolla, carved into thin, translucent, blood - colored petals !

“The hummock, too, is the home of the water-spider, the death’s-head moth, the great Atlas moth, — and clouds of blind mosquitoes. I have been told that in Northern Florida they feed and fatten hogs on the immense swarms of the last. Is that so? Looks like only two removes from cannibalism, or, at least, vampirism, to eat Florida pork, if it is so. Well, these, less the mosquitoes, were excuse enough for changing my mind, and I turned my steps down the peninsula.

“ The captain and I had parted perhaps five minutes, when I arrived at this conclusion. The main-land, up which he was slowly moving with his ox-team, forms with the jutting peninsula, at this point, a V. The captain was going up the left arm of the letter from the point of intersection, and I, by my change of course, was going up the right arm. The lake lay between us in a little bay, about which a huge alligator was nosing, now with just his snout and now with his long spine showing above the water. The maiden cane, in the lake, and the thicket of nightshade, young palms, and scrub-oak concealed me from the captain’s view, but I could catch occasional glimpses of the wagon, and see the long whip waving in the air. You may not have observed, gentlemen,” said the professor, “that I am a little deaf,” at which some of us tried to look civilly surprised. “ Well, it is true,” continued the professor, “ I am often very deaf. Consequently I heard no report, but a sharp, angry phut! at my ear, and the bark of a pine, immediately at my right hand, burst into a white, sap-bleeding bullet-mark. There it was, and calculating from the positions and object, I could not and cannot account for my escape. It seems to me the bullet, aimed by the captain at the alligator, glanced on the water and went ' in one ear and out at the other. ’ I am ashamed to say that I had not, at the moment, a full sense of gratitude. The dog seemed not unreasonably to think he was at the wrong end of the gun, and was making back, when I recalled him. He was reluctant, and I launched the small iron crow at him. It brought him to heel; but it was very odd, and is. I could not find the iron, a foot, long, thrown into a plain space of bare ground free of undergrowth. I marked the spot where it should fall, but it was not there, nor anywhere. It went vaporously to nothing from my hand. I never heard of the ghost of an iron poker, gentlemen, but it vanished like that, in the broad, bright blaze of full noon.

“ This, however, is not the story of my adventures. Here was one sudden and singular escape from death; it wars not the last. It was to be followed by others, with infinitely more terror and hazard. The dog, after that, followed me steadily. The alligator disappeared at the shot, but I have a vague recollection of noticing him, or another large one, far out in the lake west of me, as I entered the first hummock. The peninsula is divided, you observe, and contains three hammocks. The first is on the extremity of the main peninsular land. Between it and the second is a ‘ slue'² or bay.

“ The first hummock had been burned off and was now brilliant with pink and purple orchids, late as the season was, and the varied, beautiful wild phlox. I was delighted to find the cream white, the pearl white with purple heart, and other white varieties with magenta edging. It was a charming garden, and no one is so prone as myself to forget the botanist in the lover of flowers. I waited an hour or more before leaving this spot. Bragg amused himself with a huge gopher.³ After a pleasant nooning in this way, I went on toward the second hummock. I found the water risen in the bay to knee deep, and, in the slue or narrow passage, waist high. The second hummock did not detain me. It is larger, but less luxuriant in floral vegetation, and I pushed on almost immediately.

“ I was soon satisfied I should have to swim. The water was deep in the channel or slue on the far side. On the near side, however, for two hundred yards, it was scarcely deeper than the first bay. But as you approach within fifty yards of the hummock, it deepens, and now covered the tall maiden cane with a smooth, shining sheet of water. I was provoked at my neglect or thoughtlessness in not using the skiff, which I might easily have done; and what a wretched twenty-four hours I should have been spared if I had done so!

