olled upward, fixed and glassy; a stream of
scarlet blood trickled over his gray beard from the corner of his
mouth;--he was dead! As I laid him back on the pillow and turned to
restore some quiet to the ward, a Norther came sweeping down the Gulf
like a rush of mad spirits; tore up the white crests of the sea and
flung them on the beach in thundering surf; burst through the heavy fog
that had trailed upon the moon's track and smothered the island in its
soft pestilent brooding; and in one mighty pouring out of cold pure
ether changed earth and sky from torrid to temperate zone.

Vainly did I endeavor to calm the terror of my patients, excited still
more by the elemental uproar without; vainly did I harangue them, in the
plainest terms to which science is reducible, on atmospheric vibrations,
acoustics, reverberations, and volcanic agencies; they insisted on some
supernatural power having produced the recent fearful sounds. Neither
common nor uncommon sense could prevail with them; and when they
discovered, by the appearance of the extra nurse I had sent for, to
perform the last offices for Jackson, that he was dead, a renewed
and irrepressible horror attacked them, and it was broad day before
composure or stillness was regained in any part of the building except
my own rooms, to which I betook myself as soon as possible, and slept
till sunrise, too soundly for any mystical visitation whatever to have
disturbed my rest.

The next day, in spite of the brief influence of the Norther, the first
case of yellow fever showed itself in the hospital; before night seven
had sickened, and one, already reduced by chronic disease, died. I had
hoped to bury Jackson decently, in the cemetery of the city, where his
vexed mortality might rest in peace under the oleanders and china-trees,
shut in by the hedge of Cherokee roses that guards the enclosure from
the prairie, a living wall of glassy green, strewn with ivory-white buds
and blossoms, fair and pure; but on applying for a burial-spot, the
city authorities, panic-stricken cowards that they were, denied me the
privilege even of a prairie grave, outside the cemetery hedge, for the
poor fellow. In vain did I represent that he had died of lingering
disease, and that nowise contagious; nothing moved them. It was enough
that there was yellow fever in the ward where he died. I was forthwith
strictly ordered to have all the dead from the hospital buried on the
sand-flats at the east end