helpless cry, and the little fellow instinctively flew
through the open doorway, where, blinded and choking with the
devastating element around him, he staggered feebly beyond its
influence. Yet again a flurry of thick smoke lighted up the forked and
vivid flames, and chased the child before it.

Oh, fond mother! in your poignant grief for the loss of your poor
drowned boy, you were spared the agony of seeing him, even in
imagination, struggling faintly before that tempest of fire and smoke,
calling plaintively for her on whose tender bosom his head had rested,
while his naked feet were cut and bruised by the sharp coral shingle
beneath them. But onward and onward the boy wandered, and fortunately
his footsteps took the path into a purer atmosphere which led toward the
chapel. Here he looked timidly around at the lurid glare behind him, and
then entered the church and sank down exhausted, his feverish, smarting
eyes closing in slumber on the hard pavement beneath the image of the
Virgin Mary.

Then came the close and sultry night--no murmur of a land-wind to drive
the smoky canopy away--the black cinders falling in burning rain on
basin, thicket, and lagoon, till even the very lizards and scorpions hid
themselves deep within the holes and crevices of the rocks. Midnight
came. The dim and silent stars were obscured by a veil of heavy clouds,
and with a low, muttering sound of thunder, the vapory masses unclosed
their portals, and the rain fell in torrents. The flames, now nearly
satisfied with their work, leaped out occasionally from the fallen
ruins, but were quenched by the tropical deluge, and smouldered away
amid the charred and saturated timbers. Then the thunder ceased, the
lizards and scorpions came from their retreats, the teal fluttered over
the lagoon, and the noise of the waves bursting over the reef came again
to the ear. Still there was no breath of air; the atmosphere was thick
and damp; and out from the mangrove thickets and wide expanse of cactus,
swarms of insects, musquitoes, and sand-flies in myriads went buzzing
and singing in the sultry, murky night.

So dragged on the weary hours until day broke again, and the sea-birds
floated off seaward for their morning's meal, and the flying-fish
skipped with their silvery wings from wave to wave, as the dolphins
glittered in gold and purple after them below the blue water. No bright
and blazing sun came over the hills of Cuba to light up this picture,
but