266 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



secure in his morass, and from Key Biscay ne at times his camp- 

 fires could be seen against the midnight sky. 



The only thing that was human on the coast, contrasting with 

 the cruel shore and the more cruel wreckers, was the light-house 

 on the Key. The great charity reared itself between the wilder- 

 ness and the sea, an oriflamme over the strife. It stood on a jut 

 of beach at the lower end of the island, where the palmetto trees 

 dried out in the shale, and only the long sword-grass grew around 

 in scattered spears. A boat with a mast lay on the shingle, and a 

 log canoe, and close by the light stood a little low white house, with 

 two square windows and a door toward the sea, and two square 

 windows and a door toward the bay. A tiny porch covered each 

 doorway, and the little windows were opened and closed by heavy 

 wooden shutters. The only vegetation near the light was one tall, 

 twisted cocoa-tree, whose fronded leaves were so high in air they 

 formed no shelter from the sun, but crackled with a shardy sound, 

 and when the wind blew fresh from sea, from time to time the tree 

 loosened one of its large cocoa-nuts from its stem, letting it fall 

 to the ground with the thud of a cannon-ball. 



The prospect to the eye from the lantern on the tower was a 

 weary stretch of sand islands between the sea and the bay, and 

 beyond the bay the desolation of limitless swamps. Heavy surges 

 beat on the shore, long hot days made the land glimmer in the 

 mirage, and the tower and the little house cowered before the 

 breakers, or danced in the white heat. 



Here Lou Jackson had come, and with her father's brother was 

 living in the house and keeping the light 



It is difficult to explain the motives that in some persons lead 

 to their course of life. Was it necessity, was it adventure that 

 brought her here, or was it a secret longing unconfessed to be near 

 some one of the comrades of our many hunts ? 



Lou had a little foot and it was laced over its high arch with 

 an Indian moccasin. The wrought buckskin became the foot, as 

 it was tapping the uppermost step in the lantern, while its owner, 

 with, her arm on the window-sill, sat looking seaward. Here was 

 her accustomed seat as the sun fired the everglades at his sitting, 

 and left the ocean still as a child tired with its romping, and every 



