Constance Fenimore Woolson

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Harper and Brothers, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Vol. L—no. 295—1

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GARDEN IN ST. AUGUSTINE.

“The world is far away; the broad pine-barrens
Like deserts roll between;
Be then our mother—take us for thy children,
O dear St. Augustine!”

It was a party of eight, arranged by Aunt Diana. She is only my aunt by marriage, and she had with her a bona fide niece, Iris Carew, a gay school-girl of seventeen, while I, Niece Martha, as Aunt Diana always calls me, own to full forty years. Professor Macquoid went for two reasons—his lungs, and the pleasure of imparting information. It was generally understood that Professor Macquoid was engaged upon a Great Work. John Hoffman went for his own amusement; with us, because he happened to sail on the same steamer. He had spent several winters in Florida, hunting and fishing, and was in his way something of a Thoreau, without Thoreau’s love of isolation. Mr. Mokes went because Aunt Diana persuaded him, and Sara St. John because I made her. These, with Miss Sharp, Iris Carew’s governess, composed our party.

We left New York in a driving January snow-storm, and sailed three days over the stormy Atlantic, seeing no land from the winter desolation of Long Branch until we entered the beautiful harbors of Charleston and Savannah, a thousand miles to the south. The New York steamer went no farther; built to defy Fear, Lookout, and the terrible Hatteras, she left the safe, monotonous coast of Georgia and Upper Florida to a younger sister, that carried us on to the south over a summer sea, and at sunrise one balmy morning early in February entered the broad St. Johns, whose slow coffee-colored tropical tide, almost alone among rivers, flows due north for nearly its entire course of four hundred miles, a peculiarity expressed in its original name, given by the Indians, Il-la-ka—“It hath its own way, is alone, and contrary to every other.”

“The question is,” said Sara St. John, “is there any thing one ought to know about these banks?”

“‘Ye banks and bray-aas of bon-onny Doo-oon,’” chanted Iris, who, fresh as a rose-bud with the dew on it, stood at the bow, with the wind blowing her dark wavy hair back from her lovely face; as for her hat, it had long ago found itself discarded and tied to the railing for safe-keeping.

“The fresh-water shell heaps of the St. Johns River, East Florida,” began the Professor, “should be—should be somewhere about here.” He peered around, but could see nothing with his near-sighted eyes.

“Iris,” called Aunt Diana through the closed blinds of her state-room, “pray put on your hat. Miss Sharp! Where is Miss Sharp?”

“Here,” answered the governess, emerging reluctantly from the cabin, muffled in a brown veil. Sunrise enthusiasm came hard to her; she knew that hers was not the beauty that shines at dawn, and she had a great longing for her matutinal coffee. Miss Sharp’s eyes were faintly blue, she had the smallest quantity of the blondest hair disposed in two ringlets on each side of her face, a shadowy little figure, indistinct features, and a complexion that turned aguish on the slightest provocation. Nevertheless, equal to the emergency, she immediately superintended the tying down of Iris’s little round hat, and then, with her heelless prunella gaiters fully revealed by the strong wind, and her lisle-threaded hands struggling to repress the fluttering veil, she stood prepared to do her duty by the fresh-water shell heaps or any other geological formation. John Hoffman was walking up and down smoking a Bohemian-looking pipe. “There is only one item, Miss St. John, in all the twenty-five miles between the mouth of the river and Jacksonville,” he said, pausing a moment near the bench where Sara and I sat as usual together. “That headland opposite is St. Johns Bluff, the site of old Fort Caroline, where, in 1564, a colony of French Huguenots established themselves, and one year later were massacred, men, women, and children, by the cut-throat Menendez, who took the trouble to justify his deed by an inscription hung up over the bodies of his victims, ‘No por Franceses, sino por Luteranos’—‘Not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans.’ It is a comfort to the unregenerate mind to know that three years later a Frenchman sailed over and took his turn at a massacre, politely putting up a second inscription, ‘Not as Spaniards, but as traitors, thieves, and murderers.’”

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SHOOTING ALLIGATORS ON THE ST. JOHNS.

“That was certainly poetic justice,” I said. “Who would imagine that such a drama had been enacted on that innocent hillside? What terrible days they were!”

“Terrible, perhaps, but at least far more earnest as well as more picturesque than our commonplace era,” said Sara, with her indifferent air. She was generally either indifferent or defiant, and Aunt Diana regarded her with disfavor as “a young person who wrote for the magazines.” Sara was twenty-eight years old, a woman with pale cheeks, weary eyes, a slight frown on her forehead, clear-cut features, and a quantity of pale golden hair drawn rigidly back and braided close around the head with small regard for fashion’s changes. I had met her in a city boarding-house, and, liking her in spite of herself, we grew into friendship; and although her proud independence would accept nothing from me save liking, I was sometimes able to persuade her into a journey, which she always enjoyed notwithstanding the inevitable descriptive article which she declared lurked behind every bush and waved a banner of proof-sheets at her from every sunshiny hill.

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ENTRANCE TO ST. AUGUSTINE.

At Jacksonville the St. Johns bends to the south on its long course through the chain of lakes and swamps that leads to the mysterious Okeechobee land, a terra, or rather aqua incognita, given over to alligators and unending lies. The last phrase was added by Miss Sharp, who laboriously wrote down the Okeechobee stories current on the St. Johns, about buried cities, ruins of temples on islands, rusty convent bells, and the like, only to have them all demolished by the stern researches of the Professor. The Professor was not romantic.

“A buried city on the brim
Of Okeechobee was to him
A lie, and nothing more!”

We found Jacksonville a thriving, uninteresting brick-and-mortar town, with two large hotels, from whence issued other tourists and invalids, with whom we sailed up the river as far as Enterprise, and then on a smaller steamer up the wild, beautiful Ocklawaha, coming back down the St. Johns again as far as Tocoi, where, with the clear consciences of tourists who have seen every thing on the river, we took the mule train across the fifteen miles to the sea, arriving toward sunset at the shed and bonfire which form the railroad dÉpÔt of St. Augustine. This shed has never been seen open. What it contains no one knows; but it has a platform where passengers are allowed to stand before their turn comes to climb into the omnibus. The bonfire is lighted by the waiting darkies as a protection against the evening damps. But they builded better than they knew, those innocent contrabands; their blazing fire only mildly typifies the hilarious joy of the Ancient City over the coming of its annual victim, the gold-bearing Northern tourist.

“But where is the town?” demanded Aunt Diana.

“‘Cross de ribber, mistis. De omnibuster waitin’,” replied a colored official, armed with a bugle. John Hoffman, having given directions as to his trunks, started off on foot through the thicket, with an evening cigar for company. Aunt Diana, however, never allowed desertion from her camp, whether of regulars or volunteers. She had her eye upon Mokes; she knew he was safe; so she called after the retreating figure, “Mr. Hoffman! Mr. Hoffman! We shall not know where to go without you.”

“St. Augustine Hotel,” replied Hoffman, over his shoulder.

“But you?”

“Oh, I never ride in that omnibus;” and the tall figure disappeared among the trees. He was gone; but Mokes remained, eyes and all. Mokes had large eyes; in fact very large, and pale green; but his fortune was large also, and Aunt Diana had a prophetic soul. Was not Iris her dear sister’s child? So she marshaled us into the omnibus, which started off across the thicket, through the ever-present and never-mended mud hole, and out into a straight road leading toward the town through the deep white sand, which, logged over with the red legs of the saw-palmetto, forms the cheerful soil of Eastern Florida. The road was built on a causeway over a river and its attendant salt marshes; on the east side we could see two flags and the two spires of the city rising above the green.

“What river is this?” asked Aunt Diana, as we rolled over a red bridge.

“The San Sebastian,” replied Miss Sharp, reading slowly from her guide-book in the fading light. “‘After three hours and one-half of this torture the exhausted tourist finds himself at the San Sebastian River, where a miserable ferry conveys him, more dead than alive, to the city of St. Augustine.’”

“But here is no ferry,” I said.

“The ‘exhausted tourist,’ however, is here,” observed Sara, wearily.

“The guide-book is at least so far correct that we may reasonably conclude this to be the St. Sebastian—so called, I presume, from the mythical saint of that name,” remarked the Professor, peering out over his spectacles.

“Allow me,” said Miss Sharp, eagerly producing a second small volume from her basket. “This saint was, I believe, thrown into a well—no, that isn’t it. He was cast into a dungeon, and rescued by—by flying dragons—”

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PLAZA AND MONUMENT.

