CHAPTER XLVI
THE PIQUE-EN-TERRE LOSES ONE OF HER CREW
Ask the average resident of New Orleans if his town is on an island, andhe will tell you no. He will also wonder how any one could have got thatnotion,--so completely has Orleans Island, whose name at the beginningof the present century was in everybody's mouth, been forgotten. It wasonce a question of national policy, a point of difference betweenRepublican and Federalist, whether the United States ought to buy thislittle strip of semi-submerged land, or whether it would not be morerighteous to steal it. The Kentuckians kept the question at a red heatby threatening to become an empire by themselves if one course or theother was not taken; but when the First Consul offered to sell allLouisiana, our commissioners were quite robbed of breath. They hadapproached to ask a hair from the elephant's tail, and were offeredthe elephant.
For Orleans Island--island it certainly was until General Jackson closedBayou Manchac--is a narrow, irregular, flat tract of forest, swamp,city, prairie and sea-marsh, lying east and west, with the Mississippi,trending southeastward, for its southern boundary, and for its northern,a parallel and contiguous chain of alternate lakes and bayous, openinginto the river through Bayou Manchac, and into the Gulf through thepasses of the Malheureuse Islands. On the narrowest part of it standsNew Orleans. Turning and looking back over the rear of the town, one mayeasily see from her steeples Lake Pontchartrain glistening away to thenorthern horizon, and in his fancy extend the picture to right and lefttill Pontchartrain is linked in the west by Pass Manchac to LakeMaurepas, and in the east by the Rigolets and Chef Menteur toLake Borgne.
An oddity of the Mississippi Delta is the habit the little streams haveof running away from the big ones. The river makes its own bed and itsown banks, and continuing season after season, through ages ofalternate overflow and subsidence, to elevate those banks, creates aridge which thus becomes a natural elevated aqueduct. Other slightlyelevated ridges mark the present or former courses of minor outlets, bywhich the waters of the Mississippi have found the sea. Between theseridges lie the cypress swamps, through whose profound shades the clear,dark, deep bayous creep noiselessly away into the tall grasses of theshaking prairies. The original New Orleans was built on the Mississippiridge, with one of these forest-and-water-covered basins stretching backbehind her to westward and northward, closed in by Metairie Ridge andLake Pontchartrain. Local engineers preserve the tradition that theBayou Sauvage once had its rise, so to speak, in Toulouse street. Thoughdepleted by the city's present drainage system and most likely poisonedby it as well, its waters still move seaward in a course almost dueeasterly, and empty into Chef Menteur, one of the watery threadsof a tangled skein of "passes" between the lakes and the openGulf. Three-quarters of a century ago this Bayou Sauvage (orGentilly--corruption of Chantilly) was a navigable stream of wild andsombre beauty.
On a certain morning in August, 1804, and consequently some five monthsafter the events last mentioned, there emerged from the darkness ofBayou Sauvage into the prairie-bordered waters of Chef Menteur, whilethe morning star was still luminous in the sky above and in the waterbelow, and only the practised eye could detect the first glimmer of day,a small, stanch, single-masted, broad and very light-draught boat, whoseinnocent character, primarily indicated in its coat of many colors,--thehull being yellow below the water line and white above, with tastefulstripings of blue and red,--was further accentuated by the peaceful nameof _Pique-en-terre_ (the Sandpiper).
She seemed, too, as she entered the Chef Menteur, as if she would haveliked to turn southward; but the wind did not permit this, and in amoment more the water was rippling after her swift rudder, as she glidedaway in the direction of Pointe Aux Herbes. But when she had left behindher the mouth of the passage, she changed her course and, leaving thePointe on her left, bore down toward Petites Coquilles, obviously bentupon passing through the Rigolets.
