Part 5
The subsequent history of this ice is not without interest. After two days of bitter cold the wind changed in the night, and that night’s tide quietly removed every vestige of the ice cakes from the beach. The swathe on which the ice had lain, however, remained half visible, for there water and sand had mingled and frozen deep. Presently the upper beach thawed, the cold crumbling drily out of the sand, and the lower beach, which had yielded its frozen surface to each succeeding tide and frozen again during the ebb, remained as the last tide left it. Between the two beaches, the width of buried ice lingered for a fortnight, resisting sun and whole days of winter rain. It had a way of coming suddenly to an end, and of beginning as suddenly again; sand drifted over it, the tide edge seeped through to it, the moving beach, forever adjusting itself to complex forces, burst it open, yet it lingered on. For all of us who used the beach, this buried width of ice became a secret road. The coast guards knew it well and followed along it in the night. As I set down these words, I think of the times I have come to a blind end and prodded the sand with my beach staff in search of that secret footing. Little by little the sun and the tides wore down its resistance, and so it disappeared, and our searching feet knew it no more.
The great marsh was another desolation on that same overcast and icy day. Salt ice had formed in wide rims along the edges of the great level islands, the shallower channels had frozen over, and the deeper ones were strewn with ice cakes sailing and turning about in the currents of the tides. The scene had taken on a certain winter unity, for the ice had bound the channels and the islands together into one wide and wintry plain.
On the next morning--it was sunny then, but still freezing cold--I chanced to go out for a moment to look at the marsh. About a mile and a half away, in one of the open channels, was a dark something which looked like a large, unfamiliar bird. A stray goose, perhaps? Taking my glass, I found the dark object to be the head of a deer swimming down the channel, and, even as I looked, there came to my ears the distant barking of dogs. A pair of marauding curs, out hunting on their own, had found a deer somewhere and driven the creature down the dunes and into the icy creeks. Down the channel it swam, and presently turned aside and climbed out on the marsh island just behind the Fo’castle. The animal was a young doe. I thought then, and I still believe, that this doe and the unseen creature whose delicate hoofprints I often found near the Fo’castle were one and the same. It lived, I believe, in the pines on the northern shore of the marsh and came down to the dunes at earliest dawn. But to return to its adventures: All afternoon I watched it standing on the island far out in the marsh, the tall, dead sea grass rising about its russet body; when night came, it was still there, a tiny spot of forlorn mammalian life in that frozen scene. Was it too terrified to return? That night a tide of unusual height was due which would submerge the islands under at least two feet of water and floating ice. Would the doe swim ashore under cover of darkness? I went out at midnight into my solitary world and saw the ice-covered marsh gleaming palely under a sky of brilliant stars, but could see nothing of the island of the doe save a ghostliness of salt ice along the nearer rim.
The first thing I did, on waking the next morning, was to search the island with my glass. The doe was still there.
I have often paused to wonder how that delicate and lovely creature endured so cruel a night, how she survived the slow rise of the icy tide about her poor legs, and the northwest gale that blustered about her all night long in that starlit loneliness of crunchy marsh mud and the murmur of the tides. The morning lengthened, the sun rose higher on the marsh, and presently the tide began to rise again. I watched it rising toward the refugee, and wondered if she could survive a second immersion. Just a little before noon, perhaps as the water was flooding round her feet, she came down to the edge of her island, and plunged into the channel. The creek was full of ice mush and of ice floes moving at a good speed; the doe was weak, the ice cakes bore down upon her, striking her heavily; she seemed confused, hesitated, swam here, swam there, stood still, and was struck cruelly by a floe which seemed to pass over her, yet on she swam, bewildered, but resolute for life. I had almost given up hope for her, when rescue came unexpectedly. My friend Bill Eldredge, it appeared, while on watch in the station tower the day before had chanced to see the beginning of the story, and on the second morning had noticed the doe still standing in the marshes. All the Nauset crew had taken an interest. Catching sight of the poor creature fighting for life in the drift, three of the men put off in a skiff, poled the ice away with their oars, and shepherded the doe ashore. “When she reached dry land, she couldn’t rise, she was so weak, and fell down again and again. But finally she stood up and stayed up, and walked off into the pines.”
III
I have now to tell of the great northeast storm of February 19th and 20th. They say here that it was the worst gale known on the outer Cape since the _Portland_ went down with all hands on that terrible November night in ’98.
It began after midnight on a Friday night, and the barometer gave but little warning of its coming. That Friday afternoon I had walked up the beach to Nauset Station, found Bill Eldredge on watch in the tower, and asked him to wake me up when he went by at midnight. “Never mind if you don’t see a light,” I said. “Come in anyway and wake me up. I may go down the beach with you.” I often made the patrols with the men at the station, for I liked to walk the beach by night.