“Oh no, Miss Sharp,” said Iris, as the baffled governess wrestled with the fine print. “Sebastian was the one noted for his arrows; don’t you remember the picture in my hand-book?”

Leaving the causeway, the omnibus entered the town through a gate of foliage, great pride-of-India-trees mingling their branches over the street for some distance, forming a green arched way whose vista made beautiful the entrance to the Ancient City, like the shaded pathway that led to the lovely land of Beulah in the old pictures of Pilgrim’s Progress. On each side we could see a residence back among the trees—one of stone, large and massive, with an orange grove behind, the golden fruit gleaming through the glossy foliage, and protected by a picturesque hedge of Spanish-bayonets; the other a wide house surrounded by piazzas overhung with ivy and honeysuckle, a garden filled with roses and every variety of flower, gray moss drooping from the trees at the gate, and a roof painted in broad stripes which conveyed a charming suggestion of coolness, as though it were no roof at all, but only a fresh linen awning over the whole, suited to the tropical climate. Sara said this, and added that she was sure there were hammocks there too, hanging somewhere in shady places.

“Really, very meritorious,” remarked Aunt Diana, inspecting the houses through her glasses, and bestowing upon them, as it were, her metropolitan benediction.

In the mean while the colored official was gayly sounding his bugle, and our omnibus rolled into the heart of the city—a small square, adorned with a monument. We noticed the upturned faces of the people as we passed; they were all counting. “One, two, three—only seven in all,” said a young girl, with the beautiful hopeless hectic on her cheek. “One, two—seven, only seven,” said a gentleman leaning on the railing near the post-office, with the weary invalid attitude we knew so well, having seen it all along the St. Johns. We learned afterward that one of the daily occupations of the invalids of St. Augustine is to watch this omnibus come in, and count the passengers, invariably announcing the number with a triumphant “only,” as much as to say, “Aha! old town!” thus avenging themselves for their enforced stay. It makes no difference how many come; the number may be up in the hundreds, but still the invalids bring out their “only,” as though they had confidently expected thousands.

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THE BASIN.

“Oh, the water, the blue water!” cried Iris, as we turned down toward the harbor. “Shall I not sail upon you, water? Yea, many a time will I!”

“Are you fond of aquatic excursions, Mr. Mokes?” inquired Aunt Diana, taking out her vinaigrette. “What an overpowering marshy odor!”

“Oh, the dear salt, the delicious salt breath of the sea!” murmured Sara, leaning out with a tinge of color in her cheeks.

No, Mokes was not fond of aquatic excursions in the sort of craft they had about here: if he had his yacht, now!

“VoilÀ,” exclaimed Iris, “an officer! ‘Ah, ah, que j’aime un militaire, j’aime un militaire, j’aime un—’”

“Iris,” interrupted Aunt Di, “pray do not sing here in the street.”

“Oh, aunt, you stopped me right on the top note,” said Iris, glancing down the street after the uniform.

Arrived at the hotel, Aunt Diana began inspecting rooms. Sara wished to go to one of the boarding-houses, and John Hoffman, who met us on the piazza, proposed his. “I have staid there several times,” he said. “The Sabre-boy waits on the table, and a wild crane lives in the back-yard.”

“The crane, by all means,” said Sara, gathering together her possessions. I preferred to be with Sara; so the three of us left the hotel for Hospital Street, passing on our way Artillery Lane, both names belonging to the British occupancy of the venerable little city.

“This is the Plaza,” said John, as we crossed the little square; “the monument was erected in 1812, in honor of the adoption of a Spanish constitution. The Spanish constitution, as might have been expected, died young; but St. Augustine, unwilling to lose its only ornament for any such small matter as a revolution away over in Spain, compromised by taking out the inscribed tablets and keeping the monument. They have since been restored as curiosities. Castelar ought to come over and see them.”

The house on Hospital Street was a large white mansion, built of coquina, with a peaked roof and overhanging balcony. We knocked, and a tall colored youth opened the door.

“The ‘Sabre,’” said John, gravely introducing him.

“Why ‘Sabre?’” I said, as we waited for our hostess in the pleasant parlor, adorned with gray moss and tufted grasses; “to what language does the word belong?”

“Child language,” replied John. “There was a little girl here last year, who, out of the inscrutable mysteries of a child’s mind, evolved the fancy for calling him ‘the Sabre-boy.’ Why, nobody knew. His real name is Willfrid, but gradually we all fell into the child’s fancy, until every body called him the Sabre-boy, and he himself gravely accepted the title.”

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THE SABRE-BOY.

A tap at the window startled us. “The crane,” said John, throwing open the blind. “He too has come to have a look at you.”

An immense gray bird, standing nearly five feet high on his stilt-like legs, peered solemnly at us for some moments, and then stalked away with what seemed very like a sniff of disdain.

“He does not like our looks,” said Sara.

“He takes his time; not for him any of the light friendships of an hour,” replied John. “Cranie is a bird of unlimited aspirations, and both literary and Æsthetic tastes; he has been discovered turning over with his bill the leaves of Tennyson’s poems left lying on the window-sill; he invariably plucks the finest roses in the garden; and he has been seen walking on the sea-wall alone in the moonlight, meditating, no doubt, on the vanities of mankind, with whom he is compelled reluctantly to associate.”

“Do you hear the sound of the breakers, Martha?” said Sara, waking me up in the middle of the night. We had the balconied room up stairs, and the sound of the distant surf came in through the open window in the intense stillness of the night. “It makes me feel young again,” murmured my companion; but I fell asleep and heard no more.

Before breakfast, which is always late in Florida, John Hoffman took us to see a wonderful rose-tree.

“You must have sprays of bloom by the side of your coffee-cups,” he said, “and then you will realize that you are really ‘away down upon the Swannee Ribber.’”

“Do you mean to tell me that the Suwannee is in ambush somewhere about here?” began Sara, in her lead-pencil voice. She always declared that her voice took a scratching tone when she asked a manuscript question.

“Not directly here, seeing that it flows into the Gulf of Mexico, but it is in Florida, and therefore will do for melodious comparisons. You will hear that song often enough, Miss St. John; it is the invariable resource of all the Northern sailing parties on the inlet by moonlight. What the Suwannee means by keeping itself hidden away over in the western part of the State I can not imagine. I am sure we Northerners for years have mentioned that ‘dar’s whar our hearts am turning ebber,’ in every key known to music.”

“The tune has a sweet melody of its own,” I said. “Nilsson herself sang it as an encore last winter.”

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ST. GEORGE STREET.

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TREASURY STREET.

We walked out St. George Street, the principal avenue of the Ancient City, with the proud width of fifteen feet; other streets turning off to the right and the left were not more than ten and twelve feet wide. The old Spaniards built their coquina houses close together, directly upon the narrow streets, so that from their overhanging balconies on opposite sides they could shake hands with each other if so disposed. I do not think they were so disposed; probably they were more disposed to stab each other, if all accounts are true; but the balconies were near enough for either purpose. They had gardens, too, those old Dons, gardens full of fig, orange, guava, and pomegranate trees, adorned with fountains and flowers; but the garden was behind the house, and any portion of it on the street was jealously guarded by a stone wall almost as high as the house. These walls remain even now the most marked feature of the St. Augustine streets.

“What singular ideas!” I said. “One would suppose that broad shaded streets and houses set far back among trees would be the natural resource of this tropical climate.”

“On the contrary, Miss Martha, the Spaniards thought that their narrow walled-in streets would act like so many flues to suck in every current of air, while their overhanging balconies would cast a more reliable shade than any tree.”

“There is something in that,” said Sara. “What a beautiful garden!”

“Yes; that is the most picturesque garden in St. Augustine, in my opinion,” said John. “Notice those two trees; they are date-palms. Later in the spring the star-jasmine covers the back of the house with such a profusion of flowers that it becomes necessary to close the windows to keep out the overpowering sweetness. That little street at the corner is Treasury Street, and part of the walls and arches of this house belonged to the old Spanish Treasury Buildings.”

A few blocks beyond, and the houses grew smaller; little streets with odd names branched off—St. Hypolita, Cuna, Spanish, and Tolomato—all closely built up, and inhabited by a dark-eyed, olive-skinned people, who regarded us with calm superiority as we passed.