“But to turn back from a swim of fiftyyards in smooth water was absurd. I threw off my light linen coat, bound my cottonade pantaloons and shoes and socks on my head, and waded in, Bragg, the dog, following. The maiden cane was in every way embarrassing. Familiar as I am with Florida, I had the sensation of putting my bare feet on snapping turtles, water moccasins coiling in the spears of grass about my ankles; and the bearded tops hindered the view, and were unpleasantly familiar with my nose — which, as you observe, is conveniently large to poke straws in. It was with a sense of relief I rolled carelessly into a swimming posture on the open water, and struck out for the other shore, Bragg paddling manfully or dogfully in my wake. I was in no hurry. The water was of a delicious, enervating warmth, and the change from the rasping, nervous touch of the grass, verygrateful. I put out therefore with a leisurely sweep of the arms, in which lies the strength of good swimming; the body is lightly sustained just under the surface without effort, and the lungs inflated at every full, regular stroke. I know the faculty disapproves of noon or midday bathing, and perhaps I would hesitate to prescribe it to one of my patients; yet I believe, in my frequent excursions, I have derived as much refreshing, healthful vigor from a bath at midday, under the blazing sun, as if taken in dewy eve or under the pounding knuckles of a Turkish bath servant. Certainly I never enjoyed any bath as I did that one. The slightest movement kept me afloat, and indeed, the art of swimming, once fully acquired, ceases to be an art, and becomes nature. Your gentle Galilee here, like its prototype, is unusually clear. There is a sparkle of salt in it, not enough to flavor, but quite enough to give it brilliance and transparency. I could see the bottom six or eight feet below, with its pure white sand; and now the surface was broken into bright prismatic ripples, till I seemed to be floating on a sea of pearls. A charming languor, the exquisite luxury of ease and relief, was almost akin to pain in its delicious relaxation and repose. This state of entrancing rest and refreshment was interrupted by the dog. Bragg jumped upon my back as I swam, with something between a yelp and a whine. My first thought was that the old fellow was as hugely content as myself, but more boisterous, and was for a splashing romp in the water. Nothing loath, I turned to give him a good tousle for his liberties, when horror! not twenty yards away, his long snout and saw-like spine bubbling sinuous, above the waves, was the accursed dragon of Old Nile, a huge alligator, making right at us!

“There were two of the monsters; one at a greater distance to the right, but nearer the shore to which I was swimming; the other between me and the impossible haven I had left. I was utterly and instantaneously unnerved. The woman’s nature in me has never yet been so overcome by my studies as to familiarize into indifference an instinctive abhorrence of anything of the serpent kind. An innocent chameleon lizard, with his pretty gorget of striped carmine and white, and his changeable green and gray coat, is repugnant to me; the garden snake, fangless and harmless as a butterfly, arouseth old Adam as much as the coiled adder; and a crocodile adds his grisly, unredeemable ugliness to intensify the dread and hate. “ The blood curdled in my heart, and per ossa, as the Latin strongly puts it. I struck out madly, furiously, without sense or discretion; but was checked and recalled to my proper self-command by one dreadful fact: the dog was outswimming me. Now I knew as well as if it were a thing done, that one of us must be sacrificed for the other. One might possibly escape from those two monsters, but two could not. A man having any self-control can easily outswim a dog. Aroused by this reflection, I struck out again vigorously; but with long, steady, oar-stroke sweep. Not overhand, which gives only an appearance of speed, like Mr. Pecksniff’s high trotting-horse, but long, regular frog swimming. I soon saw the effect of it. I passed the dog, who turned in toward me, with a whine and effort, as I passed. A crocodile or alligator — they are one and the same — swims quite rapidly; but he does not dart like a fish. The dog’s nose or foot touched me, and I looked over my shoulder involuntarily. An alligator’s jaw in the dry skeleton is terrible to look at; the serried fangs are all made for destructive rending, not mastication: ‘ His horrid jaws agape with double fang,’ as Æschylus describes it. But that huge, tongueless, lipless maw, —

ugh! that I saw, as I live to tell it, with the exaggerated monstrosity of destructive power in its eighty teeth fitting in alternate sockets; the slits of narrow eyes glowering above; the long, serrated spine bubbling above the water right at my heels.

“ There was a dull, deadened chumpf, the drowned yelp of poor Bragg, and dog and dragon disappeared in a surge of bubbles.

“ I was spared this time, but not yet safe. Sliding over the spot where they had disappeared, came the second alligator, not ten yards away. At the moment, I caught the overhanging Limb of a stout, black-jack oak, clustered with jasmine and green-brier, and, heedless of scratches, swung myself aloft. I had the satisfaction of seeing the disappointed monster nosing about below.

