MIKE AND TIGEB TAIL PLAT CHESS. 407 



The descending sun sullenly set in the everglades, the 

 wind lulled, and a gentle rain fell like a mist. The trees 

 and light-house loomed large in the obscurity, and the 

 white reefed breakers on the reefs, spitting their frothy 

 spume into air, could not be distinguished from the drift- 

 ing scuds that settled down on the sea. A tangled path 

 would the ocean be for the ships that walked its waters 

 that night. 



Lou Jackson shivered on the stone flooring of the 

 tower. The meagre diet of biscuit, the drink of rain 

 water lapped up from the hollows of the stone, the 

 excitement and terror, had begun to work on her sys- 

 tem. Her hand trembled, her eye was sunken and bril- 

 liant, and her mind, excited unduly, ran riot with fancy 

 and vision, and became morbidly sensitive to the slight- 

 est indication of passing events. She knew that some 

 one was near and had fired on the Indians. Who or 

 from where she had not descried. She could see the 

 bodies of the two Indians lying on the sands, and others 

 walking about, and she knew she was still a hunted ani- 

 mal, and, with the instinct of a quarry, hid as best her 

 reason taught her. 



But another thought came to her with the closing day 

 and the darkening sea. She thought of the happy homes 

 on the open main, and her mind took in the children's 

 laugh, and the lighted cabin with its music and books, 

 and the foretop with its hanging sailors prying about for 

 Cape Florida light. Her own mother went to sea when 

 Lou was yet a child ; whether she went down crushed 



