Part 6

After winter has fairly set in, the lonely dwellers at the Isles of Shoals find life quite as much as they can manage, being so entirely thrown upon their own resources that it requires all the philosophy at their disposal to answer the demand. In the village, where several families make a little community, there should be various human interests outside each separate fireside; but of their mode of life I know little. Upon three of the islands live isolated families, cut off by the “always wind-obeying deep” from each other and from the mainland, sometimes for weeks together, when the gales are fiercest, with no letters nor intercourse with any living thing. Some sullen day in December the snow begins to fall, and the last touch of desolation is laid upon the scene; there is nothing any more but white snow and dark water, hemmed in by a murky horizon; and nothing moves or sounds within its circle but the sea harshly assailing the shore, and the chill wind that sweeps across. Toward night the wind begins to rise, the snow whirls and drifts, and clings wherever it can find a resting-place; and though so much is blown away, yet there is enough left to smother up the rock and make it almost impossible to move about on it. The drifts sometimes are very deep in the hollows; one winter, sixteen sheep were buried in a drift, in which they remained a week, and, strange to say, only one was dead when they were discovered. One goes to sleep in the muffled roar of the storm, and wakes to find it still raging with senseless fury; all day it continues; towards night the curtain of falling flakes withdraws, a faint light shows westward; slowly the clouds roll together, the lift grows bright with pale, clear blue over the land, the wind has hauled to the northwest, and the storm is at an end. When the clouds are swept away by the besom of the pitiless northwest, how the stars glitter in the frosty sky! What wondrous streamers of northern lights flare through the winter darkness! I have seen the sky at midnight crimson and emerald and orange and blue in palpitating sheets along the whole northern half of the heavens, or rosy to the zenith, or belted with a bar of solid yellow light from east to west, as if the world were a basket, and it the golden handle thereto. The weather becomes of the first importance to the dwellers on the rock; the changes of the sky and sea, the flitting of the coasters to and fro, the visits of the sea-fowl, sunrise and sunset, the changing moon, the northern lights, the constellations that wheel in splendor through the winter night,--all are noted with a love and careful scrutiny that is seldom given by people living in populous places. One grows accustomed to the aspect of the constellations, and they seem like the faces of old friends looking down out of the awful blackness; and when in summer the great Orion disappears, how it is missed out of the sky! I remember the delight with which we caught a glimpse of the planet Mercury, in March, 1868, following close at the heels of the sinking sun, redly shining in the reddened horizon,--a stranger mysterious and utterly unknown before.

For these things make our world: there are no lectures, operas, concerts, theatres, no music of any kind, except what the waves may whisper in rarely gentle moods; no galleries of wonders like the Natural History rooms, in which it is so fascinating to wander; no streets, shops, carriages, no postman, no neighbors, not a door-bell within the compass of the place! Never was life so exempt from interruptions. The eight or ten small schooners that carry on winter fishing, flying to and fro through foam and squall to set and haul in their trawls, at rare intervals bring a mail,--an accumulation of letters, magazines, and newspapers that it requires a long time to plod through. This is the greatest excitement of the long winters; and no one can truly appreciate the delight of letters till he has lived where he can hear from his friends only once in a month.

But the best balanced human mind is prone to lose its elasticity, and stagnate, in this isolation. One learns immediately the value of work to keep one’s wits clear, cheerful, and steady; just as much real work of the body as it can bear without weariness being always beneficent, but here indispensable. And in this matter women have the advantage of men, who are condemned to fold their hands when their tasks are done. No woman need ever have a vacant minute,--there are so many pleasant, useful things which she may, and had better do. Blessed be the man who invented knitting! (I never heard that a woman invented this or any other art.) It is the most charming and picturesque of quiet occupations, leaving the knitter free to read aloud, or talk, or think, while steadily and surely beneath the flying fingers the comfortable stocking grows.