We know not how to describe the joyousness of the effect when at lengthone leaves behind him the shadow and gloom of the swamp, and therebursts upon his sight the widespread, flower-decked, bird-hauntedprairies of Lake Catharine. The inside and outside of a prison scarcelyfurnish a greater contrast; and on this fair August morning the contrastwas at its strongest. The day broke across a glad expanse of cool andfragrant green, silver-laced with a network of crisp salt pools andpasses, lakes, bayous and lagoons, that gave a good smell, the inspiringodor of interclasped sea and shore, and both beautified and perfumedthe happy earth, laid bare to the rising sun. Waving marshes of wildoats, drooping like sated youth from too much pleasure; watery acres hidunder crisp-growing greenth starred with pond-lilies and rippled bywater-fowl; broad stretches of high grass, with thousands of ecstaticwings palpitating above them; hundreds of thousands of white and pinkmallows clapping their hands in voiceless rapture, and that amazon queenof the wild flowers, the morning-glory, stretching her myriad lines,lifting up the trumpet and waving her colors, white, azure and pink,with lacings of spider's web, heavy with pearls and diamonds--the giftsof the summer night. The crew of the _Pique-en-terre_ saw all these andfelt them; for, whatever they may have been or failed to be, they weremen whose heartstrings responded to the touches of nature. One alone oftheir company, and he the one who should have felt them most, showedinsensibility, sighed laughingly and then laughed sighingly, in the faceof his fellows and of all this beauty, and profanely confessed that hisheart's desire was to get back to his wife. He had been absent from hernow for nine hours!
But the sun is getting high; Petites Coquilles has been passed and leftastern, the eastern end of Las Conchas is on the after-larboard-quarter,the briny waters of Lake Borgne flash far and wide their dazzling whiteand blue, and, as the little boat issues from the deep channel of theRigolets, the white-armed waves catch her and toss her like a merrybabe. A triumph for the helmsman--he it is who sighs, at intervals oftiresome frequency, for his wife. He had, from the very starting-placein the upper waters of Bayou Sauvage, declared in favor of the Rigoletsas--wind and tide considered--the most practicable of all the passes.Now that they were out, he forgot for a moment the self-amusing plaintof conjugal separation to flaunt his triumph. Would any one hereafterdispute with him on the subject of Louisiana sea-coast navigation? Heknew every pass and piece of water like A, B, C, and could tell, faster,much faster than he could repeat the multiplication table (upon which hewas a little slow and doubtful), the amount of water in each at ebbtide--Pass Jean or Petit Pass, Unknown Pass, Petit Rigolet, ChefMenteur,--
Out on the far southern horizon, in the Gulf--the Gulf of Mexico--thereappears a speck of white. It is known to those on board the_Pique-en-terre_, the moment it is descried, as the canvas of a largeschooner. The opinion, first expressed by the youthful husband, whostill reclines with the tiller held firmly under his arm, and then byanother member of the company who sits on the centreboard-well, isunanimously adopted, that she is making for the Rigolets, will passPetites Coquilles by eleven o'clock, and will tie up at the little portof St. Jean, on the bayou of the same name, before sundown, if the windholds anywise as it is.
On the other hand, the master of the distant schooner shuts his glass,and says to the single passenger whom he has aboard that the little sailjust visible toward the Rigolets is a sloop with a half-deck, wellfilled with men, in all probability a pleasure party bound to theChandeleurs on a fishing and gunning excursion, and passes into commentson the superior skill of landsmen over seamen in the handling of smallsailing craft.
By and by the two vessels near each other. They approach within hailingdistance, and are announcing each to each their identity, when the youngman at the tiller jerks himself to a squatting posture, and, from undera broad-brimmed and slouched straw hat, cries to the schooner's onepassenger:
"Hello, Challie Keene."
And the passenger more quietly answers back:
"Hello, Raoul, is that you?"
M. Innerarity replied, with a profane parenthesis, that it was he.
"You kin hask Sylvestre!" he concluded
.
The doctor's eye passed around a semicircle of some eight men, the mostof whom were quite young, but one or two of whom were gray, sitting withtheir arms thrown out upon the wash-board, in the dark neglige ofamateur fishermen and with that exultant look of expectant deviltry intheir handsome faces which characterizes the Creole with his collar off.
The mettlesome little doctor felt the odds against him in the exchangeof greetings.
"Ola, Dawctah!"
"_He_, Doctah, _que-ce qui t'apres fe?_"
"_Ho, ho, compere Noyo!_"
"_Comment va_, Docta?"
A light peppering of profanity accompanied each salute.
The doctor put on defensively a smile of superiority to the juniors andof courtesy to the others, and responsively spoke their names:
"'Polyte--Sylvestre--Achille--Emile--ah! Agamemnon."
The Doctor and Agamemnon raised their hats.
As Agamemnon was about to speak, a general expostulatory outcry drownedhis voice. The _Pique-en-terre_ was going about close abreast of theschooner, and angry questions and orders were flying at Raoul's headlike a volley of eggs.
"Messieurs," said Raoul, partially rising but still stooping over thetiller, and taking his hat off his bright curls with mock courtesy, "Iam going back to New Orleans. I would not give _that_ for all the fishin the sea; I want to see my wife. I am going back to New Orleans to seemy wife--and to congratulate the city upon your absence." Incredulity,expostulation, reproach, taunt, malediction--he smiled unmoved uponthem all.
"Messieurs, I _must_ go and see my wife."
Amid redoubled outcries he gave the helm to Camille Brahmin, andfighting his way with his pretty feet against half-real efforts to throwhim overboard, clambered forward to the mast, whence a moment later,with the help of the schooner-master's hand, he reached the deck of thelarger vessel. The _Pique-en-terre_ turned, and with a little flutterspread her smooth wing and skimmed away.
"Doctah Keene, look yeh!" M. Innerarity held up a hand whose thirdfinger wore the conventional ring of the Creole bridegroom. "W'at yougot to say to dat?"
The little doctor felt a faintness run through his veins, and a thrillof anger follow it. The poor man could not imagine a love affair thatdid not include Clotilde Nancanou.
"Whom have you married?"
"De pritties' gal in de citty."
The questioner controlled himself.
"M-hum," he responded, with a contraction of the eyes.
Raoul waited an instant for some kindlier comment, and finding the hopevain, suddenly assumed a look of delighted admiration.
"Hi, yi, yi! Doctah, 'ow you har lookingue fine."
The true look of the doctor was that he had not much longer to live. Asmile of bitter humor passed over his face, and he looked for a nearseat, saying:
"How's Frowenfeld?"
Raoul struck an ecstatic attitude and stretched forth his hand as if thedoctor could not fail to grasp it. The invalid's heart sank like lead.
"Frowenfeld has got her," he thought.
"Well?" said he with a frown of impatience and restraint; and Raoulcried:
"I sole my pigshoe!"
The doctor could not help but laugh.
"Shades of the masters!"
"No; 'Louizyanna rif-using to hantre de h-Union.'"
The doctor stood corrected.
The two walked across the deck, following the shadow of the swingingsail. The doctor lay down in a low-swung hammock, and Raoul sat upon thedeck _a la Turque_.
"Come, come, Raoul, tell me, what is the news?"
"News? Oh, I donno. You 'eard concernin' the dool?"
"You don't mean to say--"
"Yesseh!"
"Agricola and Sylvestre?"
"W'at de dev'! No! Burr an' 'Ammiltong; in Noo-Juzzy-las-June. CollonnelBurr, 'e--"
"Oh, fudge! yes. How is Frowenfeld?"
"'E's well. Guess 'ow much I sole my pigshoe."
"Well, how much?"
"Two 'ondred fifty." He laid himself out at length, his elbow on thedeck, his head in his hand. "I believe I'm sorry I sole 'er."
"I don't wonder. How's Honore? Tell me what has happened. Remember, I'vebeen away five months."
"No; I am verrie glad dat I sole 'er. What? Ha! I should think so! Ifit have not had been fo' dat I would not be married to-day. You think Iwould get married on dat sal'rie w'at Proffis-or Frowenfel' was payin'me? Twenty-five dolla' de mont'? Docta Keene, no gen'leman h-ought togit married if 'e 'ave not anny'ow fifty dolla' de mont'! If I wasn' ah-artiz I wouldn' git married; I gie you my word!"
"Yes," said the little doctor, "you are right. Now tell me the news."
"Well, dat Cong-ress gone an' make--"
"Raoul, stop. I know that Congress has divided the province into twoterritories; I know you Creoles think all your liberties are lost; Iknow the people are in a great stew because they are not allowed toelect their own officers and legislatures, and that in Opelousas andAttakapas they are as wild as their cattle about it--"
"We 'ad two big mitting' about it," interrupted Raoul; "my bro'r-in-lawspeak at both of them!"
"Who?"
"Chahlie Mandarin."
"Glad to hear it," said Doctor Keene,--which was the truth. "Besidesthat, I know Laussat has gone to Martinique; that the Americains have anewspaper, and that cotton is two-bits a pound. Now what I want to knowis, how are my friends? What has Honore done? What has Frowenfeld done?And Palmyre,--and Agricole? They hustled me away from here as if I hadbeen caught trying to cut my throat. Tell me everything."
And Raoul sank the artist and bridegroom in the historian, and told him.
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