“All this quarter is Minorca Town,” said John, “and these people are the descendants of the colonists brought from the Greek islands, from Corsica, and Minorca, in 1767, by a speculative Englishman, Dr. Turnbull. Originally there were fourteen hundred of them, and Turnbull settled them on a tract of land sixty miles south of here, near Mosquito Inlet, where, bound by indentures, they remained nine years cultivating indigo and sugar, and then rising against the tyranny of their governor, they mutinied and came here in a body. Land was assigned to them, and they built up all this north quarter, where their descendants now live, as you see, in tranquil content, with no more idea of work, as a Northerner understands the word, than so many oysters in their own bay.”

“The Greek islands, did you say?” asked Sara. “Is it possible that I see before me any of the relatives of Sappho, she of ‘the Isles of Greece—the Isles of Greece?’”

“Maybe,” said John. “You will see some dark almond-shaped eyes, now and then a classical nose, often a mass of Oriental black hair; but unfortunately, so far, I have never seen the attractions united in the same person. Sometimes, however, on Sunday afternoons, you will meet young girls walking together on the Shell Road, with roses in their glossy hair, and as their dark eyes meet yours, you are reminded of Italy.”

“I have never been in Italy,” said Sara, shortly.

The reflection of an inward smile crossed John Hoffman’s face.

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THE SEA-WALL, ST. AUGUSTINE.

“But where is the rose-tree?” I said.

“Here, madam. Do you see that little shop with the open window? Notice the old man sitting within at the forge. He is a fine old Spanish gentleman and lock-smith, and my very good friend. SeÑor Oliveros, may we see the rose-tree?”

The old man looked up from some delicate piece of mechanism, and, with a smile on his fine old face, waved us toward the little garden behind the shop. There it stood, the pride of St. Augustine, a rose-tree fifteen feet high, seventeen feet in circumference, with a trunk measuring fifteen inches around and five inches through, “La Sylphide,” yielding annually more than four thousand beautiful creamy roses.

“What a wealth of bloom!” said Sara, bending toward a loaded branch.

“‘La Sylphide,’ like other sylphs, is at her best when only half opened,” said John, selecting with careful deliberation a perfect rose just quivering between bud and blossom, and offering it to Sara.

“No; I prefer this one,” she answered, turning aside to pluck a passÉe flower that fell to petals in her hand. An hour later I saw the perfect rose in Iris Carew’s hair.

“Niece Martha,” said Aunt Diana energetically, appearing in my room immediately after breakfast, “I do not approve of this division of our party; it is not what we planned.”

“What can I do, aunt? Sara ought not to pay hotel prices—”

“I am not speaking of Miss St. John; she can stay here if she pleases, of course, but you must come to us.”

“Sara might not like to be left alone, aunt. To be sure,” I continued, not without a grain of malice, “Mr. Hoffman is here, so she need not, he too lonely, but—”

“John Hoffman here?”

“Yes; we came here at his recommendation.”

Aunt Di bit her lips in high vexation; next to Mokes she prized John, who, although a person of most refractory and fatiguing ways, was yet possessed of undoubted Knickerbocker antecedents. She meditated a moment.

“On the whole you are right, Niece Martha,” she said, coming to surface again; “but we shall, of course, keep together as much as possible. For this morning I have planned a visit to the old Spanish fort; Captain Carlyle will accompany us.”

“And who is Captain Carlyle?”

“A young officer stationed here; he introduced himself to the Professor last evening, and afterward mistook me for Mrs. Van Auden, of Thirty-fourth Street. It seems he knows her very well,” continued Aunt Di, with a swallow of satisfaction. (Ah, wise young Captain! Mrs. Van Auden’s handsome face was at least ten years younger than Aunt Diana’s.)

“I saw Iris glancing after a uniform last night as we came around the Plaza,” I said, smiling.

But Aunt Di was true to her colors, and never saw or heard any thing detrimental to her cause.

It was a lovely February morning; the telegraph reported zero weather in New York, but here the thermometer stood at seventy, with a fresh sea-breeze. We stepped up on to the sea-wall at the Basin, where the sail-boats were starting out with pleasure parties for the North Beach. Iris had her Captain; Aunt Diana followed closely arm in arm with Mokes; Miss Sharp, jubilant, had captured the Professor; Sara and I were together as usual, leaving John Hoffman to bring up the rear with his morning cigar.

“The material of this wall,” began the Professor, rapping it with his cane, “is that singular conglomerate called coquina, which is quarried yonder on Anastasia Island; but the coping is, as you will perceive, granite.”

“How delightful to meet the dear old New England stone down here!” exclaimed Miss Sharp, tapping the granite with an enthusiastic gaiter.

“The wall was completed in 1842 at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars, having been built by the United States government,” continued the Professor.

“And why, nobody knows,” added John, from behind.

“To keep the town from washing away, I suppose,” said Sara.

“Of course; but why should the United States government concern itself over the washing away of this ancient little village with its eighteen hundred inhabitants, when it leaves cities with their thousands unaided? The one dock has, as you see, fallen down; a coasting schooner once a month or so is all the commerce, and yet here is a wall nearly a mile in length, stretching across the whole eastern front of the town, as though vast wealth lay behind.”

“The town may grow,” I said.

“It will never be any thing more than a winter resort, Miss Martha.”

“At any rate, the wall is charming to walk upon,” said Iris, dancing along on her high-heeled boots; “it must be lovely here by moonlight.”

“It is,” replied the Captain, with a glance of his blue eyes. He was a marvel of beauty, this young soldier, with his tall, well-knit, graceful form, his wavy golden hair, and blonde mustache sweeping over a mouth of child-like sweetness. He had a cleft in his chin like the young Antinous that he was, while a bold profile and commanding air relieved the otherwise almost too great loveliness of a face which invariably attracted all eyes. Spoiled? Of course he was; what else could you expect? But he was kind-hearted by nature, and endowed with a vast fund of gallantry that carried him along gayly on the topmost wave.

“There is a new moon this very night, I think,” observed Aunt Diana, suggestively, to Mokes.

But Mokes “never could walk here after dark; dizzy, you know—might fall in.”

“Oh, massive old ruin!” cried Iris, as we drew near the fort; “how grand and gray and dignified you look! Have you a name, venerable friend?”

“This interesting relic of Spanish domination was called San Juan de Pinos—” began the governess, hastily finding the place in her guide-book.

“Oh no, Miss Sharp,” interrupted Aunt Diana, who had noticed with disapprobation the clinging of the lisle-thread glove to the Professor’s lank but learned arm. “You are mistaken again; it is called Fort Marion.”

“It used to be San Marco,” said John.

“I vote for San Marco; Marion is commonplace,” decided Iris, sweeping away the other names with a wave of her dainty little glove.

“A magnificent specimen of the defensive art of two centuries ago,” began the Professor, taking up a position on the water-battery, and beginning to point out with his cane. “It is built, you will observe, in a square or trapezium—”

“Let us go up and have a dance on the top,” said Iris.

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OLD FORT SAN MARCO.

“This is very instructive,” murmured Aunt Diana, moving nearer to her niece. “Miss Sharp, pray call your pupil’s attention to this remarkable relic.” For Mokes had seated himself sulkily on one of the veteran cannon which frowned over the harbor like toothless old watch-dogs. There was no objection to an army Antinous as a picturesque adjunct, Aunt Diana thought; but it was well known that there was very little gold in the service outside of the buttons, while here at hand was a Croesus, a genuine live Croesus, sitting sulky and neglected on his cannon!

“Oh, certainly,” said Miss Sharp, coming to the rescue. “Iris, my child, you observe that it is in the form of a trapezoid—”

“Trapezium,” said the Professor—“trapezium, Miss Sharp, if you please.”

“‘That daring young man on a—’” chanted the Captain under his breath, as if in confidence to the southeast tower.

“In the salient angles of the bastions are four turrets or bartizans,” continued the Professor.

“Oh yes; how interesting!” ejaculated the governess, clasping her lisle-threads together. “Partisans!”

“Bar-ti-zans,” repeated the Professor, with cutting distinctness. “The moat, as you will notice, is fortified by an internal barrier, and there is an outer wall also which extends around the whole, following its various flexuses. By close observation we shall probably be able to trace the lines of the abatis, scarp, counterscarp, and fraise, all belonging to the period of mediÆval fortification.”

“The Great Work is evidently to the fore now,” whispered Sara, as we sat together on a second cannon.

