The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865

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Flor rummaged for her castanets, her tambourine, her ankle-rings,--they
had all been thrown hither and thither,--and at length, as Pluto's torch
flared up, ran tinkling along the turf, into the glow; and her voice
broke, as she danced, into high, clear singing, triumphant singing, that
welled up to the very sky, and made the air echo with sweetness. As she
sang, all her slender form swayed to the tune, posturing, gesturing,
bending now, now almost soaring, while, falling in showers of twinkling
steps, her fleet feet seemed to weave their way on air. What ailed the
girl? all asked;--such a play of emotion of mingled sorrow and ecstasy,
never before had been interpreted by measure; so a disembodied spirit
might have danced, and her dusky hue, the strange glancing lights thrown
upon her here and there by the torch, going and coming and glittering at
pleasure, made her appear like a shadow disporting before them. At
length and slowly, note by note, with wild lingering turns to which the
movement languished, her tone fell from its lofty jubilance to a happy
flute-like humming; she waved her arms in the mimic tenderness of
repeated and passionate farewells; then, still humming, faint and low
and sweet, tripped off again, through the glow, along the turf, into the
shadow, and out of sight; and it seemed to the beholders as if a
fountain of gladness had gushed from the sod, and, playing in the light
a moment, had run away down to join the river and the breaking sea.

Mas'r Henry called after Flor to throw her a penny; but she failed to
reappear, and he tossed it to Pluto instead, and forgot about her.

* * * * *

So, bailed out and stuffed with marsh-grass in its crazy cracks, the old
scow was afloat, the rope was cut, and by midnight it went drifting down
the river. Waist-deep in shoal water, its appropriator had dragged it
round inside the channel's ledge of rocks, with their foam and
commotion, to the somewhat more placid flow below, and now it shot away
over the smooth, slippery surface of the stream, that gave back
reflections of the starbeams like a polished mirror.

Terrified by the course along the rapid river, the little creature
crouched in the bottom of the scow, now breathless as it sped along the
slope, now catching at the edge as in some chance eddy or flow it
swirled from side to side, or, spinning quite round, went down the other
way. But by-and-by gathering courage, she took her station, kneeling
where with the long poles, previously provided, she could best direct
her galley and avoid the dangers of a castaway. Peering this way and
that through the darkness, carried along without labor, spying countless
dangers where none existed, passing safely by them all, coming into a
strange region of the river, she began to feel the exhilaration of
venturous voyagers close upon unknown shores; the rush of the river and
the rustle of the forest were all the sounds she heard; she was speeding
alone through the darks of space to find another world. But, with time,
a more material sensation called her back,--her feet were wet. What if
the scow should founder! She flew to the old sun-dried gourd, and bailed
away again till her arms were tired. When she dared leave the gourd, she
was more calmly floating along and piercing an avenue of mighty gloom;
the river-banks had reared themselves two walls of stone, and over them
a hanging forest showed the heavens only like a scarf of stars caught
upon its tree-tops and shaking in the wind. The deep loneliness made
Flor tremble; the water that upbuoyed her was blackness itself; the way
before her was impenetrable; far up above her opened that rent of
sky,--so far, that she, a little dark waif among such tremendous
shadows, was all unguessed by any guardian eye.

But not for heaven itself bodily before her would she have turned about,
she who was all but free. The thought of that rose in her heart like
strong wings beating onward;--feverishly she followed.

