Six months after the relief of the city, a Chilian sailor belonging to the "Huascar," which was lying off the Battery, stopped to watch a crowd of workmen who were busily engaged in clearing away the ruins of some tenement buildings near Tompkins Square.
The face of one of the workmen had evidently attracted the foreigner's attention, as he gazed at him intently and curiously.
Suddenly there was a sharp detonation. The crowd scattered in all directions. An unexploded shell which had lodged in the building had been struck by a pick in the hands of one of the laborers, and had been fired.
Among the victims was the man at whom he had been so intently looking a moment before. This one he took in his arms and bore him apart from the rest.
Nervously he tore open the dead man's shirt. On the bared breast was a curiously shaped mole.
The sailor sank on his knees in prayer beside the body for a moment. Then he turned, and addressing an officer who, with a file of soldiers, had come upon the scene, and was directing the removal of the dead, he asked in broken English, pointing to the corpse:
The war had found a victim in him who had caused it.
Brant Beach is a long promontory of rock and sand, jutting out at an acute angle from a barren portion of the coast. Its farthest extremity is marked by a pile of many-colored, wave-washed boulders; its junction with the mainland is the site of the Brant House, a watering-place of excellent repute.
The attractions of this spot are not numerous. There is surf-bathing all along the outer side of the beach, and good swimming on the inner. The fishing is fair; and in still weather yachting is rather a favorite amusement. Further than this there is little to be said, save that the hotel is conducted upon liberal principles, and the society generally select.
But to the lover of nature--and who has the courage to avow himself aught else?--the sea-shore can never be monotonous. The swirl and sweep of ever-shifting waters, the flying mist of foam breaking away into a gray and ghostly distance down the beach, the eternal drone of ocean, mingling itself with one's talk by day and with the light dance-music in the parlors by night--all these are active sources of a passive pleasure. And to lie at length upon the tawny sand, watching, through half-closed eyes, the heaving waves, that mount against a dark blue sky wherein great silvery masses of cloud float idly on, whiter than the sunlit sails that fade and grow and fade along the horizon, while some fair damsel sits close by, reading ancient ballads of a simple metre, or older legends of love and romance--tell me, my eater of the fashionable lotos, is not this a diversion well worth your having?