“The lunette, now, is considered quite a curiosity,” said the Captain, briskly breaking in. “Miss Carew, allow me to show it to you.”

“Lunette!” said the Professor, with lofty scorn.

“That is what we call it down here, Sir,” replied Antinous, carelessly. “Miss Iris, there, is an odd little stairway there—”

“Lunette!” repeated the Professor again. “But that is an example of the lamentable ignorance of the age. Why, that is a barbacan, the only remaining specimen in the country, and, indeed, hard to be excelled in Europe itself.”

“I have heard it described as a demi-lune,” I remarked, bringing forward my one item, the item I had been preserving for days. (I try to have ready a few little pellets of information; I find it is expected, now that I am forty years old.) The Professor took off his tall silk hat and wiped his forehead despairingly. “Demi-lune!” he repeated—“demi-lune! The man who said that must be a—”

“Demi-lunatic,” suggested John. “Forgive me, Miss Martha; it isn’t mine, it’s quoted.”

We crossed a little draw-bridge, and passed through the ruined outwork, barbacan, lune, or demi-lune, whichever it was. Iris and the Captain had disappeared. At the second draw-bridge we came face to face with the main entrance, surmounted by a tablet bearing an inscription and the Spanish coat of arms.

“It seems to be two dragons, two houses for the dragons, and a supply of mutton hung up below,” said Sara, irreverently making game of the royal insignia of Spain. “Oh dear!” she sighed in an under-tone, “I ought to have all this written down.”

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THE DEMI-LUNE—EXTERIOR.

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COAT OF ARMS.

“Here are the main facts, Miss St. John,” said John Hoffman, taking out his notebook. “I collected them several years ago out of piles of authorities; they are authentic skeletons as far as they go, and you can fill them out with as many adjectives, fancies, and exclamation points as you please.” He walked on, joining the others in the inner court-yard, where the Professor, the old sergeant in charge, the piles of cannon-balls, and all the ruined doorways were engaging in a wild mÊlÉe of information. Left alone, Sara and I read as follows: “Fort here as far back as 1565. Enlarged several times, and finally finished much as it now stands in 1755. The Appalachian Indians worked on it sixty years; also Mexican convicts. The inscription over the entrance says that the fort was finished when Ferdinand Sixth was King of Spain, and Hereda Governor of Florida. It has been many times attacked, twice besieged, never taken. Occupied in 1862 by the Fourth New Hampshire regiment.”

We had read so far when Aunt Diana came out through the sally-port. “Have you seen Iris?” she asked. “The sergeant is going to show us the window through which the Coochy escaped.”

“The Coochy?”

“A cat, I believe; some kind of a wild-cat,” said Aunt Diana, vaguely, as her anxious eyes scanned every inch of the moat and outworks in search of the vanished niece. At length she spied a floating blue ribbon. “There they are, back in that—in that illumined thing.”

“Oh, Aunt Di! Why, that is the demi-lune.”

“Well, whatever it is, do call Iris down directly.”

I went after the delinquents, discovering after some search the little stone stairway, nicely masked by an innocent-looking wall, where was a second stone tablet containing the two dragons, their two houses, and the supply of mutton hung up below. There on the topmost grassy stair were the two young people, and had it not been for that floating blue ribbon, there they might have remained in ambush all the morning.

“Come down,” I cried, looking up, laughingly, from the foot of the stair—“come down, Iris. Aunt Di wishes you to see the escaped cat.”

“I don’t care about cats,” pouted Iris, slowly descending. “I am glad he escaped. Let him go; I do not want to see him.”

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THE PROFESSOR.

“Iris,” began Aunt Di, “pray what has occupied you all this time?”

“The study of fortifications, aunt; you have no idea how interesting it is—that demi-lune.”

“Many persons have found it so,” observed John.

“We could not quite decide whether it was, after all, a demi-lune or a barbacan,” pursued Iris.

“Many persons have found the same difficulty; indeed, visit after visit has been necessary to decide the question, and even then it has been left unsettled,” said John, gravely.

Following Aunt Diana, we all went into a vaulted chamber lighted by a small high-up window, or rather embrasure, in the heavy stone wall.

“Through that window the distinguished Seminole chieftain Coa-coo-chee, that is for to say, the Wild-cat, made his celebrated escape by starving himself to an atomy, squirming up, and squeezing through,” announced the sergeant, who stood in front as torch-bearer.

“Then it wasn’t a cat, after all,” said Iris.

“Only in a Pickwickian sense,” said John.

“Now I thought all the while it was Osceola,” said Sara, wearily.

“The Seminole war—” began the Professor.

“Captain, I am sure you know all about these things,” said Iris; “pray tell me who was this Caloochy.”

“Well,” said Antinous, hesitating, “I believe he was the son of—son of King Philip, and he had something to do with the Dade massacre.”

“King Philip? Oh yes, now I know,” said Iris. “Chapter twenty-seven, verse five: ‘Philip, while hiding at Mount Hope, was heard to exclaim, Alas, I am the last of the Wampanoags! Now indeed am I ready to die.’”

“Oh no, Iris dear,” said Miss Sharp, hastily correcting; “that was the New England chieftain. This Philip was a Seminole—Philip of the Withlacoochee.”

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CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.

“Osceola is in it somewhere, I feel convinced,” persisted Sara; “he is always turning up when least expected, like the immortal Pontiac of the West. There is something about the Caloosahatchee too.”

“Are you not thinking of the distinguished chieftains Holatoochee and Taholoochee, and the river Chattahoochee?” suggested John.

“For my part, I can’t think of any thing but the chorus of that classical song, The Ham-fat Man, ‘with a hoochee-koochee-koochee,’ you know,” whispered the Captain to Iris.

“Don’t I!” she answered. “I have a small brother who adores that melody, and plays it continually on his banjo.”

The next thing, of course, was the secret dungeon, and we crossed the court-yard, where the broad stone way led up to the ramparts, occupied during the late war by the tents of the United States soldiers, who preferred these breezy quarters to the dark chambers below. We passed the old chapel with its portico, inner altar, and niches for holy-water; the hall of justice. The furnace for heating shot was outside, and the southeast turret still held the frame-work for the bell which once rang out the hours over the water.

Standing in the gloomy subterranean dungeon, we listened to the old sergeant’s story—the fissure, the discovery of the walled-up entrance, the iron cage, and the human bones.

“Oh, do come out,” I said. “Your picturesque Spaniards, Sara, are too much for me.”

“But who were the bones, I wonder?” mused Iris.

“Yes,” said Aunt Diana, “who were they? Mr. Mokes, what do you think?”

Mokes thought “they were rascals of some kind, you know—thieves, perhaps.”

“Huguenots,” from John.

“Recreant priests,” from myself.

“The architect of the fort, imprisoned that the secrets of its construction might die with him,” suggested Miss Sharp.

“A prince of the blood royal, inconvenient to have around, and therefore sent over here to be out of the way,” said Iris.

“For my part, I feel convinced that the bones were the mortal remains of ‘Casper Hauser,’ the ‘Man with the Iron Mask,’ and ‘Have we a Bourbon among us,’” said Sara. Mokes looked at her. He never was quite sure whether she was simply strong-minded or a little out of her head. He did not know now, but decided to move a little farther away from her vicinity.

The Professor had left us some time before, and as we came out through the sally-port we saw him down in the moat in company with the fiddler-crabs, an ancient horse, and two small darkies.

“I have discovered the line of the counterscarp!” he cried, excitedly. “This is undoubtedly the talus of the covered way. If we walk slowly all around we may find other interesting evidences.”

But there was mud in the moat, not to speak of the fiddlers, whose peculiarity is that you never can tell which way they are going—I don’t believe they know themselves; and so our party declined the interesting evidences with thanks, and passing the demi-lune again, went down to the sea-wall. Miss Sharp looked back hesitatingly; but Aunt Diana had her eye upon her, and she gave it up.

In the afternoon all the party excepting myself went over to the North Beach in a sail-boat. I went down to the Basin to see them off. “Osceola” was painted on the stern of the boat. “Of course!” said Sara. She longed to look out over the broad ocean once more, otherwise she would hardly have consented to go without me. The boat glided out on the blue inlet, and Miss Sharp grasped the professor’s arm as the mainsail swung round and the graceful little craft tilted far over in the fresh breeze.

AUNT VINY.

