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Updated: June 19, 2025
It was a milch cow of some expensive breed; and the owner's brand had been burned upon the horns: a monographic combination of the letters A and P. Feliu said he knew that brand: Old-man Preaulx, of Belle-Isle, who kept a sort of dairy at Last Island during the summer season, used to mark all his cows that way. Strange!
Nearly all had lost some relative or friend in the great catastrophe; the gathering was serious, silent, almost grim, which formed about Feliu.
Carmen became alarmed; she feared that the nervous and delicate child might die in one of those moaning dreams out of which she had to arouse her, night after night. But Feliu, answering her anxiety with one of his favorite proverbs, suggested a heroic remedy:
If we can find her relatives so much the better; but I say, gentlemen, let them come right here to Feliu, themselves, and thank him as he ought to be thanked, by God! That's just what I think about it."
Soon Feliu came to aid her, while his men set to work completing the interrupted preparation of the breakfast. Flannels were heated for the friction of the frail limbs; and brandy-and-water warmed, which Carmen administered by the spoonful, skilfully as any physician, until, at last, the little creature opened her eyes and began to sob.
"No lo creo!" muttered Feliu, looking at the floor; then in a quiet, deep voice he said, pointing to an oar in the corner of the room, "Echame ese remo." She gave it to him. Still reclining upon one elbow, Feliu measured the depth of the water with his thumb nail upon the blade of the oar, and then bade Carmen light his pipe for him. His calmness reassured her.
Before a little waxen image of the Mother and Child, an odd little Virgin with an Indian face, brought home by Feliu as a gift after one of his Mexican voyages, Carmen Viosca had burned candles and prayed; sometimes telling her beads; sometimes murmuring the litanies she knew by heart; sometimes also reading from a prayer-book worn and greasy as a long-used pack of cards.
Miguel remains on the beach; but Mateo, bearing the end of the line, fights his way out, swimming and wading by turns, to the further sandbar, where the water is shallow enough to stand in, if you know how to jump when the breaker comes. But Feliu, nearing the flooded shell-bank, watches the white flashings, knows when the time comes to keep flat and take a long, long breath.
The first few mornings she had to be pulled out almost at once; but after that Feliu showed her less mercy, and helped her only when he saw she was really in danger.
And still the brown arms spin in an ever-nearing mist of spray; and the outer sand-bar is not far off, and there is shouting Mateo, leaping in the surf, swinging something about his head, as a vaquero swings his noose! ... Sough! splash! it struggles in the trough beside Feliu, and the sinewy hand descends upon it. Tiene! tira, Miguel! And their feet touch land again! ...
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