“I know,” continued the doctor, “ that very many declare the alligator will not readily attack a man; and it is quite likely they were in pursuit of the dog, rather than my indifferent pork. But the animal will attack a human being; and Humboldt and other naturalists cite examples. Not to mention the escape of Mr. Butler, a South American missionary, there is a circumstance within my own knowledge, of a gentleman who was attacked in crossing a stream in Florida, and only saved by his dog, that gallantly came to his rescue and was sacrificed to save his master. Had I been armed with a light ax or hatchet, I might, possibly, have ventured back; but the urgency should be great indeed, to compel me to so desperate a venture. The alligators exhibited no intention of withdrawing; but cruised about in a verv official manner, standing off and on, manof-war fashion, to keep me blockaded. You can understand that, under tile circumstances, I needed rest; rest for my nerves. I am glad to remember,” said the doctor, speaking lower, “ that I did not then forget to whom my gratitude was due, nor fail to acknowledge the debt.” After a momentary pause, which we respected, for we saw how the little professor was silently engaged, he raised his head with an odd smile, and went on: —

“Some naturalists,” said he, “rank the alligator with the lowest order of vertebrate intelligence. It has no regular ganglia like the brain in higher animals, and the spinal cord is a simple ganglion that can only originate reflex actions; that is, such as are involuntary, and may occur from simple nerve force without the knowledge of the individual. If this is the case,” said he, with a smile, “ how will you account for the evidence of malicious intelligence manifested in a studied plan of revenge; the pursuit, the delay of an attack until I was helpless in his element, and even the conjunction of additional blockading force? It looks rational to suppose that the captain’s bullet was accepted as the opening of hostilities, and, from that time, I and the dog became enemies, or at least contraband of war. There was a look of familiarity in the two ironclads as they cruised about there. I seemed to recognize two swift blockaders of the Federal force in one of the Carolina sounds.

“ The thickets of oak, jasmine, greenbrier, and palmetto cut off any extensive outlook; but I could see the enemy patiently vigilant. An alligator will cruise about the same beat of a hundred yards square, for days and weeks. There was no certainty when those fellows would leave. I could only watch my opportunity. With this conclusion, I began to look about me. The size of the hummock was sensibly diminished by the rise. A foot of water covers a great deal in the low slopes of Florida, and the half dozen acres were reduced to less than a quarter. One strikingly peculiar and observable consequence of this diminution was in the abundance of reptilia, venomous and harmless; loathsome vermin and other unpleasant animal creation crowded into a small space : roaches as big as gophers; huge Spiders with Hop-o’-my-Thumb’s sevenleague boots on, with slender waists and great hairy thighs and mandibles, large enough to destroy a linnet; scorpions unpleasantly vivacious in the August heats; huge, ugly scolopendra, the largest I have seen out of the tropics; black poisonous beetles not classified in entomology; lizards, spreading adders, it seemed at every few feet; long white or cream-colored whip snakes; rattlesnakes as thick as your arm, with a dozen rattles and a button; and a singular serpent with brassy metallic scales, the veritable reptile lifted up by Moses in the wilderness; a wild cat scurrying up the trees, and traces of the mustela putorius in every thicket. These various creatures had all been crowded into a small space by the rapid rise, and it required caution to avoid them. A Florida reptile does not know fear. The adder will lie in your path, not offering to move; and every venomous creature shows fight at the first intimation of hostilities. Luckily they are even more deficient in the rational ganglia than the blockaders without, and strike their fangs indifferently into the stick or club you present. That island was no pleasant place, and yet how to get off ? Yonder, in clear view over the water, was the comfortable weather - boarded cottage, and a skiff lay at the little platform. It was visible enough to me, but I could not be seen from it. The dense foliage overhung the deep water. If I climbed over, nothing but my head could be seen, and that, of course, would be undistinguishable two miles away. No one knew where I was; I had left the impression that I was going to Cross Prairie. There was the house, so near apparently, yet as remote from me as the farther Indies and the pole. It was part of the hardship in all my peril, that I was perishing so near to prompt and efficient help, if my situation had been known. Examination on the farther side of the island developed the snouts of other alligators. It was the deep midsummer, when they are most active and ferocious. If I attempted to swim to Whitner Point, they would discover, and, I believed, attack me in the water. After hesitating, I saw no Other plan than to wait until night. The alligator takes a final cruise at sunset, and then is off. I could retrace my way very readily by starlight across the ‘bay,’and back to my hospitable friends.

“ This was all very prudent and sagacious, but it left out of consideration the unexpected incident of the cyclone. The disastrous effects of that hurricane we all know.

It was admirably recited by the professor, but perhaps it derived its effect from the accurate and literal picture it drew of the devastations of the then recent hurricane. Up to that time the promise of harvest in South Florida had been of unparalleled fruitfulness. The cane and cotton fields were unrivaled; the orange harvest the most abundant that had been seen for many years; and now, in thirty-six hours, the whole labor of the year was destroyed. Nor were its visible effects less terrible than disas trous. The destruction of property; the overblown pine tenements; the wreck of fencing, everywhere opening the muchinjured fields to devastation by the vast herds of wild cattle that range these Southern everglades; the pine forests, shattered, broken, and torn to pieces, so that a wagon and team could not go its own length in any direction — all united to show vividly the terrible power of the hurricane. Our attention recalled to these facts, there was a lengthening of visages as the professor resumed the story of his own adventures.