“If you are frightened, Miss Sharp, pray change seats with me,” I heard Aunt Diana say. The Captain was not there, but Mokes was; and John Hoffman was lying at ease on the little deck at the stern, watching the flying clouds. The boat courtesied herself away over the blue, and, left alone, I wandered off down the sea-wall, finding at the south end the United States Barracks, a large building with broad piazzas overlooking the water, and a little green parade-ground in front, like an oasis in the omnipresent sand. At the north end of the wall floated the flag of old San Marco, here at the south end floated the flag of the barracks, and the two marked the limits of the Ancient City. The post is called St. Francis, as the foundations of the building formed part of the old Franciscan monastery which was erected here more than two centuries ago. Turning, I came to a narrow street where stood a monument to the Confederate dead—a broken shaft carved in coquina. Little St. Augustine had its forty-four names inscribed here, and while I was reading them over a shadow fell on the tablet, and, turning, I saw an old negro, who, leaning on a cane, had paused behind me. “Good afternoon, uncle,” I said. “Did you know the soldiers whose names are here?”

“Yas, I knowed ’em; my ole woman took car’ ob some ob dem when dey was babies.”

“The war made great changes for your people, uncle.”

“Yas, we’s free now. I tank de Lord dat day de news come dat my chil’en’s free.”

“But you yourself, uncle? It did not make so much difference to you?” I said, noticing the age and infirmity of the old man. But straightening his bent body, and raising his whitened head with a proud happiness in his old eyes, he answered,

“I breave anoder breff ebber sense, mistis, dat I do.”

Farther on I found a woman sitting at the door of a little shop with sweets to sell, and purchased some for the sake of making a mental sketch of her picturesque head with its white turban. “I have not the exact change, but will send it to you to-morrow,” I said, intending to fee the Sabre to execute the errand. “Who shall I say it is?”

“Why, Viny, course. Every body knows Aunt Viny.”

“I want to go over to Africa, Aunt Viny. Can you tell me the way?”

“Certain. You goes—You know St. Francis Street?”

“No.”

“De Bravo’s Lane, den?”

“No.”

“Well, nebber mind. You goes ’long down Bridge Street—you knows dat?”

“No.”

“I declar’ for’t, mistis, I don’t jes know how to tell you, but whenebber I wants to go dar, I jes goes.”

I laughed, and so did Aunt Viny. A colored girl came round the corner with a pail on her head. “Dar’s Victoria; she’ll show yar,” said Aunt Viny.

“Your daughter?”

“Yas. Victoria Linkum is her name, mistis. You see, she was jes borned when Linkum died, and so I named her from him,” said the woman, with simple earnestness.

The funny little Victoria showed me the way across a bridge over the Maria Sanchez Creek.

“Why is it called so—who was this Maria?” I asked. But Victoria Linkum did not know. Africa was a long straggling suburb, situated on a peninsula in shape not unlike the real Africa, between the Maria Sanchez Creek and the Sebastian River; it was dotted with cabins and an easy-going idle population of freedmen, who had their own little church there, and a minister whose large silver-rimmed spectacles gave dignity to his ebony countenance. “They do not quite know how to take their freedom yet,” said a lady, a fellow-boarder, that evening. “The colored people of St. Augustine were an isolated race; they had been family servants for generations, as there were few plantations about here, and, generally speaking, they were well cared for, and led easy lives. They held a great celebration over their freedom; but the truth is they don’t know what to do with it yet, and their ideas take the oddest shapes. The Sabre, for instance, always insists upon going and coming through the front-door; he calmly brings in all his provisions that way—quarters of venison, butter, fish, whatever it may be, no matter who is present.”

“Did you enjoy the afternoon, Sara?” I asked that evening.

“I can not tell you how much. If you could only have seen it—the blue inlet, the island, and the two light-houses, the surf breaking over the bar, and in front the broad ocean, thousands of miles of heaving water, with no land between us and Africa.”

“You absurd child! as though that made any difference.”

“But it does make a difference, Martha. If I thought there was so much as one Canary Island, the sense of vastness would be lost. I stood on that beach and drew in a long breath that came straight from the Nile.”

“And Aunt Diana?”

“Oh, she was happy.”

“Iris smiled upon Mokes, then?”

“Conspicuously.”

“Naughty little flirt! And Miss Sharp?”

“One summer day—with pensive thought—she wandered on—the sea-girt shore,” chanted Sara. “The madam-aunt had the Professor, and kept him!”

“And John Hoffman?”

“Mr. Hoffman said that we ought to be very thankful for the simple, unalloyed enjoyment of the perfect day; how much better it was than the gaudy glare of cities, and so forth.”

“I have noticed that no one ever says that who has not been well through the g. g. aforesaid, and especially the and-so-forth, Sara, my dear.”

The sunny days passed; the delicious, indolent atmosphere affected us all; we wandered to and fro without plan or purpose in a lazy enjoyment impossible with Northern climate and Northern consciences.

“I feel as though I had taken hasheesh,” said Sara.

Crowds of tourists came and went, and liked or liked not the Ancient City according to their tastes.

“You must let yourself glide into the lazy tropical life,” I explained to a discontented city friend; “it is dolce far niente here, you know.”

But the lady did not know. “Very uninteresting place,” she said; “nothing to see—no shops.”

“What! going, Mr. Brown?” I asked one morning.

“Yes, Miss Martha, I am going,” replied the old gentleman, decidedly. “I have been very much disappointed in St. Augustine—nothing to do, no cemeteries to speak of.”

“Stay longer? No, indeed,” said a lady who had made three toilets a day, and found nobody to admire them. “What you find to like in this old place is beyond me!”

“She is not far wrong there,” commented Sara, sotto voce; “it is beyond her; that is the very point of the thing.”

But, on the other hand, all those in search of health, all endowed with romance and imagination, all who could appreciate the rare charming haze of antiquity which hangs over the ancient little city, grew into love for St. Augustine, and lingered there far beyond their appointed time. Crowds of old ladies and gentlemen sunned themselves on the south piazzas, and troops of young people sailed and walked every where, waking up the sleeping woods and the dreaming water with song and laughter. The enterprising tourists came and went with their accustomed energy; they bought palmetto hats and twined gray moss around them; they carried orange-wood canes and cigar boxes containing young alligators. (Why young alligators must always travel North in cigar boxes in preference to any other kind of box is a mystery; but in cigar boxes they always go!) Once a hand-organ man appeared, and ground out the same tune for two whole days on the Plaza.

“And what may be the name of that melody, Miss Iris—the one he is playing now?” asked the Professor, endeavoring to assume a musical air.

“He can only play one tune, and he has been playing that steadily for two days,” replied Iris. “As far as I can make out from the discords it is intended to be Strauss’s Tausend und Eine Nacht.”

But the Professor, an expert in Hebrew, Greek, and Sanskrit, had never condescended to a modern tongue.

“Pray translate it for me,” he said, playfully, with the air of an affable Sphinx.

“It is a subject to which I have given profound thought, Sir,” said Iris, gravely. “It is not ‘A thousand and one nights,’ because the last night only is intended, and therefore the best way to translate it is, I think, ‘The thousand and oneth.’ I will give you some verses on the melody, if you like.”

The Professor liked, and Iris began:

“‘TAUSEND UND EINE NACHT.

“Dancing at a watering-place, you know—two young people waltzing—orchestra playing Tausend und Eine Nacht. You have danced to it a hundred times I dare say.”

No, the Professor had neglected dancing in his youth, but still it might not be too late to learn if—

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Iris, waking up from her vision. “I forgot it was you, Sir; I thought you were—were somebody else.”

So the days passed. Iris strolled about the town with Mokes, talked on the piazza with Hoffman, and wore his roses in her hair (Hoffman was always seen with a fresh rose every morning); she even listened occasionally to extracts from the Great Work. But the sea-wall by moonlight was reserved for Antinous. Thus we dallied with the pleasant weather until Aunt Diana, like a Spartan matron, roused herself to action. “This will never do,” she said; “this very afternoon we will all go over to the island and see the tombs.”

Aunt Di’s temper had been sorely tried. Going out with Mokes the preceding evening to find Iris, who was ostensibly “strolling up and down the wall” in the moonlight with the Captain, she had found no trace of her niece from one end of the wall to the other—from the glacis of San Marco to the flag-staff at the Barracks. Heroically swallowing her wrath, she had returned to the hotel a perfect coruscation of stories, bon-mots, and compliments, to cover the delinquency of her niece, and amuse the deserted Mokes; and, to tell the truth, Mokes seemed very well amused. He was not an ardent lover.

