Luck loves to go in mask. It turned out quite as well, after all, that for two days, by kind conspiracy¹ of Constance and Miranda, the boat trip was delayed. In that time no fleet came.

Here at the head of her lovely bay tremblingly waited Mobile, never before so empty of men, so full of women and children. Southward, from two to four leagues apart, ran the sun-beaten, breezy margins² of snow-white sand-hills evergreen³ with weird⁴ starveling pines, dotted with pretty summer homes and light steamer-piers. Here on the Eastern Shore were the hotels: "Howard's," "Short's," "Montrose," "Battle's Wharf⁵" and Point Clear, where summer society had been wont⁶ to resort all the way from beloved New Orleans. Here, from Point Clear, the bay, broadening south-westward⁷, doubled its width, and here, by and by, this eastern shore-line suddenly became its southern by returning straight westward in a long slim stretch of dazzling green-and-white dunes⁸, and shut its waters from the Gulf⁹ of Mexico except for a short "pass" of a few hundred yards width and for some three miles of shoal water between the pass and Dauphin Island; and there on that wild sea-wall's end--Mobile Point--a dozen leagues due south from the town--sat Fort Morgan, keeping this gate, the port's main ship-channel. Here, north-west from Morgan, beyond this main entrance and the league of impassable shoals, Fort Gaines guarded Pelican¹⁰ Channel, while a mile further townward Fort Powell held Grant's Pass into and out of Mississippi Sound, and here along the west side, out from Mobile, down the magnolia-shaded Bay Shell Road and the bark road below it, Kincaid's Battery and the last thousand "reserves" the town's fighting blood could drip--whole platoons of them

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