Flor perceived now that the old scow was being borne along with a
strong, steady-motion, unlike its first fitful drift; it brought her
heart to her throat,--for just so, it seemed to her, would a torrent set
that was hastening to plunge over the side of the earth. She remembered,
with a start of cold horror, Zoe's dim tradition of a fall far off in
the river. She had never seen one, but Zoe had stamped its terrors
deeply. Still down in the gloom itself she could see nothing but the
slowly lightening sky overhead, the drowning stars, the rosy flush upon
the dark old tips feathering against a dewy grayness that was like
powdered light. But gradually she heard what conquered all necessity of
seeing,--heard a continuous murmurous sound that filled all the air and
grew to be a sullen roar. It seemed like the dread murmur from the world
beyond the grave, the roar in earthly ears of that awful silence. Flor's
quick senses were not long at fault. She seized her poles, and with all
her might endeavored to push in towards the side and out of the main
channel. Straws would have availed nearly as much; far faster than she
went in shore she drove down stream. It was getting to be morning
twilight all below; a soft, damp wind was blowing in her face; in the
distance she could see, like the changing outline of a phantom, a low
cloud of mist, wavering now on this side, now on that, but forever
rising and falling and hovering before her. She knew what it was. If she
could only bring her boat to that bank,--precipice though it was,--there
must be some broken piece to catch by! She toiled with all her puny
strength, and the great stream laughed at her and roared on. Suddenly,
what her wildest efforts failed to do, the river did itself,--dividing
into twenty currents for its plunge, some one of the eddies caught the
old scow in its teeth and sent it whirling along the inmost current of
all, close upon the shore. The rock, whose cleft the river had
primevally chosen, was here more broken than above; various edges
protruded maddeningly as Flor skimmed by almost within reach. Twice she
plucked at them and missed. One flat shelf, over which the thin water
slipped like a sheet of molten glass, remained and caught her eye; she
was no longer cold or stiff with terror, but frantic to save herself; it
was the only chance, the last; shooting by, she sprang forward, pole in
hand, touched it, fell, caught a ledge with her hands while the fierce
flow of the water lifted her off her feet, scrambled up breathlessly and
was safe, while the scow swept past, two flashing furlongs, poised a few
moments after on the brink of the fall, went majestically over, and came
up to the surface below in pieces.

Flor wrung her hands in dismay. She had not understood her situation
before. There was no escape now, it seemed,--not even to return. Nothing
was possible save starving to death on this ledge,--and after that, the
vultures. She sat there for a little while in a kind of stupor. She saw
the light falling slowly down, as it had fallen millions of mornings
before, and bringing out all blue and purple shadows on the wet old
rock; she saw the current ever hurrying by to join the tumult of the
cataract; she heard the deep, sweet music of the waters like a noisy
dream in her ears. With the shock of her wreck coming at the instant
when she fancied herself so swiftly and securely speeding on towards
safety and freedom, she felt indifferent to all succeeding fate. What if
she did die? who was she? what was she? nothing but an atom. What odds,
after all? The solution of her soliloquy was, that, before the first ray
of sunshine reached down and smote the dark torrent into glancing
emerald, she began to feel ravenously hungry, and found it a great deal
of odds, after all. She rose to her feet, grasping cautiously at the
slippery rock, and searched about her. There was another ledge close at
hand, corresponding to the one on which she stood; she crept forward and
transferred herself, with an infinitude of tremors, from this to that;
there was a foothold just beyond; she gained it. Up and down and all
along there were other projections, just enough for a hand, a foot: a
wet and terrible pathway; to follow it might be death, to neglect it
certainly was. What had she danced for all her days, if it had not made
her sure and nimble footed? Under her the foam leaped up, the spectral
mist crept like an icy breath, the spray sprinkled all about her,
swinging herself along from ledge to ledge, from jag to jag, like a
spider on a viewless thread. Now she hung just above the fall, looking
down and longing to leap, with nothing but a shining laurel-branch
between her and the boiling pits below; now, at last, a green hillside
sloped to the water's edge, sparkling across all its solitude with ten
thousand drops of dew, a broad, blue morning heaven bent and shone
overhead, and having raced the river in the moment's light-heartedness
of glee at her good hap, she sat some rods below, looking up at the fall
and dipping her bleeding and blistered feet in and out of the cool and
rapid-running river.

What was there now to do? To go back,--to go back,--not if she were torn
by lions! That was as impossible for her as to reverse a fiat of
creation. God had said to her,--"Let there be light." How could she,
then, return to darkness? To keep along on land,--it might be weeks
before she reached the quarter of the gunboats,--she would be seized as
a stray, and lodged in jail, and sold for whom it might concern. But
with her scow gone to pieces, what other thing was there to do? So she
sat looking up at the spurting cascades, with their horns of silver
leaping into the light, and all the clear brown and beryl rush of their
crystalline waters, and longing for her scow. If she had so much as the
bit of bark on which the squirrels crossed the river! She looked again
about her for relief. The rainbow at the foot of all the falls, in its
luminous, steady arch, seemed a bridge solid enough for even her little
black feet, had one side of the stream been any surer haven than the
other; and as she sought out its bases, her eye lighted on something
curiously like a weed swaying up and down. She picked her way to it, and
found it wedged where she could loosen it,--two planks still nailed to a
stout crossbar. She floated it, and held it fast a moment. What if she
trusted to it,--with neither sail nor rudder, as before, but now with
neither oar nor pole? On shore, for her there were only ravening wolves;
waterfalls were no worse than they, and perhaps there were no more
waterfalls. She stepped gingerly upon the fragment, seated and balanced
herself, paddled with her two hands, and thought to slip away. In spite
of everything, a kind of exultation bubbled up within her,--she felt as
if she were defying Destiny itself.