“Where do you suppose they are?” I said, sotto voce, to John Hoffman.

“The demi-lune!” he answered.

A sail-boat took us first down to Fish Island, which is really a part of Anastasia, separated from it only by a small creek. The inlet, which is named Matanzas River south of the harbor, and the North River above it, was dotted with porpoises heaving up their unwieldy bulk; the shores were bristling with oysters; armies of fiddler-crabs darted to and fro on the sands; heavy old pelicans, sickle-bill curlews, ospreys, herons, and even bald-headed eagles flew around and about us. We ran down before the wind within sight of the mysterious old fortification that guards the Matanzas channel—mysterious from the total absence of any data as to its origin. “Three hundred and fifty Huguenots met their death down there,” said John Hoffman; “massacred under the personal supervision of Menendez himself. Their bones lie beneath this water, or under the shifting sands of the beach, but the river perpetuates the deed in its name, Matanzas, or slaughter.”

“Is there any place about here where there were no massacres?” asked Sara. “Wherever I go, they arise from the past and glare at me. Between Spanish, Huguenot, and Indian slaughter, I am becoming quite gory.”

The Professor, who was holding on his tall hat with much difficulty in the fresh breeze, here wished to know generally if we had read the remarkable narrative of CabeÇa de Vaca, the true discoverer of the Mississippi, who landed in Florida in 1527.

“Alas! the G. W. again,” murmured Sara in my ear. Miss Sharp, however, wanted “so much to hear about it” that the Professor began. But the hat kept interfering. Once Mokes rescued it, once John Hoffman, and the renowned De Vaca suffered in consequence. The governess wore a white scarf around her neck, one of those voluminous things called “clouds.” She took it off, and leaned forward with a smile. “Perhaps if you were to tie this over your hat,” she said, sweetly offering it.

But the Professor was glad to get it, and saw no occasion for sweetness at all. He wanted to go on with De Vaca; and so, setting the hat firmly on the back of his head, he threw the scarf over the top, and tied the long ends firmly under his chin. The effect was striking, especially in profile, and we were glad when the landing at Fish Island gave us an opportunity to let out our laughter over hastily improvised and idiotic jokes, while, all unconscious, the Professor went on behind us, and carried De Vaca into the thirteenth chapter.

The island began with a morass, and the boatmen went back for planks.

“‘Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,’” said Iris, balancing herself on an oyster shell, Mokes by her side (the Captain was absent—trust Aunt Diana for that!). “Those verses always haunt one so, don’t they?”

Mokes, as usual in the rear, mentally speaking, wanted to know “what verses?”

“Moore’s Dismal Swamp, of course. Sometimes I find myself saying it over fifty times a day:

Be sure and pronounce ‘swamp’ to rhyme exactly with ‘damp’ and ‘lamp,’” continued Iris; “the effect is more tragic.”

“Certainly,” said Mokes, “far more.”

Passing the morass on planks, we walked down a path bordered with Spanish-bayonets, crossed the creek on a small boat lying there, and entered the enchanted domain. It seemed to be a large plantation run to waste; symmetrical fields surrounded by high hedges of the sour orange, loaded with its fruit; old furrows still visible in the never-freezing ground; every where traces of careful labor and cultivation, which had made the sandy island blossom as the rose. In the centre of a broad lawn were the ruins of a mansion, the white chimney alone standing, like a monument to the past. Beyond, a path led down to a circle of trees with even, dense foliage; there, in the centre, shut out from the glare of the sunshine, alone in the greenery, stood a solitary tomb, massive and dark, without date or inscription save what the little fingers of the lichen had written. We stood around in silence, and presently another pleasure party came down the path and joined us—gay young girls with sprays of orange blossoms in their hats, young men carrying trailing wreaths of the yellow jasmine. Together we filled the green tree circle; and one of the strangers, a fair young girl, moved by a sudden impulse, stepped forward and laid a spray of jasmine on the lonely tomb.

“‘Et in Arcadia ego,’” said John, who stood behind me. “Do you remember that picture of the gay flower-decked Arcadians coming through a forest with song and laughter, and finding there a solitary tomb with that inscription? This is Arcadia, and we too have found the tomb.”

Strolling on down the island, we came to a long arched walk of orange-trees trained into a continuous arbor.

“What a lovely wild old place!” said Iris. “What is its history? Does any body know?”

“It has not been occupied for nearly a century, I am told,” said Aunt Diana.

“Who would have expected traces of such careful cultivation down on this remote island?” I said, as a new vista of symmetrical fields opened out on one side.

“There you make the common mistake of all Northerners, Miss Martha,” said John Hoffman. “Because the country is desolate and thinly settled, you suppose it to be also wild and new, like the Western States and Territories. You forget how long this far peninsula has been known to the white man. These shores were settled more than a century before Plymouth or Jamestown, and you can scarcely go out in any direction around St. Augustine without coming upon old groves of orange and fig trees, a ruined stone wall, or fallen chimney. Poor Florida! she is full of deserted plantations.”

“But does any one know the story of the place?” repeated Iris, who preferred any diversion to Mokes’s solo.

“Why insist upon digging it up?” said Sara. “Let it rest in the purple haze of the past. The place has not been occupied for a hundred years. We see this beautiful orange walk; yonder is a solitary tomb. Can we not fill out these shadowy borders without the aid of prosaic detail?”

The Professor, who had been digging up vicious-looking roots, now joined us. “When I was here some years ago,” he began, in his loud, distinct tones, “I made a point of investigating—”

“Let us make a point of leaving,” murmured Sara, taking me off down the walk. John Hoffman followed, so did Iris, and consequently Mokes, likewise Aunt Di. Miss Sharp longed to stay, but did not quite dare; so she compromised by walking on, as far as her feet were concerned, all the rest of her, however, looking back with rapt attention. “Yes? How interesting! Pray go on.”

The Professor went on; we heard his voice in the rear. “It was called El Verjel (the garden), and its orange grove was the glory of St. Augustine—”

“Hurry!” whispered Sara, “or we shall hear the whole.”

We hastened out into the sunny meadows, catching “killed by lightning”—“1790”—“he sent his oranges to London;” then the voice died away in the distance. John Hoffman kept with us, and we wandered on, looking off over the Matanzas, sweeping on to the south, dotted with sails, and the black dug-outs of the Minorcan fishermen anchored along shore. The tide was out, and the coast-line bare and desolate.

“Nothing that H. H. ever wrote excels her ‘When the tide comes in,’” I said. “Do you remember it?

and that final question,

“You believe, then, that love has its high and low tides?” said John, lighting a fresh cigar.

“Low tide,” said Sara, half to herself—“low tide always.” She was looking at the bare shore with a sadness that had real roots down somewhere.

“Very low, I suppose,” commented John; “every thing is always very high or very low with you ladies. You are like the man who had a steamer to sell. ‘But is it a low-pressure engine?’ asked a purchaser. ‘Oh yes, very low,’ replied the owner, earnestly.”

Sara flushed, and turned away.

“Do you do it on purpose, I wonder?” I thought, with some indignation, as I glanced at John’s imperturbable face. I was very tender always with Sara’s sudden little sadnesses. I think there is no one who comprehends a girl passing through the shadow-land of doubt and vague questioning that lies beyond youth so well as the old maid who has made the journey herself, and knows of a surety that there is sunshine beyond. Obeying a sudden impulse, I asked the question aloud. Sara was in front of us, out of hearing.

“Do I do what on purpose, Miss Martha? Tell anecdotes?”

“You know what I mean very well, Mr. Hoffman. Her sadness was real for the moment; why wound her?”

“Wound her! Is a woman wounded by a trifling joke?”

“But her nature is peculiarly sensitive.”

“You mistake her, I think, Miss Martha. Sara St. John is coated over with pride like an armor; she is invulnerable.”

I could not quite deny this, so I veered a little. “She is so lonely, Mr. Hoffman!” I said, coming round on another tack.

“Because she so chooses.”

“It may not be ‘choose.’ Mr. Hoffman, why should you not try to—” Here I looked up and caught the satirical smile on my companion’s face, and, vexed with myself, I stopped abruptly.

“You are a good friend, Miss Martha.”

“She has need of friends, poor girl!”

“Why poor?”

“In the first place she is poor, literally.”

“Poverty is comparative. Who so poor as Mokes with his millions?”

