ew of the hotel, though not near enough to
shore to lower her gang-plank.... But she had sung her swan-song.
Gathering in from the northeast, the waters of the bay were already
marbling over the salines and half across the island; and still the
wind increased its paroxysmal power.

Cottages began to rock. Some slid away from the solid props upon which
they rested. A chimney fumbled. Shutters were wrenched off; verandas
demolished. Light roofs lifted, dropped again, and flapped into ruin.
Trees bent their heads to the earth. And still the storm grew louder
and blacker with every passing hour.

The Star rose with the rising of the waters, dragging her anchor.

Two more anchors were put out, and still she dragged--dragged in with
the flood,--twisting, shuddering, careening in her agony. Evening fell;
the sand began to move with the wind, stinging faces like a continuous
fire of fine shot; and frenzied blasts came to buffet the steamer
forward, sideward. Then one of her hog-chains parted with a clang like
the boom of a big bell. Then another! ... Then the captain bade his
men to cut away all her upper works, clean to the deck. Overboard into
the seething went her stacks, her pilot-house, her cabins,--and whirled
away. And the naked hull of the Star, still dragging her three
anchors, labored on through the darkness, nearer and nearer to the
immense silhouette of the hotel, whose hundred windows were now all
aflame. The vast timber building seemed to defy the storm. The wind,
roaring round its broad verandas,--hissing through every crevice with
the sound and force of steam,--appeared to waste its rage. And in the
half-lull between two terrible gusts there came to the captain's ears a
sound that seemed strange in that night of multitudinous terrors ... a
sound of music!

VI.

... Almost every evening throughout the season there had been dancing
in the great hall;--there was dancing that night also. The population
of the hotel had been augmented by the advent of families from other
parts of the island, who found their summer cottages insecure places of
shelter: there were nearly four hundred guests assembled. Perhaps it
was for this reason that the entertainment had been prepared upon a
grander plan than usual, that it assumed the form of a fashionable
ball. And all those pleasure seekers,--representing the wealth and
beauty of the Creole parishes,--whether from Ascension or Assumption,
St. Mary's or St.