he had recalled it confusedly hitherto, and made no effort to live it again.  Knox leaned forward eagerly, dropping his pipe; Alexander talked rapidly and brilliantly, finally springing to his feet, and concluding with an outburst so eloquent that his audience cowered and covered his face with his hands.  For some moments Knox sat thinking, then he rose and pushed a small table in front of Alexander, littering it with pencils and paper, in his untidy fashion.

“My boy,” he said, “you’re still hot with your own eloquence.  Before you cool off, I want you to write that down word for word as you told it to me.  If it twisted my very vitals, it will give a similar pleasure to others.  ’Twould be selfish to deny them.  When it’s done, I’ll send it to Tiebout.  Now I’ll leave you, and if my niggers are still too demoralized to cook supper for you, I’ll do it myself.”

Alexander, whose brain, in truth, felt on fire, for every nerve had leapt to the recreating of that magnificent Force that had gathered an island into the hollow of its hand, crushed, and cast it back to the waters, dashed at the paper and wrote with even more splendour than he had spoken.  When he had finished, he was still so excited that he rushed from the house and walked till the hideous sights and smells drove him home.  He was quivering with the ecstasy of birth, and longed for another theme, and hours and days of hot creation.  But he was to be spared the curse of the “artistic temperament.”

XI

The description of the hurricane went to St. Christopher by sloop two days later (there were no English papers on St. Croix), and was not heard from for two weeks.  Meanwhile Alexander forgot it, as writers have a way of forgetting their infants of enthusiastic delivery.  There was much to do on St. Croix.  The negroes were put at once to rebuilding and repairing, and masters, as well as overlookers and agents, were behind them from morning till night.  Mr. Mitchell had not returned, and Alexander was obliged to take charge of his estates.  When he was not galloping from village to village and mill to mill, driving the sullen blacks before him, or routing them out of ruins and hollows, where they huddled in a demoralized stupor, he was consoling his aunt for the possible sacrifice of Mr. Mitchell to the storm.  Alexander was quite confident that the hurricane had spared Tom Mitchell, whomsoever else it may have devoured, but his logic did not appeal to his aunt, who wept whenever he was there to offer his arm and shoulder.  At other times she bustled about among her maids, who were sewing industriously for the afflicted.