“ As you remember, the cyclone set in with a rising wind from the north and nortlh-northwest, settling into the latter. Until dark, it had not reached a pitch of unusual violence, and just before that time, though the waves were running high, I ventured again into the water, the blokading alligators having been driven out to sea, so to speak, by the storm. It was the rashest thing ever undertaken. The wind, setting for three hours from the north, had put, the whole body of water in motion, and the surface rolled and foamed and dashed in white, chopping, strangling crests. I tossed and bobbed about on the sarface, as helpless as a cork. It was more providential than through discreet effort that I was again carried under my friend the black-jack, and I crawled back drenched through and through, and chilled, this time, to the bone. Fortunately, I had succeeded in getting a fire out of a whole box of parlor matches, a wretched imposition whose unsulphurous phosphorus attracts and generates moisture in its own chemical composition. I collected the fire as well as I could; lighted a huge lightwood— that is, pitch-pine—log, and, backed against an immense live-oak, prepared to make a night of it.

“ It was the wildest, worst night that fell upon this earth anywhere; and I had chosen the gloomiest, loneliest spot in all the land. For a while, the mass of jungle protected the fire, but it soon began to roar and sparkle in the wind. The huge flame was torn to pieces like rags by the storm. The hurricane bellowed and roared, and I could hear the moan and dash of the lake growing more and more metallic in its violence, to a dull, clanking plunge. Yet it was a calm to what followed. I could still see the glimmer of the cottage lamps at Fannistan, across the water, and contrast its comforts in my mind with my own exposed, dangerous situation. It occurred to me then, that if I died in the violence of that night, or was drowned, no one would know it or suspect it. I had given out to every one, even to the last of the colony I had met, an intention to go to Cross Prairie. If my disfigured remains were tossed on shore, not a soul would suppose it was the professor. As I heard the lake moan and moan in the surging, like a living thing in trouble, I felt a passionate horror of committing my unknown body to its care. I was full of an earnest human yearning that this poor mortal frame, that had served me faithfully so long, should have benediction, recognition, and rest in consecrated ground. But how to effect it? How to increase the probabilities of its becoming known? My fly boxes were none of them waterproof ; my india-rubber satchel had a mouth as ‘wide as a church door,’ and the conventional bottle, jug, or phial of shipwrecked mariner, was not in my collection. Finally, it occurred to me that my watch, a double-cased gold, had my name scratched deeply on the inner plate with a penknife. My guard chain was a long buckskin cord that had been steeped in neat’s foot oil, and was water proof. Using this, I tied my watch into the watch pocket, but so attached to my limbs that it would not be lost while the ligatures of my physical frame held together. But long before this was planned or completed, the intolerable fury of the elements increased, in the dense volumes of descending rain floods. It exceeded in extent and quantity any rain-fall I ever experienced. I felt the incipient asphyxia, the gasping for breath that attends Submersion; and the scarce and scattered oxygen, in the whirl and storm, refused to fill and satisfy my lungs. How the whole firmament blazed with continuous flashing, and shook with the sharp, imminent thunder of its descending bolts! A tall pine, at a little distance, went quivering and bursting from the dazzling pleonasm of staring brightness into the deep, thunderous abysses of darkness. I thought I had been struck. My whole brain, not simply the optic nerve, but my very body, in every fibre and corpuscle, saw the furious, sudden brightness; and the impulse went quivering from the nervous centres out to the fingers’ ends. Not an electric current from without, inwardly, but the reverse; as if the animal magnetism of my whole corporal frame rushed out exultant to greet its kindred fluid in the victorious thunderbolt. I am not asserting a scientific fact, but illustrating a physical sensation by such analogy as it suggests.

“ The next day I examined the stricken pine. It was gnarled; the grain ran in intricate involution by twists and curves around the trunk. At the blossom en I the sinuous bends were large and sweeping from limb to limb; and here the lightning rent the fibres open, splitting the tree, and breaking it off high up the trunk. But where the curves in the grain were knotted and contorted, it appeared as if the subtle fluid, impatient at its tedious path, had burst the solid wood into filmy, feathery fragments.

