XII.
February 22d.
… OLD physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them? …
It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and
deadly, had been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind
of robes and tread of myriad dancing feet,—by the crash of
cymbals and heavy vibration of drums! Within a few days there
has been a frightful increase of the visitation, an almost
incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the number of new
cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled,
quadrupled. …
… Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more
thickly peopled streets,—about one hundred paces apart, each
being tended by an Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is
done with the idea of purifying the air. These sinister fires
are never lighted but in times of pestilence and of tempest: on
hurricane nights, when enormous waves roll in from the fathomless
sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in the world, and great
vessels are being driven ashore, such is the illumination by
which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts to save
the lives of shipwrecked men, often at the cost of their
own. *
[_]
* During a
hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian steamer
was disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of
the island by having her propeller fouled. Sorely broken and
drifting rigging had become wrapped around it. One of the crew,
a Martinique mulatto, tied a rope about his waist, took his knife
between his teeth, dived overboard, and in that tremendous sea
performed the difficult feat of disengaging the propeller, and
thus saving the steamer from otherwise certain destruction. …
This brave fellow received the Cross of the Legion of Honor.