When, however, Flor intrusted herself to the stream, the stream received
the trust and seemed inclined to keep it; for there she stayed: the
planks tilted up and down, the water washed over her, but there were the
falls at nearly the same distance as when she embarked, and there they
stayed as well. The water, too, was no more fresh and sweet, but had a
salt and brackish taste. The sun was nearly overhead, and she was in an
agony of apprehension before she saw the falls slide slowly back, and in
one of a fresh succession of wonders, understanding nothing of it, she
found herself, with a strange sucking heave under her, falling on the
ebb-tide as before she had fallen on the mountain-current.

Gentle undulations of friendly hills seemed now to creep by; and through
their openings she caught glimpses of cotton-fields. There was a wicked
relish in her thoughts, as she pictured the dusky laborers at work
there, and she gliding by unseen in the idle sunshine. She passed again
between high banks of red earth, scored by land-slides, with springs
oozing out half-way up, and now and then clad in a mantle of vivid
growth and color,--a thicket of blossoming pomegranate darkening on a
sunburst of creamy dogwood, or a wild fig-tree sending its roots down to
drink, with a sweet-scented and gorgeous epiphyte weaving a flowery
enchantment about-them, and making the whole atmosphere reel with
richness. But all this verdant beauty, the lush luxuriance of
grape-vines, of dark myrtle-masses, of swinging curtains of convolvuli
almost brushing her head as she floated by,--nothing of this was new to
Flor, nothing precious; she could have given all the beauty of earth and
heaven for a crust of bread just then. She thought of the plantation
with a dry sob, but would not turn her face. She could not move much,
indeed, her position was so ticklish; hardy wretch as she was, she had
already become faint and famished: she contrived, resting her arms on
the crossbar, at last, to lay her head upon them; and thus lying,
perpetually bathed by the soft, warm dip and rise of the water, the pain
of hunger left her, and she saw the world waft by like a dream.

Slowly the evening began to fall. Flor marked the bright waters dim and
put on a bloomy purple along which rosy and golden shadows wandered and
mingled, stars looked timidly up from beneath her, and just over her
shoulder, as if all the daylight left had gathered in that one little
curved line, lay the suspicion of the tenderest new moon, like some
boatman of the skies essaying to encourage her with his apparition as he
floated lightly down the west. Flor paid heed to the spectacle in its
splendid quiet but briefly; her eyes were fixed on a great trail of
passion-flowers that blew out a gale of sweetness from their broad blue
disks. She had reached that hanging branch, lavishly blossoming here on
the wilderness, and had hung upon the tide beneath it for a while, till
she found herself gently moving back again; and now she swung slightly
to and fro, neither making nor losing headway, and, fond of such
sensuous delights, half content to lie thus and do nothing but breathe
the delicious odor stealing towards her, and resting in broad airy
swaths, it seemed, upon the bosom of the stream around her. By-and-by,
when the great blue star, that last night at the zenith seemed to
suspend all the tented drapery of the sky, hung there large and lovely
again, Flor, gazing up at it with a confused sense of passion-flowers in
heaven, half woke to find herself sliding down stream at last in
earnest. Her brain was very light and giddy; all her powers of
perception were momentarily heightened; she took notice of her seesawing
upon the ebb and flow, and understood that washing up and down the
shores, a mere piece of driftwood, life would long have left her ere she
attained the river's mouth, if she were not stranded by the way. The
branch of a cedar-tree came dallying by with that, brought down from
above the falls; she half rose, and caught at it, and fell back, but she
kept hold of it by just a twig, and, fatigued with the exertion, drowsed
away awhile. Waking again, after a little, her fingers still fast upon
it, she drew it over, fixed it upright as she could, and spread her
petticoat about it at the risk of utter capsize. The soft sweet wind
beat against the sail as happily as if it had been Cleopatra's weft of
purple silk, and carried her on, while she lay back, one arm around her
jury-mast, and half indifferently unconscious again. She had meant, on
reaching the gunboats,--ah, inconceivable bliss!--to win her way with
her feet; with willowy graces and eloquent pantomime, to have danced
along the deck and into favor trippingly: now, if she should have
strength enough left to fall on her knees, it would be strange. She
clung to the crossbar in a little while from blind habit; the rest of
her body seemed light and powerless. She was neither asleep nor awake
now, suffering nothing save occasionally a wild flutter of hope which
was joy and anguish together; but all things began mingling in her mind
in a species of delirium while she gave them attention, afterwards slid
by blank of all meaning but beauty. The lofty cypresses on the edge
above loomed into obelisks, and stood like shafts of ebony against a
glow of sunrise that stirred down deep in the night; dew-clouds, it
seemed, hung on them, and lifted and lowered when their veils of moss
waved here and there; the glistering laurel-leaves shivered in a network
of light and shade like imprisoned spirits troubling to be free; but
where the great magnolias stood were massed the white wings of angels
fanning forth fragrances untold and heavenly, and one by one slowly
revealing themselves in the dawn of another day. It seemed as if great
and awful spirits must be leading this little being into light and
freedom.