Shortly after midnight, Bill came to the door, but I did not get up and dress to go down the beach with him, for I was rather tired from piling up a mass of driftwood, so I sat up in bed and talked to him by the dying light of my fire. On bitter nights, I used to put a big log on in the hope that it might flicker and smoulder till morning, but on average nights, I let the fire die down to a bed of ashes, for I am a light sleeper, and the little play of flames on the hearth kept me awake. Living in outer nature keeps the senses keen, and living alone stirs in them a certain watchfulness.
The coast guardsman stood against the brick fireplace, his elbow propped for a moment on the shelf; I scarce could see his blue-clad figure in the gloom. “It’s blowing up,” he said. “I think we are going to have a northeaster.” I apologized for not getting up, pleaded weariness, and, after a little talk, Bill said that he must be going, and returned to the beach. I saw him use his flashlight a moment as he plunged down the dune.
I woke in the morning to the dry rattle of sleet on my eastern windows and the howling of wind. A northeaster laden with sleet was bearing down on the Cape from off a furious ocean, an ebbing sea fought with a gale blowing directly on the coast; the lonely desolation of the beach was a thousand times more desolate in that white storm pouring down from a dark sky. The sleet fell as a heavy rain falls when it is blown about by the wind. I built up my fire, dressed, and went out, shielding my face from the sleet by pulling my head down into the collar of my coat. I brought in basket after basket of firewood, till the corner of the room resembled a woodshed. Then I folded up the bedclothes, threw my New Mexican blanket over the couch, lighted the oil stove, and prepared breakfast. An apple, oatmeal porridge, toast made at the fireplace, a boiled egg, and coffee.
Sleet and more of it, rushes of it, attacks of it, screaming descents of it; I heard it on the roof, on the sides of the house, on the windowpanes. Within, my fire fought against the cold, tormented light. I wondered about a small fishing boat, a thirty-foot “flounder dragger” that had anchored two miles or so off the Fo’castle the evening before. I looked for her with my glass, but could not see into the storm.
Streaming over the dunes, the storm howled on west over the moors. The islands of the marsh were brownish black, the channels leaden and whipped up by the wind; and along the shores of the desolate islands, channel waves broke angrily, chidingly, tossing up heavy ringlets of lifeless white. A scene of incredible desolation and cold. All day long I kept to my house, building up the fire and keeping watch from the windows; now and then I went out to see that all was well with the Fo’castle and its foundations, and to glimpse what I could, through the sleet, of the storm on the sea. For a mile or so offshore the North Atlantic was a convulsion of elemental fury whipped by the sleety wind, the great parallels of the breakers tumbling all together and mingling in one seething and immense confusion, the sound of this mile of surf being an endless booming roar, a seethe, and a dread grinding, all intertwined with the high scream of the wind. The rush of the inmost breakers up the beach was a thing of violence and blind will. Darkness coming early, I closed my shutters on the uproar of the outer world, all save one shutter on the landward side.
With the coming of night the storm increased; the wind reaching a velocity of seventy to eighty miles an hour. It was at this time, I am told, that friends on the mainland began to be worried about me, many of them looking for my light. My lamp, a simple kerosene affair with a white china shade, stood on a table before the unshuttered window facing the land. An old friend said he would see it or think that he saw it for a half minute or so, and then it would vanish for hours into the darkness of the gale. It was singularly peaceful in the little house. Presently, the tide, which had ebbed a little during the afternoon, turned and began to come in. All afternoon long the surf had thundered high upon the beach, the ebb tide backed up against the wind. With the turn of the tide came fury unbelievable. The great rhythm of its waters now at one with the rhythm of the wind, the ocean rose out of the night to attack the ancient rivalry of earth, hurling breaker after thundering breaker against the long bulwark of the sands. The Fo’castle, being low and strongly built, stood solid as a rock, but its walls thrummed in the gale. I could feel the vibration in the bricks of the chimney, and the dune beneath the house trembled incessantly with the onslaught of the surf.
Where were my friends at Nauset Station, thought I, in this furious night. Who was on his way north, with seven miles of night and sleet to battle through before he returned to the shelter of the station and the warmth of that kitchen stove which is kept polished to a brilliance beyond all stoves? It was Bill, as a matter of fact, and because of the surf on the beach he was using the path which runs along the top of the cliff close by its brim, a path exposed to the full violence of the gale. As I mused thus, troubled about my friends, there came a knock at my open window, and then steps outside and a knock at the door. Letting my visitor in was easy enough, but to close the door after him was another matter. Closing the door against the force of the gale was like trying to close it upon something material; it was exactly as if I were pressing the door against a bulging mass of felt. My visitor was Albert Robbins, first man south from Nauset, a big powerful youngster and a fine lad; he was covered with sleet and sand, sand and sleet in his hair, in his eyebrows, in the corners of his eyes, in his ears, behind his ears, in the corners of his mouth, in his nostrils even. And a cheerful, determined grin!