No one can dream what a charm there is in taking care of pets, singing-birds, plants, etc., with such advantages of solitude; how every leaf and bud and flower is pored over, and admired, and loved! A whole conservatory, flushed with azaleas, and brilliant with forests of camellias and every precious exotic that blooms, could not impart so much delight as I have known a single rose to give, unfolding in the bleak bitterness of a day in February, when this side of the planet seemed to have arrived at its culmination of hopelessness, with the Isles of Shoals the most hopeless speck upon its surface. One gets close to the heart of these things; they are almost as precious as Picciola to the prisoner, and yield a fresh and constant joy, such as the pleasure-seeking inhabitants of cities could not find in their whole round of shifting diversions. With a bright and cheerful interior, open fires, books, and pictures, windows full of thrifty blossoming plants and climbing vines, a family of singing-birds, plenty of work, and a clear head and quiet conscience, it would go hard if one could not be happy even in such loneliness. Books, of course, are inestimable. Nowhere does one follow a play of Shakespeare’s with greater zest, for it brings the whole world, which you need, about you; doubly precious the deep thoughts wise men have given to help us,--doubly sweet the songs of all the poets; for nothing comes between to distract you.

One realizes how hard it was for Robinson Crusoe to keep the record of his lonely days; for even in a family of eight or nine the succession is kept with difficulty. I recollect that, after an unusually busy Saturday, when household work was done, and lessons said, and the family were looking forward to Sunday and merited leisure, at sunset came a young Star-Islander on some errand to our door. One said to him, “Well, Jud, how many fish have they caught to-day at Star?” Jud looked askance and answered, like one who did not wish to be trifled with, “We don’t go a-fishing Sundays!” So we had lost our Sunday, thinking it was Saturday; and next day began the usual business, with no break of refreshing rest between.

Though the thermometer says that here it is twelve degrees warmer in winter than on the mainland, the difference is hardly perceptible,--the situation is so bleak, while the winds of the north and west bite like demons, with all the bitter breath of the snowy continent condensed in their deadly chill. Easterly and southerly gales are milder; we have no east winds such as sadden humanity on shore; they are tempered to gentleness by some mysterious means. Sometimes there are periods of cold which, though not intense (the mercury seldom falling lower than 11° above zero), are of such long duration that the fish are killed in the sea. This happens frequently with perch, the dead bodies of which strew the shores and float on the water in masses. Sometimes ice forms in the mouth of the Piscataqua River, which, continually broken into unequal blocks by the rushing tide and the immense pressure of the outer ocean, fills the space between the islands and the shore, so that it is very difficult to force a boat through. The few schooners moored about the islands become so loaded with ice that sometimes they sink; every plunge into the assailing waves adds a fresh crust, infinitely thin; but in twenty-four hours enough accumulates to sink the vessel; and it is part of the day’s work in the coldest weather to beat off the ice,--and hard work it is. Every time the bowsprit dips under, the man who sits astride it is immersed to his waist in the freezing water, as he beats at the bow to free the laboring craft. I cannot imagine a harder life than the sailors lead in winter in the coasting-vessels that stream in endless processions to and fro along the shore; and they seem to be the hardest set of people under the sun,--so rough and reckless that they are not pleasant even at a distance. Sometimes they land here. A crew of thirteen or fourteen came on shore last winter; they might have been the ghosts of the men who manned the picaroons that used to swarm in these seas. A more piratical-looking set could not well be imagined. They roamed about, and glared in at the windows with weather-beaten, brutal faces, and eyes that showed traces of whiskey, ugly and unmistakable.

No other visitors break the solitude of Appledore, except neighbors from Star once in a while; if any one is sick, they send, perhaps, for medicine or milk; or they bring some rare fish; or if any one dies, and they cannot reach the mainland, they come to get a coffin made. I never shall forget one long, dreary, drizzly northeast storm, when two men rowed across from Star to Appledore on this errand. A little child had died, and they could not sail to the mainland, and had no means to construct a coffin among themselves. All day I watched the making of that little chrysalis; and at night the last nail was driven in, and it lay across a bench in the midst of the litter of the workshop, and a curious stillness seemed to emanate from the senseless boards. I went back to the house and gathered a handful of scarlet geranium, and returned with it through the rain. The brilliant blossoms were sprinkled with glittering drops. I laid them in the little coffin, while the wind wailed so sorrowfully outside, and the rain poured against the windows. Two men came through the mist and storm, and one swung the light little shell to his shoulder, and they carried it away, and the gathering darkness shut down and hid them as they tossed among the waves. I never saw the little girl, but where they buried her I know: the lighthouse shines close by, and every night the quiet, constant ray steals to her grave and softly touches it, as if to say, with a caress, “Sleep well! Be thankful you are spared so much that I see humanity endure, fixed here forever where I stand!”