So the river lapsed along, and the sun blazed, and a torture of thirst
came and went as it had come and gone before; and sometimes swiftly,
sometimes slowly, the veering winds and the pendulous tides carried the
wreck and its burden along. Flor had planned, before she started, that
all her progress should be made by night; by day she would haul up among
the tall rushes or under the lee of some stump or rock, and so escape
strange sail and spying eyes. But there had been no need of this, for no
other boat had passed up or down the river since she sailed. If there
had, she could no more have feared it. She stole by a high deserted
garden, the paling broken half away. A tardy almond-tree was stirring
its tower of bloom in the sunshine up there; oranges were reddening on
an overhanging bough, whose wreaths of snowy sweetness made the air a
passionate delight; a luscious fruit dropped, with all its royal gloss,
into the river beside her, and she could not put out a hand to catch it.
She saw now all that passed, but no longer with any afterthoughts of
reference to herself; so sights might slip across the retina of a dead
man's eye; her identity seemed fading from her, as from some substance
on the point of dissolution into the wide universe. She felt like one
who, under an aesthetic influence, seems to himself careering through
mid-air, conscious only of motion and vanishing forms. Cultured uplands
and thick woods peopled with melodies all stole by, mere picture; the
long snake of the river crept through green meadowy shores haunted by
the cluck and clutter of the marsh-hen; from a bluff of the bank broke a
blaze of fire and a yelping roar, and something slapped and skipped
along the water,--a ball from a Rebel battery to bring the strange craft
to,--others followed and danced like demons through the hissing tide
that rocked under her and plunged up and down, tilting and turning and
half drowning the wreck. Flor looked at them all with wide eyes, at the
battery and at the bluff, and went by without any more sensation than
that dazed quiet in which, at the time, she would have gone down to
death with the soft waters laying their warm weight on her head, not
even thanking Fortune that in giving her a slippery plank gave her
something to elude either canister or catapult. Occasionally she felt a
pain, a strange parched pain; it burned awhile, and left her once more
oblivious. She slept a little, by fits and starts; sometimes the very
stillness stirred her. She listened and heard the turtle plumping down
into the stream, now and then the little fishes leaping and plashing,
the eels slipping in and out among the reeds and sedges at the side; far
away in the broad marshes, that, bathed in dim vapor, now lay all about
her, the cry of a bittern boomed; she saw a pair of herons flapping
inland over the gray swell of the water; there were some great purple
phantoms, darkly imagined monsters; looming near at hand:--all the
phantasmagoria drifted by,--and then, caught in the currents playing
forever by noon or night round the low edges of sand-bars and islets,
she was sweeping out to sea like chaff.