“Wanted to see if you were still here,” he said humorously, rooting sand out of his eyes with a knuckle. I busied myself getting him a cup of steaming coffee.
“Any news? Anyone in trouble?” I asked.
“Yes, there’s a coast guard patrol boat off the Highland; something’s the matter with her engine. She’s anchored off there, and they’ve sent two destroyers out from Boston to get her.”
“When did you hear that?”
“This afternoon.”
“Didn’t hear anything else?”
“No, the wires blew down, and we can’t get beyond Cahoons.”
“Think they’ve got any chance if the destroyers haven’t got to them?”
“Gosh, I hope so,” he said; and then, after a pause, “but it don’t look like it.” And then, “So long,” and into the storm again.
I did not go to bed, for I wanted to be ready for any eventuality. As the hour of flood tide neared, I dressed as warmly as I could, turned down my lamp, and went out upon the dunes.
An invisible moon, two days past the full, had risen behind the rushing floor of cloud, and some of its wan light fell on the tortured earth and the torment of the sea. The air was full of sleet, hissing with a strange, terrible, insistent sound on the dead grass, and sand was being whirled up into the air. Being struck on the face by this sand and sleet was like being lashed by a tiny, pin-point whip. I have never looked on such a tide. It had crossed the beach, climbed the five-foot wall of the dune levels that run between the great mounds, and was hurling wreckage fifty and sixty feet into the starved white beach grass; the marsh was an immense flooded bay, and the “cuts” between the dunes and the marsh rivers of breakers. A hundred yards to the north of me was such a river; to the south, the surf was attempting to flank the dune, an attempt which did not succeed. Between these two onslaughts, no longer looking _down_ upon the sea, but directly into it and just over it, the Fo’castle stood like a house built out into the surf on a mound of sand. A third of a mile or so to the north I chanced to see rather a strange thing. The dune bank there was washing away and caving in under the onslaught of the seas, and presently there crumbled out the blackened skeleton of an ancient wreck which the dunes had buried long ago. As the tide rose this ghost floated and lifted itself free, and then washed south close along the dunes. There was something inconceivably spectral in the sight of this dead hulk thus stirring from its grave and yielding its bones again to the fury of the gale.
As I walked in the night I wondered about the birds who live here in the marsh. That great population of gulls, ducks, and geese and their rivals and allies--where were they all crouching, where were they hidden in that wild hour?
All Sunday morning there was sleet--more sleet fell in this storm than the Cape had seen in a generation--and then, about the middle of the afternoon, the wind died down, leaving a wild sea behind. Going to Nauset Station, I had news of the disaster at the Highland. The destroyers, in spite of a splendid battle, had been unable to reach the disabled patrol boat, and the luckless ship had gone to pieces. It is thought that she dragged onto the outer bar. Nine men had perished. Two bodies came ashore next day; their watches had stopped at five o’clock, so we knew that the vessel had weathered the night and gone to pieces in the morning. What a night they must have had, poor souls!
There was wreckage everywhere, great logs, tree stumps, fragments of ships, planking, splintered beams, boards, rough timber, and, by itself in the surf, the enormous rudder of the _Hickey_, splintered sternpost and all. The day after the storm, people came down from Eastham in farm wagons and Fords, looked at the sea for a while, talked over the storm with whoever happened to be standing by, paid a call on the coast guards, and then went casually to work piling up the best of the timber. I saw Bill Eldredge in one of the cuts sorting out planks to be used in building a henhouse. Gulls were milling over the surf and spume--the greatest numbers gathering where the surf was most discoloured--and gulls were flying back and forth between the breakers and the marsh. From their point of view, perhaps, nothing had happened.
_Chapter V_
WINTER VISITORS
I
During the winter the world of the dunes and the great beach was entirely my own, and I lived at the Fo’castle as undisturbed as Crusoe on his island. Man disappeared from the world of nature in which I lived almost as if he, too, were a kind of migratory bird. It is true that I could see the houses of Eastham village on the uplands across the marsh, and the passing ships and fishing boats, but these were the works of man rather than man himself. By the middle of February the sight of an unknown someone walking on the beach near the Fo’castle would have been a historical event. Should any ask how I endured this isolation in so wild a place and in the depth of winter, I can only answer that I enjoyed every moment to the full. To be able to see and study undisturbed the processes of nature--I like better the old Biblical phrase “mighty works”--is an opportunity for which any man might well feel reverent gratitude, and here at last, in this silence and isolation of winter, a whole region was mine whose innermost natural life might shape itself to its ancient courses without the hindrance and interferences of man. No one came to kill, no one came to explore, no one even came to see. Earth, ocean, and sky, the triune unity of this coast, pursued each one their vast and mingled purposes as untroubled by man as a planet on its course about the sun.