It is exhilarating, spite of the intense cold, to wake to the brightness the northwest gale always brings, after the hopeless smother of a prolonged snow-storm. The sea is deep indigo, whitened with flashing waves all over the surface; the sky is speckless; no cloud passes across it the whole day long; and the sun sets red and clear, without any abatement of the wind. The spray flying on the western shore for a moment is rosy as the sinking sun shines through, but for a moment only,--and again there is nothing but the ghastly whiteness of the salt-water ice, the cold, gray rock, the sullen, foaming brine, the unrelenting heavens, and the sharp wind cutting like a knife. All night long it roars beneath the hollow sky,--roars still at sunrise. Again the day passes precisely like the one gone before; the sun lies in a glare of quicksilver on the western water, sinks again in the red west to rise on just such another day; and thus goes on, for weeks sometimes, with an exasperating pertinacity that would try the most philosophical patience. There comes a time when just that glare of quicksilver on the water is not to be endured a minute longer. During this period no boat goes to or comes from the mainland, and the prisoners on the rock are cut off from all intercourse with their kind. Abroad, only the cattle move, crowding into the sunniest corners, and stupidly chewing the cud; and the hens and ducks, that chatter and cackle and cheerfully crow in spite of fate and the northwest gale. The dauntless and graceful gulls soar on their strong pinions over the drift cast up about the coves. Sometimes flocks of snow-buntings wheel about the house and pierce the loud breathing of the wind with sweet, wild cries. And often the spectral arctic owl may be seen on a height, sitting upright, like a column of snow, its large, round head slowly turning from left to right, ever on the alert, watching for the rats that plague the settlement almost as grievously as they did Hamelin town, in Brunswick, five hundred years ago.

How the rats came here first is not known; probably some old ship imported them. They live partly on mussels, the shells of which lie in heaps about their holes, as the violet-lined fresh-water shells lie about the nests of the muskrats on the mainland. They burrow among the rocks close to the shore, in favorable spots, and, somewhat like the moles, make subterranean galleries, whence they issue at low tide, and, stealing to the crevices of seaweed-curtained rocks, they fall upon and dislodge any unfortunate crabs they may find, and kill and devour them. Many a rat has caught a Tartar in this perilous kind of hunting, has been dragged into the sea and killed,--drowned in the clutches of the crab he sought to devour; for the strength of these shell-fish is something astonishing.

Several snowy owls haunt the islands the whole winter long. I have never heard them cry like other owls; when disturbed or angry, they make a sound like a watchman’s rattle, very loud and harsh, or they whistle with intense shrillness, like a human being. Their habitual silence adds to their ghostliness; and when at noonday they sit, high up, snow-white above the snow-drifts, blinking their pale yellow eyes in the sun, they are weird indeed. One night in March I saw one perched upon a rock between me and the “last remains of sunset dimly burning” in the west, his curious outline drawn black against the redness of the sky, his large head bent forward, and the whole aspect meditative and most human in its expression. I longed to go out and sit beside him and talk to him in the twilight, to ask of him the story of his life, or, if he would have permitted it, to watch him without a word. The plumage of this creature is wonderfully beautiful,--white, with scattered spots like little flecks of tawny cloud,--and his black beak and talons are powerful and sharp as iron; he might literally grapple his friend, or his enemy, with hooks of steel. As he is clothed in a mass of down, his outlines are so soft that he is like an enormous snowflake while flying; and he is a sight worth seeing when he stretches wide his broad wings, and sweeps down on his prey, silent and swift, with an unerring aim, and bears it off to the highest rock he can find, to devour it. In the summer one finds frequently upon the heights a little, solid ball of silvery fur and pure white bones, washed and bleached by the rain and sun; it is the rat’s skin and skeleton in a compact bundle, which the owl rejects after having swallowed it.

