第12章

IT was the month of May. Far down the Beautiful River, Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash, Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian boatmen.

It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, from the shipwrecked Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together, Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune;Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by hearsay, Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred farmers On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair Opelousas.

With them Evangeline went, and her guide, the Father Felician.

Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wilderness somber with forests, Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river;Night after night, by their blazing fires, encamped on its borders.

Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plumelike Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current, Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sand-bars Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin, Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans waded.

Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river, Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens, Stood the houses of planters, with negro-cabins and dove-cots.

They were approaching the region where reigns perpetual summer, Where through the Golden Coast, and groves of orange and citron, Sweeps with majestic curve the river away to the eastward.

They, too, swerved from their course; and, entering the Bayou of Plaquemine, Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters, Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction.

Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals.

Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the herons Home to their roosts in the cedar-trees returning at sunset, Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac laughter.

Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and gleamed on the water, Gleamed on the columns of cypress and cedar sustaining the arches, Down through whose broken vaults it fell as through chinks in a ruin.

Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things around them;And o'er their spirits there came a feeling of wonder and sadness,--Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed.

As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies, Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa, So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil, Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it.

But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that faintly Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the moonlight.

It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of a phantom.

Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before her, And every stroke of the oar now brought him nearer and nearer.

Then in his place, at the prow of the boat, rose one of the oarsmen, And, as a signal sound, if others like them peradventure Sailed on those gloomy and midnight streams, blew a blast on his bugle.

Wild through the dark colonnades and corridors leafy the blast rang, Breaking the seal of silence, and giving tongues to the forest.

Soundless above them the banners of moss just stirred to the music.

Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance, Over the watery floor, and beneath the reverberant branches;But not a voice replied; no answer came from the darkness;And, when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was the silence.

Then Evangeline slept; but the boatmen rowed through the midnight, Silent at times, then singing familiar Canadian boat-songs, Such as they sang of old on their own Acadian rivers, And through the night were heard the mysterious sounds of the desert, Far off,--indistinct,--as of wave or wind in the forest, Mixed with the whoop of the crane and the roar of the grim alligator.

Thus ere another noon they emerged from the shades; and before them Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya.

Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty, the lotus Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen.