Smoke-stacks were hurled overboard, pilot-houses torn away, cabins
blown to fragments.

And over roaring Kaimbuck Pass,--over the agony of Caillou Bay,--the
billowing tide rushed unresisted from the Gulf,--tearing and swallowing
the land in its course,--ploughing out deep-sea channels where sleek
herds had been grazing but a few hours before,--rending islands in
twain,--and ever bearing with it, through the night, enormous vortex of
wreck and vast wan drift of corpses ...

But the Star remained. And Captain Abraham Smith, with a long, good
rope about his waist, dashed again and again into that awful surging to
snatch victims from death,--clutching at passing hands, heads,
garments, in the cataract-sweep of the seas,--saving, aiding, cheering,
though blinded by spray and battered by drifting wreck, until his
strength failed in the unequal struggle at last, and his men drew him
aboard senseless, with some beautiful half-drowned girl safe in his
arms. But well-nigh twoscore souls had been rescued by him; and the
Star stayed on through it all.

Long years after, the weed-grown ribs of her graceful skeleton could
still be seen, curving up from the sand-dunes of Last Island, in
valiant witness of how well she stayed.

VII.

Day breaks through the flying wrack, over the infinite heaving of the
sea, over the low land made vast with desolation. It is a spectral
dawn: a wan light, like the light of a dying sun.

The wind has waned and veered; the flood sinks slowly back to its
abysses--abandoning its plunder,--scattering its piteous waifs over bar
and dune, over shoal and marsh, among the silences of the mango-swamps,
over the long low reaches of sand-grasses and drowned weeds, for more
than a hundred miles. From the shell-reefs of Pointe-au-Fer to the
shallows of Pelto Bay the dead lie mingled with the high-heaped
drift;--from their cypress groves the vultures rise to dispute a share
of the feast with the shrieking frigate-birds and squeaking gulls. And
as the tremendous tide withdraws its plunging waters, all the pirates
of air follow the great white-gleaming retreat: a storm of billowing
wings and screaming throats.

And swift in the wake of gull and frigate-bird the Wreckers come, the
Spoilers of the dead,--savage skimmers of the sea,--hurricane-riders
wont to spread their canvas-pinions in the face of storms; Sicilian and
Corsican outlaws, Manila-men from the marshes, deserters from many
navies, Lascars,