Some quieter day, on the edge of a southerly wind, perhaps, boats go out over the gray, sad water after sea-fowl,--the murres that swim in little companies, keeping just out of reach of shot, and are so spiteful that they beat the boat with their beaks, when wounded, in impotent rage, till they are despatched with an oar or another shot; or kittiwakes,--exquisite creatures like living forms of snow and cloud in color, with beaks and feet of dull gold,--that come when you wave a white handkerchief, and flutter almost within reach of your hand; or oldwives, called by the natives _scoldenores_, with clean white caps; or clumsy eider-ducks, or coots, or mergansers, or whatever they may find. Black ducks, of course, are often shot. Their jet-black, shining plumage is splendidly handsome, set off with the broad, flame-colored beak. Little auks, stormy-petrels, loons, grebes, lords-and-ladies, sea-pigeons, sea-parrots, various guillemots, and all sorts of gulls abound. Sometimes an eagle sweeps over; gannets pay occasional visits; the great blue heron is often seen in autumn and spring. One of the most striking birds is the cormorant, called here “shag”; from it the rock at Duck Island takes its name. It used to be an object of almost awful interest to me when I beheld it perched upon White Island Head,--a solemn figure, high and dark against the clouds. Once, while living on that island, in the thickest of a great storm in autumn, when we seemed to be set between two contending armies, deafened by the continuous cannonading of breakers, and lashed and beaten by winds and waters till it was almost impossible to hear ourselves speak, we became aware of another sound, which pierced to our ears, bringing a sudden terror lest it should be the voices of human beings. Opening the window a little, what a wild combination of sounds came shrieking in! A large flock of wild geese had settled for safety upon the rock, and completely surrounded us,--agitated, clamorous, weary. We might have secured any number of them, but it would have been a shameful thing. We were glad, indeed, that they should share our little foothold in that chaos, and they flew away unhurt when the tempest lulled. I was a very young child when this happened, but I never can forget that autumn night,--it seemed so wonderful and pitiful that those storm-beaten birds should have come crying to our rock; and the strange, wild chorus that swept in when the window was pried open a little took so strong a hold upon my imagination that I shall hear it as long as I live. The lighthouse, so beneficent to mankind, is the destroyer of birds,--of land birds particularly, though in thick weather sea-birds are occasionally bewildered into breaking their heads against the glass, plunging forward headlong towards the light, just as the frail moth of summer evenings madly seeks its death in the candle’s blaze. Sometimes in autumn, always in spring, when birds are migrating, they are destroyed in such quantities by this means that it is painful to reflect upon. The keeper living at the island three years ago told me that he picked up three hundred and seventy-five in one morning at the foot of the lighthouse, all dead. They fly with such force against the glass that their beaks are often splintered. The keeper said he found the destruction greatest in hazy weather, and he thought “they struck a ray at a great distance and followed it up.” Many a May morning have I wandered about the rock at the foot of the tower mourning over a little apron brimful of sparrows, swallows, thrushes, robins, fire-winged blackbirds, many-colored warblers and fly-catchers, beautifully clothed yellow-birds, nuthatches, catbirds, even the purple finch and scarlet tanager and golden oriole, and many more beside,--enough to break the heart of a small child to think of! Once a great eagle flew against the lantern and shivered the glass. That was before I lived there; but after we came, two gulls cracked one of the large, clear panes, one stormy night.

The sea-birds are comparatively few and shy at this time; but I remember when they were plentiful enough, when on Duck Island in summer the “medrakes,” or tern, made rude nests on the beach, and the little yellow gulls, just out of the eggs, ran tumbling about among the stones, hiding their foolish heads in every crack and cranny, and, like the ostrich, imagining themselves safe so long as they could not see the danger. And even now the sandpipers build in numbers on the islands, and the young birds, which look like tiny tufts of fog, run about among the bayberry-bushes, with sweet, scared piping. They are exquisitely beautiful and delicate, covered with a down just like gray mist, with brilliant black eyes, and slender, graceful legs that make one think of grass-stems. And here the loons congregate in spring and autumn. These birds seem to me the most human and at the same time the most demoniac of their kind. I learned to imitate their different cries; they are wonderful! At one time the loon language was so familiar that I could almost always summon a considerable flock by going down to the water and assuming the neighborly and conversational tone which they generally use: after calling a few minutes, first a far-off voice responded, then other voices answered him, and when this was kept up a while, half a dozen birds would come sailing in. It was the most delightful little party imaginable; so comical were they, so entertaining, that it was impossible not to laugh aloud,--and they could laugh too, in a way which chilled the marrow of one’s bones. They always laugh, when shot at, if they are missed; as the Shoalers say, “They laugh like a warrior.” But their long, wild, melancholy cry before a storm is the most awful note I ever heard from a bird. It is so sad, so hopeless,--a clear, high shriek, shaken, as it drops into silence, into broken notes that make you think of the fluttering of a pennon in the wind,--a shudder of sound. They invariably utter this cry before a storm.

Between the gales from all points of the compass, that

“’twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war,”