“ I need not dwell on that hideous night, or nightmare of confused storm and darkness. Clinging to the slippery bulk of the giant oak, I expected every moment to be blown out of its sheltering arms, or to hear the crash of its jarring trunk. All sense of might or strength or durability was gone. Huge trees of centuries' growth were rent like saplings, and blown into the air; the furious bursts of wind, the sharp, sudden crackle of the thunder, and the dazzling blaze of lightning, confused all thought. I could hear the waves beating and surging with that hollow, metallic clang, like huge sheets of copper banged together, and knew the lake was rising with fearful rapidity. Dense floods of rain were blown and dashed over me like waves of the sea; and I felt or thought I felt the slime of reptiles crawling to higher ground, or into my wretched seat, whenever I put my hands down.

“I cannot say that I slept. I cannot recall any distinct change from one state to the other, and I was always conscious of where I was, and of the driving storm and horror about me. But there did come a change in which I was conscious through it all of a dear presence encouraging and strengthening me. The psychology of sleep is the least explained and most familiar problem of our nature. There is one third of a man’s life cut off and separated from his daily existence, and of which his waking hours know nothing, except by glimpses of remembered dreams. The reinvigorating influence of healthful sleep is more surely a fact than it is capable of explanation. The mastery of the will, the vigilant ipsissimus that constitutes the waking self, is withdrawn; yet thought goes on, intelligence and memory are not lost, though the tiller seems to blow about in the wind, and the sails fly loose. You meet old friends; you talk of scenes and events unfamiliar to your daily life; you hear question and answer, novel and contradictory. You know by an infallible test that it is an alien mind, and not your own, that offers suggestion or inquiry. There is nothing so keen in us as that intuitive perception which recognizes at once, and infallibly, the thought that has gone through the processes of germination and birth, as our own. It is very different from the same thought offered independently and originally as the product of another intelligence. That test, without seeking mysteries in spiritualism, every man or woman has. Call up your last night’s dream. It has as strongly marked tests of conference with intelligence other than your own, as you will meet to-day. We lose the thread in waking. We do not see the connection, and it all looks jumbled and confused. But how confused our waking thoughts would be, if subjected to like tests, although these go on under the conscious supervision of the will! In sleep, as in waking, we confer with other intelligences than our own, and do it perhaps familiarly and frequently. It is no answer to call this transcendentalism or spiritualism. It is a question of fact. You do or you do not. Settle in your own mind whether you do receive suggestions in your sleep, independent of any processes of your thought, and accept the whole consequence. It need not be very wise or very prudent; the test is not its wisdom or its prudence, but the absolute fact of the independent suggestion. That done, do not let specious philosophy argue you out of the plain evidence of your senses. No doubt the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy gave a rational explanation of the movements of the planetary system, yet it was wrong, though it stood the mathematical tests of a thousand years, and received the approbation of religion and philosophy.

“At this crucial point, when the thought was in my mind to anticipate by a few hours or moments the end, the comforter came, or rather was with me. Now in my weakness she supported me when I needed support. There has been no day since the separation of our material existence when life’s heavier trials have not found that comforter by my side.

“ The dawn came slowly and heavily, with no cessation of the fierce shock of the contending elements. At times the sphere of the firmament seemed to burst and shiver with the blinding, quivering flash; the solid waves banged and broke upon one another; and the huge oaks groaned and fell under the blast. The mighty waters of rain rolled down with ebb and flow, as if a lake set upright poured its surface down and obscured everything at a few yards’ distance. The most terrifying fact visible in all this confusion was the rapid rising of the lake. The black-jack oak, that had received me out of the alligator’s jaws, had now its top branches and vines sweeping and tossing in the water. Below me the contracted surface of the island was swimming in pools. The eye could not detect any difference between the level of the lake and the level of the land. In a few hours the island would be entirely submerged, and the rain fell as if the reservoirs of the heavens were inexhaustible. Nothing in that fearful hour kept up my strength, exhausted by fatigue and twenty-four hours’ fasting, but the sense of companionship, the assured comfort of that loving, encouraging presence. Though I might take refuge in the trees as the waters rose, yet they were places of difficult or doubtful security. Every hour some forest giant yielded. As the water rose, and sapped the strength of the roots, what probability was there that any one would outstand the storm? Climbing the tall, slippery shaft of the one or two pine-trees that still stood was impossible, and the huge oaks branched low with boughs bending downward. Hour after hour went by, the hurricane still at its height, and I clung to the crotch of the oak, planning and rejecting a dozen impossible modes of escape. As it drew on toward noon the wind abated; the violence of the rain ceased, and I could see, to my surprise and gratification, the cottage at Fannistan still standing. The lull did not last long. I used it in digesting a plan of escape.

