Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/812

792 from its shelving bank, rose a roaring, murmuring sound, which gradually increased in strength and volume, until it had reached its height, when it as slowly descended. It may be represented as follows:

It never advanced or receded, but seemed always in the same spot; and, though I remained there some time, it never ceased, but continued to rise and fall in the manner that I have indicated above. The reader may obtain a better idea of the music if he will place his ear against a telegraph-pole, the timber of which, acting as a sounding-board for the wires that are played upon by the wind, gives forth a strange, tremulous sound, that is an exact counterpart of the "music of Pascagoula"—with this difference, however, that whereas the music of the wires is very wavering and tremulous, that of the water rises and falls with a steady swell.

One evening in October, some years after the event above mentioned, while seated on an old wharf on the banks of the Pascagoula River, idly watching the ever varying and shifting hues of the setting sun, pointing with my finger across the wide extent of marsh that stretched before me to a squall that was raging in the Gulf, I remarked to my companion how distinctly we could hear the roar of the wind, though the storm was so far off. "That," she replied, "is not the storm that you hear, but the mysterious music." Approaching the edge of the wharf upon which we sat, and leaning over, I soon ascertained the truth of her words, for from out of the water came a roaring, rushing sound like that of a mighty wind, that may be represented thus:

The sound, however, was not caused by the wind passing between the wharf and the water, as there was very little breeze where we were, and, though I visited the spot some time afterward, it abated but little. I have been frequently told by fishermen that, when fishing at night on the waters of the Pascagoula, should they hear the mysterious music and make an unusual sound by splashing the water with an oar, or jumping overboard,