Aunt Di’s temper had been sorely tried. Going out with Mokes the preceding evening to find Iris, who was ostensibly “strolling up and down the wall” in the moonlight with the Captain, she had found no trace of her niece from one end of the wall to the other--from the glacis of San Marco to the flag-staff at the Barracks. Heroically swallowing her wrath, she had returned to the hotel a perfect coruscation of stories, _bon-mots_, and compliments, to cover the delinquency of her niece, and amuse the deserted Mokes; and, to tell the truth, Mokes seemed very well amused. He was not an ardent lover.
“Where do you suppose they are?” I said, _sotto voce_, to John Hoffman.
A sail-boat took us first down to Fish Island, which is really a part of Anastasia, separated from it only by a small creek. The inlet, which is named Matanzas River south of the harbor, and the North River above it, was dotted with porpoises heaving up their unwieldy bulk; the shores were bristling with oysters; armies of fiddler-crabs darted to and fro on the sands; heavy old pelicans, sickle-bill curlews, ospreys, herons, and even bald-headed eagles flew around and about us. We ran down before the wind within sight of the mysterious old fortification that guards the Matanzas channel--mysterious from the total absence of any data as to its origin. “Three hundred and fifty Huguenots met their death down there,” said John Hoffman; “massacred under the personal supervision of Menendez himself. Their bones lie beneath this water, or under the shifting sands of the beach, but the river perpetuates the deed in its name, Matanzas, or slaughter.”
“Is there any place about here where there were no massacres?” asked Sara. “Wherever I go, they arise from the past and glare at me. Between Spanish, Huguenot, and Indian slaughter, I am becoming quite gory.”
The Professor, who was holding on his tall hat with much difficulty in the fresh breeze, here wished to know generally if we had read the remarkable narrative of Cabeça de Vaca, the true discoverer of the Mississippi, who landed in Florida in 1527.
“Alas! the G. W. again,” murmured Sara in my ear. Miss Sharp, however, wanted “so much to hear about it” that the Professor began. But the hat kept interfering. Once Mokes rescued it, once John Hoffman, and the renowned De Vaca suffered in consequence. The governess wore a white scarf around her neck, one of those voluminous things called “clouds.” She took it off, and leaned forward with a smile. “Perhaps if you were to tie this over your hat,” she said, sweetly offering it.