“ I observed that as the storm renewed its violence the wind was setting from the opposite point of the compass. It had been north-northwest, and now it was south-southeast. From this fact I drew several important conclusions.

“ First, that the very centre of the cyclone must have passed over this vicinage. Otherwise there would have been a chopping and changing to various points, as we skirted the circle of the wind. A cyclone is a moving whirlwind of greater or less diameter. The body of the storm has its own general progressive direction, besides carrying within itself the long, circular, gyratory motion of the wind; just as a top moves down a slight incline, while the toy itself is spinning rapidly on its peg. The top, that is, the circle of the wind, crossed us as it moved from east to west. It began north-northwest, and continued so till we were in its centre, where there was a lull of short flurries. The other hemisphere of the wind, the reverse current, caught us in coming back from the south to the north.

“ The second consideration, or corollary, was that as the violence of the wind in one direction had lasted from ten p. M. of the 15th, to twelve M. of the 16th, we might expect the same duration of violence, fourteen hours, before the other half had passed over us. This dissipated any doubts as to the practicability of remaining on the hummock. I had to choose between the risk of drowning in an attempt at escape, and the same hazard of drowning if I remained on the island.

“ The lake was certainly an ugly thing to look at. No light craft could possibly live there. I must choose a heavier vessel; something sluggish, inert, steady, that could not be beaten to pieces or tossed about like a skiff, even if that choice was permitted to me. My refuge must be one of the logs or trees that occasionally floated by, or were blown upon the island. I got down into the shallow water and crossed to my point of observation at the black-jack. A little cape jutted out from this end like the blade of an ax. Obliquely across, a similar point on the second hummock reached out into the water. These abutments projected nearly opposite each other, though on different ends of the hummocks, and the current of wind, south-southeast, bore directly from one to the other. There was my point of departure.

“ Dragging themselves loose from entangling vines and the bottom, as the water arose, lay two trees in the water. The farther end of both was beginning to sway out. When they reached the open current, they would swing violently loose, and rush through the gap or sluice; and I had not much time to choose.

“ The outer one, which would soon be free, was the trunk and branches of a huge pine. The fronds were still green upon it, and the limbs unbroken. It had been blown, probably, from the bank on the main-land, and tossed over to this point. Its branches, the fronds that would partially protect, and the huge weight and solidity recommended it. The other tree did not present as safe projections by which I could hold on or bind myself. But I had felled too many pine-trees to put confidence in this one. Often the last chip will fall out before the momentarily balancing trunk will incline to its fall. The weight around the stem of a pine is divided evenly among its branches, so that it is balanced, as I have seen the corky substance of a bit of cornstalk poised on the point of a knife by thrusting two table forks at proper angles and distances into it. In the water there would be no preponderating weight to bear any side of my floating pine down, and keep it steady on an even keel. It would inevitably roll, and in the flood and the storm roll rapidly. It was a theory, but I had to be guided by theory, and I turned to my other raft.

“ This was a huge, bare live-oak with the trunk divided into two large limbs. If there had ever been any others, they were broken off. It was in the form of a great Y. At the stump was a root or two that I might hold on by, but it looked precarious. It would not roll, certainly, and that was the main consideration. As I mounted it pickaback, and girded myself to it with my cottonades and Suspenders, the pine launched off, dragging my raft loose in the effort, and swam splendidly into the gap. I thought I had missed my calculation, but, as it got free, it shot in, spinning like a whirligig. My barge followed, plunging somewhat, but comparatively steady. Every wave dashed over me. I was frequently strangled and blinded, and had no time to think of anything but clinging to the log. It turned slowly round as it went, for which I was not sorry. How anxious I grew as it neared the cape! I slipped loose my fastenings for a plunge, but it swung round and lay snug and close right against the bank.

“ I had looked forward with some unnecessary apprehension, as it proved, to the passage of the second slue. Fortunately a great heap of logs had drifted in and was lodged. To climb over these to the shallow water on the farther side cost only a few scratches and bruises. In less than twenty minutes after my raft got afloat, I was safe and sound on the main-land, and half an hour later I was sipping Seῆorita Fanchon’s hot brandy toddy ; and that is the whole story of my perils and escape.”

Will Wallace Harney.