“Then she is poor in the loss of her youth; she is no longer young, like Iris.”

“‘Oh, saw ye not fair Iris going down into the west’—a minute ago,” said John, glancing after a vanishing blue ribbon. A suspicion, and not for the first time either, crossed my mind. “So it is little Iris, after all,” I thought. “Oh, man, man, how can you be so foolish!” Then aloud, “I must go forward and join the others,” I said, with a tinge of annoyance I could not conceal. John looked at me a moment, and then strode forward. I watched him; he joined Sara. I followed slowly. “There is a second tomb farther down the island,” he was saying as I came up; “it is even more venerable than the first; a square inclosure of coquina, out of which grows an ancient cedar-tree which was probably planted, a mere slip, after the grave was closed. Will you walk that way with me, Miss St. John?” And with bared head he stood waiting for her answer.

“Thank you,” said Sara, “I do not care to walk farther.”

He bowed and left her.

Half an hour later, as Sara and I were strolling near the far point of the island, we caught through the trees a glimpse of Iris seated in the low, crooked bough of a live-oak, and at her feet John Hoffman, reclining on the white tufted moss that covered the ground. “Absurd!” I said, angrily.

“Why absurd? Is she not good and fair? To me there is something very bewitching about Iris Carew. She is the most graceful little creature; look at her attitude now, swinging in that bough! and when she walks there is a willowy suppleness about her that makes the rest of us look like grenadiers. Then what arch dark eyes she has, what a lovely brunette skin, the real brune! Pretty, graceful little Iris, she is always picturesque, whatever she does.”

“But she is a child, Sara, while he—”

“Is John Hoffman,” replied Sara, with a little curl of her lip. “Come, Martha, I want to show you some Arcadians.”

“Arcadians?”

“Yes. Not the people who found the tomb in the forest, but some real practical Arcadians, who enjoy life as Nature intended.”

“Who knows what she intended? I am sure I don’t,” I said, crossly.

Near the ruins of the mansion we found the Arcadians, a young man with his wife and child, living in a small out-building which might have been a cow-house. It was not more than ten feet square, the roof had fallen in, and was replaced by a rude thatch of palmetto leaves; there was no window of any kind, no floor save the sand, and for a door only an old coverlet hung up and tied back like a curtain. Within we could see a low settle-bed with some ragged coverings, a stool, powder, shot, and fishing tackle hung up on one side, and an old calico dress on the other; without was a table under a tree, a cupboard hung on the outside of the house, containing a few dishes, and the ashes of the family fire near at hand. Two thin dogs and a forlorn calf (oh, the cadaverous cattle of Florida!) completed the stock of this model farm.

“They eat and cook out-of-doors all the year round, I suppose. What a home! Did any one ever see such poverty,” I said, “and such indolence? They do not even take the trouble to make a door.”

“What do they want of a door? There is nothing to keep out but Nature. And as for poverty, they seem happy enough,” replied Sara.

They did. The woman came to meet us with her brown baby, and the young husband took his gun and went out to find his supper—partridge from the wood, probably, and oysters from the beach. They had lived there three years, the woman said. Her name was Anita, her husband’s Gaspar, the baby was Rafaello. No, they did not work much. They had a few sweet-potatoes yonder, and sometimes she braided palmetto and took it down to the city to sell. Gaspar had a dug-out, and sometimes he sold fish, but not often. They had every thing they wanted. Did she know any thing about this old place? No, she did not. Couldn’t she find out? Yes, she supposed she could; her people had lived along the Matanzas for years; but she never took the trouble to ask. Should she send that brown baby to school when it grew larger?

“To school?” And the young mother laughed merrily, showing even, white teeth, and tossing up the little Rafaello until he crowed with glee. “None of us-uns goes to school, my lady.”

“But what will he do, then?”

“Do? Why, live here or somewhars, jes as we’re doing,” replied Anita. “That’s all he wants.”

“A great many people come over here in the season, do they not?” I asked, abandoning my educational efforts.

“Yes, pleasant days folks come.”

“Do you think the ladies are pretty?”

“Sometimes,” replied Anita, with a critical air.

“Wouldn’t you like to look as they do?”

“Oh no,” replied our “nut-brown mayde,” with a broad, contented smile.

“And the gentlemen. What do you think of them?”

“Eh? the mens, did you say? Oh, they’re so wimpsy!” And bursting into a peal of laughter, the mother tossed up the baby again until he too joined in the merriment over the “wimpsyness,” whatever that was, of the tourists from the North.

“Do you know, I feel as though Calhoun himself was laughing at me from his grave,” I said, as we walked away. “Your Arcadians, Sara, have made me more conscious of my bodily defects than a whole regiment of fine city people. What a shape that woman had! what eyes! what teeth! But what did she mean by wimpsy?”

“Very likely she meant Mokes. He is certainly limpsy; then why not wimpsy? There he is, by-the-way.”

So he was, sitting with (of all persons in the world!) the governess. “In 1648 there were three hundred householders resident in St. Augustine, Mr. Mokes,” we heard her say as we drew near.

“Must have wanted to—beast of a place,” commented Mokes. He looked up doubtfully as we went by, but not having decided exactly how strong-minded Sara might be, he concluded not to venture; the governess at least never posed a fellow with startling questions.

“Poor Mokes!” I said.

“Oh yes, very poor!”

“I was thinking of his forlorn love affair, Sara.”

“Iris may still be Mrs. Mokes.”

“Oh no!”

“Do not be too sure, Martha. In my opinion—nay, experience—a young girl is far more apt to be dazzled by wealth than an older woman. The older woman knows how little it has to do with happiness, after all; the young girl has not yet learned that.”

The Osceola carried us northward again, and then around into a creek where was the landing-place of Anastasia Island.

“This Anastasia was a saint,” I said, as we strolled up the path leading to the new light-house. “She belonged to the times of Diocletian, and we know where to find her, which is more than I can say of Maria Sanchez over in the village.”

“And who is this Maria Sanchez?” inquired Aunt Diana, in her affable, conversational tone. Aunt Di always asked little questions of this kind, not because she cared to know, but because she esteemed it a duty to keep the conversation flowing.

“Ah! that is the question, aunt—who was she? There are persons of that name in the town now, but this creek bore the name centuries ago; wherefore, nobody knows. Maria is a watery mystery.”

The new light-house, curiously striped in black and white like a barber’s pole, rose from the chaparral some distance back from the beach, one hundred and sixty feet into the clear air; there was nothing to compare it with, not a hill or rise of land, not even a tall tree, and therefore it looked gigantic, a tower built by Titans rather than men.

“Let us go up to the top,” said Iris, peeping within the open door. We hesitated: one hundred and sixty feet of winding stairway may be regarded as a crucial test between youth and age.

“Oh, Aunt Di, not you, of course! nor you either, Miss Sharp, nor the Professor, nor Cousin Martha,” said Iris, heedlessly. “You can all sit here comfortably in the shade while the rest of us run up; we shall not stay long.”

Upon this instantly we all arose and began to climb up those stairs. Sit there comfortably in the shade, indeed! Not one of us!

The view from the summit seemed wonderfully extensive—inland over the level pine-barrens to the west; the level blue sea to the east; north, the silver sands of the Florida main-land; and south, the stretch of Anastasia Island, its backbone distinctly visible in the slope of the low green foliage.

“How soft and blue the ocean looks!” said Iris. “I should like to sail away to the far East and never come back.”

“If I only had my yacht here now, Miss Iris!” said Mokes, gallantly. “But we should want to come back some time, you know. Egypt and the Nile—well, they are dirty places; although I—er—I always carry every thing with me, it is almost impossible to live properly there.”

We all knew what Mokes meant; he meant his portable bath. He aped English fashions, and was always bringing into conversation that blessed article of furniture, which accompanied him every where in charge of his valet. So often indeed did he allude to it that we all felt, like the happy-thought man, inclined to chant out in chorus, to the tune of the Mistletoe Bough,

“You have, I am told, Mr. Mokes, the finest yacht in this country,” said John Hoffman.

Well, it wasn’t a bad one, Mokes allowed.

“I don’t know which I would rather own,” pursued John, “your yacht or your horses. Why, Sir, your horses are the pride of New York.”

I glanced at John; he was as grave as a judge. Mokes glowed with satisfaction. Iris listened with downcast eyes, and Aunt Diana, who had at last reached the top stair, gathered her remaining strength to smile upon the scene. Mokes came out of his shell entirely, and graciously offered his arm to Aunt Diana for the long descent.