The sun was going down, a mere redness in the curdling fleecy haze; the
weltering seas rose and fell in broad sheets of burnished silver, the
monotone of their music followed them, a cool salt wind blew over them
and freshened them for storm. Flor rose on her arm and looked back,--the
breeze roused her; pain and fear and hope rose with her and looked back
too. Eager, feverish, fierce, recollecting and desiring and imprecating,
her dry lips parted for a shriek that the dryer throat had at first no
power to utter. In such wild longing pangs it seemed her heart would
burst as it beat. The low land, the great gunboats, all were receding,
and she was washing out to sea, a weed.--Well, then, wash!

* * * * *

The stem of the boat rose lightly, riding over the rollers; the sturdy
arms kept flashing stroke; the great gulfs gaped for a life, no matter
whose; night would darken down on them soon;--pull with a will!

They heard her voice as they drew near: she had found it again, singing,
as the swan sings his death-song, loud and clear,--singing to herself
some song of her old happy dancing-days, while the spray powdered over
her and one broad wave lifted and tossed her on to the next,--no note of
sorrow in the song, and no regret.

It was but brief delay beside her; then they pulled back, the wind
piping behind them,--nearer to that purple cloud with its black plume of
smoke, up the side and over; all the white faces crowding round her,
pallid blots; one dark face smiling on her like Sarp's; friendship and
succor everywhere about her; and over her, blowing out broadly upon the
stormy wind, that flag whose starry shadow nowhere shelters a slave.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

SUMMER, 1865.

Dead is the roll of the drums,
And the distant thunders die,
They fade in the far-off sky;
And a lovely summer comes,
Like the smile of Him on high.

Lulled the storm and the onset.
Earth lies in a sunny swoon;
Stiller splendor of noon,
Softer glory of sunset,
Milder starlight and moon!

For the kindly Seasons love us;
They smile over trench and clod,
(Where we left the bravest of us,)--
There's a brighter green of the sod,
And a holier calm above us
In the blessed Blue of God.

The roar and ravage were vain;
And Nature, that never yields,
Is busy with sun and rain
At her old sweet work again
On the lonely battle-fields.

How the tall white daisies grow
Where the grim artillery rolled!
(Was it only a moon ago?
It seems a century old,)--

And the bee hums in the clover,
As the pleasant June comes on;
Aye, the wars are all over,--
But our good Father is gone.

There was tumbling of traitor fort,
Flaming of traitor fleet,--
Lighting of city and port,
Clasping in square and street.

There was thunder of mine and gun,
Cheering by mast and tent,--
When--his dread work all done,
And his high fame full won--
Died the Good President.

In his quiet chair he sate,
Pure of malice or guile,
Stainless of fear or hate,--
And there played a pleasant smile
On the rough and careworn face;
For his heart was all the while
On means of mercy and grace.

The brave old Flag drooped o'er him,
(A fold in the hard hand lay,)--
He looked, perchance, on the play,--
But the scene was a shadow before him,
For his thoughts were far away.

'Twas but the morn, (yon fearful
Death-shade, gloomy and vast,
Lifting slowly at last,)
His household heard him say,
"'Tis long since I've been so cheerful,
So light of heart as to-day."

'Twas dying, the long dread clang,--
But, or ever the blessed ray
Of peace could brighten to-day,
Murder stood by the way,--
Treason struck home his fang!
One throb--and, without a pang,
That pure soul passed away.

Idle, in this our blindness,
To marvel we cannot see
Wherefore such things should be,
Or to question Infinite Kindness
Of this or of that Decree,

Or to fear lest Nature bungle,
That in certain ways she errs:
The cobra in the jungle,
The crotalus in the sod,
Evil and good are hers;--
Murderers and torturers!
Ye, too, were made by God.

All slowly heaven is nighing,
Needs that offence must come;
Ever the Old Wrong dying
Will sting, in the death-coil lying,
And hiss till its fork be dumb.

But dare deny no further,
Black-hearted, brazen-cheeked!
Ye on whose lips yon murther
These fifty moons hath reeked,--

From the wretched scenic dunce,
Long a-hungered to rouse
A Nation's heart for the nonce,--
(Hugging his hell, so that once
He might yet bring down the house!)--

From the commons, gross and simple,
Of a blind and bloody land,
(Long fed on venomous lies!)--
To the horrid heart and hand
That sumless murder dyes,--
The hand that drew the wimple
Over those cruel eyes.

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