It is not good to be too much alone, even as it is unwise to be always with and in a crowd, but, solitary as I was, I had few opportunities for moods or to “lose and neglect the creeping hours of time.” From the moment that I rose in the morning and threw open my door looking toward the sea to the moment when the spurt of a match sounded in the evening quiet of my solitary house, there was always something to do, something to observe, something to record, something to study, something to put aside in a corner of the mind. There was the ocean in all weathers and at all tides, now grey and lonely and veiled in winter rain, now sun-bright, coldly green, and marbled with dissolving foam; there was the marsh with its great congresses, its little companies, its wandering groups, and little family gatherings of winter birds; there was the glory of the winter sky rolling out of the ocean over and across the dunes, constellation by constellation, lonely star by star. To see the night sky in all its divinity of beauty, the world beneath it should be lovely, too, else the great picture is split in halves which no mind can ever really weld into a unity of reverence. I think the nights on which I felt most alone (if I paused to indulge myself in such an emotion) were the nights when southeasterly rains were at work in the dark, immense world outside my door dissolving in rain and fog such ice and snow as lingered on after a snowfall or a cold spell had become history. On such southeasterly nights, the fog lay thick on marsh and ocean, the distant lights of Eastham vanished in a universal dark, and on the invisible beach below the dune, great breakers born of fog swell and the wind rolled up the sands with the slow, mournful pace of stately victims destined to immolation, and toppled over, each one, in a heavy, awesome roar that faded to silence before a fellow victim followed on out of the darkness on the sea. Only one sense impression lingered to remind me of the vanished world of man, and that the long, long complaints and melancholy bellowings of vessels feeling their way about miles offshore.
But I was not entirely alone. My friends the coast guards at Nauset Station, patrolling the beach every night and in all weathers, often came in to see how I was faring, to hand me on a letter, or to tell me the news of the Cape. My pleasure in such visits was very real, and between half after seven and eight o’clock I always hoped for a step. When one has not spoken to another human being for twenty-four hours, a little conversation is pleasant exercise, though to the speaker the simplest phrases, even the simple idiom, “Come in,” may take on a quaint air of being breathless and voluble. Sometimes no one came, and I spent the evening by my fire reading quietly, going over my notes, and wondering who it was who walked the beach.
It is not easy to live alone, for man is a gregarious creature; especially in his youth, powerful instincts offer battle to such a way of life, and in utter solitude odd things may happen to the mind. I lived as a solitary, yes, but I made no pretence of acting the conventional hermit of the pious tract and the Eighteenth Century romance. With my weekly trips to Orleans to buy fresh bread and butter, my frequent visits to the Overlook, and my conversations with the men on night patrol, a mediæval anchorite would have probably regarded me as a dweller in the market place. It was not this touch with my fellows, however, which alone sustained me. Dwelling thus upon the dunes, I lived in the midst of an abundance of natural life which manifested itself every hour of the day, and from being thus surrounded, thus enclosed within a great whirl of what one may call the life force, I felt that I drew a secret and sustaining energy. There were times, on the threshold of spring, when the force seemed as real as heat from the sun. A sceptic may smile and ask me to come to his laboratory and demonstrate; he may talk as he will of the secret workings of my own isolated and uninfluenced flesh and blood, but I think that those who have lived in nature, and tried to open their doors rather than close them on her energies, will understand well enough what I mean. Life is as much a force in the universe as electricity or gravitational pull, and the presence of life sustains life. Individuals may destroy individuals, but the life force may mingle with the individual life as a billow of fire may mingle for a moment with a candle flame.
But now I must begin to tell of the birds who are wintering on the coast, of the exchange of species which takes place here, and of how all manage to live.
As I walk the beach on a bright and blustery January morning, my first impression is one of space, beauty, and loneliness. The summer bird life of the beach has completely disappeared, and at the moment of which I tell, not a single beach bird or sea bird, not even a resident gull, is to be seen on the beach along all these empty miles. I walk, and no terns come swooping down at me out of the dunes, scolding me for my intrusion on their immense and ancient privacy; no sandpipers rise at my approach, wheel over the inner breakers, and settle down again a hundred yards ahead. Summer residents and autumn migrants of the beach, sandpipers, plovers, yellow-legs, “knots,” and sanderlings, all have gone south with the sun and are now to be found anywhere from the Carolinas south to Patagonia. The familiar sanderlings--it is of _Crocethia alba_ that I write--lingered surprisingly late; they seemed almost as numerous in October as in August, there were plenty to be seen in November, but in December flocks were rare, and by Christmas, there were only a few strays and cripples left behind.