But Aunt Di could—“excuse me, Mr. Mokes”—really hold on “better by the railing;” but “perhaps Iris—”

Yes, Iris could, and did.

John looked after the three as they wound down the long spiral with a smile of quiet amusement.

“All alike,” he said to me, with the “old-comrade” freedom that had grown up between us. “La richesse est toujours des femmes le grand amour, Miss Martha.”

“Don’t quote your pagan French at me,” I answered, retreating outside, where on the little platform I had left Sara gazing out to sea. She was looking down now, leaning over the railing as if measuring the dizzy height.

“If I should throw myself over,” she said, as I came up, “my body would go down; but where would my soul go, I wonder?”

“Don’t be morbid, Sara.”

“Morbid? Nonsense! That is a duty word, a red flag which timid people always hang out the moment you near the dangerous ground of the great hereafter. We must all die some time, mustn’t we? And if I should die now, what difference would it make? The madam-aunt would think me highly inconsiderate to break up the party in any such way; Iris would shed a pretty tear or two; Mokes would really feel relieved; the Professor would write an account of the accident for the Pith-and-Ponder Journal, with a description of the coquina quarry thrown in; Miss Sharp would read it and be ‘so interested;’ and even you, Martha, would scarcely have the heart to wish me back again.” Tears stood in her eyes as she spoke, her face had softened with the sad fancies she had woven, and for the moment the child-look came back into her eyes, as it often comes with tears.

“And John Hoffman,” I said, involuntarily. I knew he was still within hearing.

“Oh, he would decorously take his prayer-book and act as chief mourner, if there was no one else,” replied Sara, with a mocking little laugh.

“Come down!” called Aunt Di’s voice from below; “we are going to the coquina quarry.”

I lingered a moment that John might have full time to make his escape, but when at length we went inside, there he was, leaning on the railing; he looked full at Sara as she passed, and bowed with cold hauteur.

“It is useless to try and make any body like her,” I thought as I went down the long stairway. “Why is it that women who write generally manage to make themselves disagreeable to all mankind?”

We found Miss Sharp seated on a stair, half-way down, loaded with specimens, shells, and the vicious-looking roots of Fish Island.

“I am waiting for Professor Macquoid,” she explained, graciously. “He came as far as this, and then remembering a rare plant he had forgotten to take up, he went back for it, leaving the other specimens with me. I have no doubt he will soon return; but pray do not wait.”

We did not; but left her on the stair.

Sara and I strolled over to the old light-house—a weather-beaten tower standing almost in the water, regularly fortified with walls, angles, and loop-holes—a lonely little stronghold down by the sea. It was a picturesque old beacon, built by the Spaniards a long time ago as a look-out; when the English came into possession of Florida, in 1763, they raised the look-out sixty feet higher, and planted a cannon on the top, to be fired as a signal when a vessel came in sight. The light that we had so often watched flashing and fading in the twilight as we walked on the sea-wall was put in still later by the United States government; in old times a bonfire was lighted on top every night.

“I like this gray old beacon better than yonder tall, spying, brand-new tower,” I said. “This is a drowsy old fellow, who sleeps all day and only wakes at night, as a light-house should, whereas that wide-awake striped Yankee over there is evidently keeping watch of all that goes on in the little city. Iris must take care.”

“Do you think he can spy into the demi-lune?” said Sara, smiling.

At the coquina quarry we found the Professor, scintillating all over with enthusiasm. “A most singular conglomerate of shells cemented by carbonate of lime,” he said, putting on a stronger pair of glasses—“a recent formation, evidently, of the post-tertiary period. You are aware, I suppose, that it is found nowhere else in the world? It is soft, as you see, when first taken out, but becomes hard by exposure to the air.” Knee-deep in coquina, radiating information at every pore, he stood—a happy man!

“And Miss Sharp?” I whispered.

“On the stair,” replied Sara.

Not until we were on our way back to the sail-boat was the governess relieved from her vigil; then she heard us passing, and came out of her own accord, loaded with the relics.

“Why, Miss Sharp, have you been in the light-house all this time?” asked Aunt Diana.

The governess murmured something about a “cool and shady place for meditation,” but bravely she held on to her relics, and was ready to hear every thing about coquina and the post-tertiary, as well as a little raid into the glacial theory, with which the Professor entertained us on the way to the landing.

“Do you hear the drum-fish drumming down below?” said John, as the Osceola sailed merrily homeward. We listened, and caught distinctly the muffled tattoo—the marine band, as Iris said.

“I came across an old dilapidated book, written, I suppose, fifty years ago,” said John. “Here is an extract about the old light-house and the drum-fish, which I copied from the coverless pages: ‘We landed on Anastasia Island, and walked to the old light-house. Here a Spaniard lives with his family, the eldest, a beautiful dark-eyed little muchacha (young girl), just budding into her fourteenth year. Here, in this little fortified castle, SeÑor Andro defies alike the tempests and the Indians. Having spent an hour or two in the hospitable tower, and made a delicious repast on the dried fish which garnishes his hall from end to end, eked out with cheese and crackers and a bottle or two of Frontignac, besides fruit and brandy, we bade farewell to the pretty Catalina and the old tower, for it was time to go drumming. Fair Anastasia, how delightful thy sunny beach and the blue sea that kisses buxomly thy lonely shore! Before me rolls the eternal ocean, mighty architect of the curious masonry on which I stand, the animal rock which supports the vegetable soil. How many millions upon millions of these shell-fish must have been destroyed to form a substratum for one rood of land! But it was time for drumming, the magic hour (between the fall of the ebb and the rise of the flood) for this delightful sport, whose superior enchantment over all others in the Walton line I had so often heard described with rapture—the noble nature of the fish, his size and strength, the slow approach which he makes at first to the hook, like a crab; then the sudden overwhelming transport that comes over you when you feel him dashing boldly off with the line is comparable to nothing save pulling along a buxom lass through a Virginia reel.’ What do you say to that, Mokes? That part about the Virginia reel, now, is not to be despised.”

But Mokes had never danced the Virginia reel—had seen it once at a servants’ ball, he believed.

“What are you doing, Sara?” I said, sleepily, from the majestic old bed, with its high carved posts and net curtains. “It is after eleven; do put up that pencil, at least for to-night.”

“I am amusing myself writing up the sail this afternoon. Do you want to hear it?”

“If it isn’t historical.”

“Historical! As though I could amuse myself historically!”

“It mustn’t be tragedy either: harrowing up the emotions so late at night is as bad as mince-pie.”

“It is light comedy, I think—possibly farce. Now listen: it begins with an ‘Oh’ on a high note, sliding down this way: ‘Oh-o-o-o-o-h!’

“MATANZAS RIVER.

After I had fallen asleep, haunted by the marching time of Sara’s verse, I dreamed that there was a hand tapping at my chamber door, and, half roused, I said to myself that it was only dreams, and nothing more. But it kept on, and finally, wide awake, I recognized the touch of mortal fingers, and withdrew the bolt. Aunt Diana rushed in, pale and disheveled in the moonlight.

“What is the matter?” I exclaimed.

“Niece Martha,” replied Aunt Di, sinking into a chair, “Iris has disappeared!”

Grand tableau, in which Sara took part from the majestic bed.

“She went to her room an hour ago,” pursued Aunt Di; “it is next to mine, you know, and I went in there just now for some camphor, and found her gone!”

“Dear, dear! Where can the child have gone to?”

“An elopement,” said Aunt Di, in a sepulchral tone.

“Not Mokes?”

“No. If it had been Mokes, I should not have—that is to say, it would have been highly reprehensible in Iris, but—However, it is not Mokes; he is sound asleep in his room; I sent there to see.” And Aunt Diana betook herself to her handkerchief.

“Can it be John Hoffman?” I mused, half to myself.

“Mr. Hoffman went up to his room some time ago,” said Sara.

“And pray how do you know, Miss St. John?” asked Aunt Di, coming out stiffly from behind her handkerchief. “Mr. Hoffman would have been very glad to—and, as it happens, he is not in his room at all.”

“Then of course—Oh, irretrievable folly!” I exclaimed, in dismay.

“But it isn’t John Hoffman, I tell you,” said Aunt Diana, relapsing into dejection again. “He has gone out sailing with the Van Andens; I heard them asking him—a moonlight excursion.”

Then the three of us united: