from the voluptuous thunder of the grand piano, with its marvelous musical swing.

"Waltzing!" cried the captain. "God help them! God help us all now!... The Wind waltzes to-night, with the Sea for his partner!"...

Some one shrieked in the midst of the revels-some girl, who found her pretty slippers wet. What could it be? Thin streams of water were spreading over the level planking, curling about the feet of the dancers. What could it be? . . .

...

5

10

For a moment there was a ghastly hush of voices, and through that hush there burst upon the ears of all a fearful and unfamiliar sound as of a colossal cannonade, rolling up from the south, with volleying lightnings. Vastly and swiftly, nearer and nearer it camea ponderous and unbroken thunder-roll, terrible as the 16 long muttering of an earthquake.

The nearest mainland-across mad Chaillou Bay to the sea marshes-lay twelve miles north; west, by the Gulf, the nearest solid ground was twenty miles distant. 20 There were boats, yes; but the stoutest swimmer might never reach them now! . . .

25

There rose a frightful cry—the hoarse, hideous, indescribable cry of hopeless fear—the despairing animal-cry man utters when suddenly brought face to face with 2 Nothingness, without preparation, without consolation, without possibility of respite. . . . Some wrenched down the doors; some clung to the heavy banquet tables, to the sofas, to the billiard tables. During one terrible instant -against fruitless heroisms, against futile generosities— raged all the frenzy of selfishness, all the brutalities of a panic. And then—then came, thundering through the blackness, the giant swells, boom on boom!... One crash!—the huge frame building rocks like a cradle,

seesaws, crackles. What are human shrieks now ?—the tornado is shrieking. Another!-chandeliers splinter; lights are dashed out; a sweeping cataract hurls in; the immense hall rises, oscillates, twirls as upon a pivot, crepitates, crumbles into ruin. Crash again! the swirl- › ing wreck dissolves into the wallowing of another monster billow; and a hundred cottages overturn, spin in sudden eddies, quiver, disjoint, and melt into the seething.

...

So the hurricane passed—tearing off the heads of 10 the prodigious waves to hurl them a hundred feet in air, heaping up the ocean against the land, upturning the woods. Bays and passes were swollen to abysses, rivers regorged, the sea marshes were changed to raging wastes of water. ... Lakes strove to burst their boun-1 daries. Far-off river steamers tugged wildly at their cables, shivering like tethered creatures that hear by night the approaching howl of destroyers. . .

20

But the Star remained; and Capt. Abraham Smith, with a long, good rope about his waist, dashed again 2 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 2 at last, and his men drew him aboard senseless, with some beautiful, half-drowned girl safe in his arms. But wellnigh two score souls had been rescued by him, and the Star stayed on through it all.

25

Long years after, the weed-grown ribs of her grace-30 ful skeleton could still be seen, curving up from the sand-dunes of Last Island, in valiant witness of how well she stayed.

LXXIX.

OWI AGAINST ROBIN.

BY SIDNEY LANIER.

FROWNING, the owl in the oak complained him
Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him
Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest.

"From the north, from the east, from the south and

the west,

Woodland, wheat-field, cornfield, clover,

Over and over and over and over,

Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven,

Nothing but robin songs heard under heaven:

How can we sleep?

Peep! you whistle, and cheep! cheep! cheep!
Oh, peep if you will, and buy, if 'tis cheap,
And have done; for an owl must sleep.
Are ye singing for fame, and who shall be first?
Each day's the same, yet the last is worst,
And the summer is cursed with the silly outburst
Of idiot redbreasts peeping and cheeping

By day, when all honest birds ought to be sleeping.
Lord, what a din! And so out of all reason.

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10

15

Have ye not heard that each thing hath its season? 20 Night is to work in, night is for play-time;

Good heavens, not daytime!

"A vulgar flaunt is the flaring day, The impudent, hot, unsparing day,

That leaves not a stain nor a secret untold-
Day the reporter, the gossip of old,
Deformity's tease, man's common scold-
Poh! Shut the eyes, let the sense go numb
When day down the eastern way has come.
'Tis clear as the moon (by the argument drawn
From Design) that the world should retire at dawn.
Day kills. The leaf and the laborer breathe
Death in the sun, the cities seethe,

The mortal black marshes bubble with heat
And puff up pestilence; nothing is sweet

Has to do with the sun: even virtue will taint
(Philosophers say) and manhood grow faint
In the lands where the villanous sun has sway
Through the livelong drag of the dreadful day.
What Eden but noon light stares it tame,
Shadowless, brazen, forsaken of shame?
For the sun tells lies on the landscape-now
Reports me the what, unrelieved with the how-
As messengers lie, with the facts alone,
Delivering the word and withholding the tone.

"But oh, the sweetness, and oh, the light Of the high-fastidious night!

Oh, to awake with the wise old stars

พ

15

The cultured, the careful, the Chesterfield' stars,
That wink at the workaday fact of crime,

25

And shine so rich through the ruins of time
That Baalbec' is finer than London; oh,

To sit on the bough that zigzags low
By the woodland pool,

And loudly laugh at man, the fool

That vows to the vulgar sun; oh, rare,

To wheel from the wood to the window where

31.

A day-worn sleeper is dreaming of care,

And perch on the sill and straightly stare
Through his visions; rare, to sail

Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale—

To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam,
Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream,
Hither, thither, to and fro,

Silent, aimless, dayless, slow

(Aimless? Field-mice? True, they're slain,
But the night-philosophy hoots at pain,
Grips, eats quick, and drops the bones

In the water beneath the bough, nor moans
At the death life feeds on). Robin, pray

Come away, come away

To the cultus of night. Abandon the day.
Have more to think and have less to say.

And cannot you walk now? Bah, don't hop! Stop!
Look at the owl, scarce seen, scarce heard,

O irritant, iterant, maddening bird!"

E

LXXX.

A RUFFIAN IN FEATHERS.

BY OLIVE THORNE MILLER.'

We all know Shakespeare's opinion of the "man that 20 hath no music in himself," although we usually misquote' it. If this be a fair judgment of the human race, how much more justly may it be said of the bird, to whom we look for the sweetest harmonies of nature!

I do not think his best friend will claim that the com- 25 mon house sparrow has the soul of music in him; cer