e sudden
apparition of great oleaginous patches spreading over the water,
sheeting over the swells. That is, if you had never heard of the
mysterious submarine oil-wells, the volcanic fountains, unexplored,
that well up with the eternal pulsing of the Gulf-Stream ...

But the pleasure-seekers of Last Island knew there must have been a
"great blow" somewhere that day. Still the sea swelled; and a splendid
surf made the evening bath delightful. Then, just at sundown, a
beautiful cloud-bridge grew up and arched the sky with a single span of
cottony pink vapor, that changed and deepened color with the dying of
the iridescent day. And the cloud-bridge approached, stretched,
strained, and swung round at last to make way for the coming of the
gale,--even as the light bridges that traverse the dreamy Teche swing
open when luggermen sound through their conch-shells the long,
bellowing signal of approach.

Then the wind began to blow, with the passing of July. It blew from
the northeast, clear, cool. It blew in enormous sighs, dying away at
regular intervals, as if pausing to draw breath. All night it blew; and
in each pause could be heard the answering moan of the rising surf,--as
if the rhythm of the sea moulded itself after the rhythm of the
air,--as if the waving of the water responded precisely to the waving
of the wind,--a billow for every puff, a surge for every sigh.

The August morning broke in a bright sky;--the breeze still came cool
and clear from the northeast. The waves were running now at a sharp
angle to the shore: they began to carry fleeces, 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 a
panic against the face of the sun, and passed. All that day and
through the night and into the morning again the breeze continued from
the north. east, blowing like an equinoctial gale ...

Then day by day the vast breath freshened 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 morning of the 9th wanly lighted a surf that appalled
the best swimmers: the sea was one wild agony of foa