IV

I call at Nauset Station several times a week, usually late in the

afternoon. Packages and mail are delivered near by, and every once in a

while I call there for a message sent on to me from Eastham.

The station stands on the mainland of the Cape just where the dunes

begin; it is a white wooden building built snug and low like a Cape

Cod cottage; indeed, it rather resembles a Cape cottage in its design.

On the ground floor is the boat room, a kitchen-dining room, a living

room, and the captain’s quarters; on the floor above are two dormitory

spaces. From the west dormitory, a ship’s ladder leads through a

trapdoor to the tower.

My neighbours of Nauset live there much as men might on a small

vessel. They have drills and duties, their definite enlistments--the

first enlistment is for three years--their pay days, their service

discipline, their uniforms, and days of leave. Breakfast at seven,

drills in the morning--surfboat drill to-day, resuscitation drill or

blinker and flag drill to-morrow--dinner at eleven, tower watch in turn

through all the day, sleep and recreation in the late afternoon, supper

at four-thirty, then sundown, night, and the long miles of loneliness

and ocean. In winter the guards wear a uniform of dark navy blue and

a blue flannel shirt; in summer they shift into sailor whites, broad

collar, white hat, and all. Officially, the men are known as “surfmen”

and are ranked by number according to their standing and length of

service.

A fine group, these wardens of the Cape. Into the worst storm they

go--without a question, with never a hesitation--a storm in which life

would seem impossible. The door clangs behind them, the sleet screams

at the windows, the very earth of the old Cape shakes to the thunder of

the seas, but they are already on the moors, fighting on into the gale;

fighting on, crawling on, for seven dreadful miles. Yet the men make

nothing of it and scarcely ever talk about it--they simply take their

black oilskins and rubber boots from a locker, get into them by lantern

light, and go.

I owe the Nauset crew a very genuine debt. Without their friendly

interest and aid, without their hospitality and continuing good-will,

my experiment might well have been both over-solitary and difficult.

Those long winter nights in the lamplit domesticity of my house, the

rising wail of the wind on the dunes, the flash of the surfman’s light

in the whirls of snow, the moment’s reunion with mankind, the pause on

the beach, the moment’s talk by the fire--all that is written deep. The

winter long, in foul weather, I kept a night lamp burning in a window

and a pot of coffee a-simmer on the hearth. Sometimes I heard steps on

the little deck of the Fo’castle, sometimes no one came, and the light

guttered out unvisited in the dawn.

The majority of my neighbours are of Cape Cod stock. Born of Cape blood

and reared in the Cape atmosphere, even men who have never been to

sea have an instinctive turn for the sea and the ways of ships. But

these wardens of the Cape are not sailors ashore; they are “surfmen.”

The name is a wise one--men of the great beach, inheritors of a long,

local tradition concerning surf and all its ways. These men have heard

the roar of the great beach sounding about their cradles. As I

have already written, the sight of the surf in a great gale on the

Cape is a spectacle of mingled exaltation, magnificence, and terror,

while to venture it in a boat would strike any landsman as a lunatic

performance. On such occasions, the sound, traditional surf knowledge

of Cape men comes into play. Captains of coast guard crews here choose

their launching ground, choose their moment, choose their wave. All

together now, go!--and out she runs, the captain standing astern,

facing the breakers and steering, the men pulling for their lives.

[Illustration: _A Surfman of the Cape_]

V

Five o’clock in the afternoon, and I have arrived at Nauset Station

after a walk up the beach in a cold head-wind. I slip my pack from

my back and stand my beach staff in a corner of the little entry way

outside the kitchen door. The great storm tore down so much of the bank

that the water in the kitchen well now has an odd taste to it, and the

men have had to bring drinking water from the village; a ship’s cask

and a spring-water bottle stand on the entry floor. In the pink-buff

walls are various locker doors.

The four-thirty supper is drawing to a close, but my neighbours are

still at table, for I can hear voices and discussion at the board. I

know each familiar tone. Having an ancient prejudice against disturbing

friends at meals, I wait a little while ... the minutes pass ... I

knock at the kitchen door.

Come in! I find my friends still at their long table at the kitchen’s

farther end. Supper is just about over. Somebody went fishing

yesterday, and on the table a great tureen, once full of good fish

chowder, stands at dead low tide.... Sit down and have a cup of coffee

with us.... Thanks, I’d love to.... Follows a shoving about of chairs

to make room, and presently I am seated at the board, talking beach

gossip, eating coast guard doughnuts, and sipping brown-black coffee

from a giant white coffee cup of the armour-plate variety. The good

hot “mug-up” of coffee, thus hospitably poured, is pleasant after

my long, cold walk. My table mates are all young men, some of them

scarce more than strapping boys on the threshold of the twenties. Here

are the names of my hosts: Captain George B. Nickerson, Commanding

Officer; Alvin Newcomb, Surfman No. 1; Russell Taylor, No. 2; Zenas

Adams, No. 3; William Eldredge, No. 4; Andrew Wetherbee, No. 5; Albert

Robbins, No. 6; Everett Gross, No. 7; Malcolm Robbins, No. 8; Effin

Chalke, No. 9. Other old friends have finished their enlistments or

been transferred--Wilbur Chase, John Blood, Kenneth Young, and Yngve

Rongner, who gave me my swordfish sword.

The captains of the various stations are well-known men and rank high

in the community. When I first came to Eastham, Nauset was under the

command of my kind friend Captain Abbott H. Walker, an expert among

surfmen and boatmen, and one of the best liked and most respected men

on all Cape Cod. Two years ago, after having been in command of Nauset

for twenty-six stirring years, he retired to his pleasant house on

Orleans Bay. The station was fortunate in having as his successor a

distinguished younger officer, Captain George B. Nickerson of Chatham.

Nauset is a busy station, and Captain Nickerson has already added new

laurels to its splendid history.

The table talk is good, the speech racy and vigorous. Sipping coffee,

I hear of a battle at sea fought that very morning between some large

unknown fish and unseen enemies--“right off the station”--the fish

leaping clear, a great wound or spot visible in its side.... Here,

have another cup....

“No, going out in a gale isn’t as bad as facing ‘the sand.’ Rather face

a nor’easter any time.”

Every once in a while, usually in autumn, a dry gale will descend upon

the beach and stir up a sandstorm worthy of the Sahara. I chanced to

see such a storm three years ago. The simoon began, I remember, with a

sunset of fiery rose deepening to smoky carmine, the sky being empty

save for a few thin, sailing wisps. With the smouldering out of this

strange sky and the arrival of starlight, a north wind which had blown

vigorously all day was taken over by a devil. It shifted its quarter,

began to blow directly down the beach, and increased enormously in

force. Within half an hour, the whole world of beach and dune was one

screaming, smoky, inhuman arabia of flying sand. Sucking up the sand

from strewn miles of driftage, tearing at the roots of everything

movable, the wind torrent rushed along the beach as down a channel.

Presently pebbles, sticks, barrel staves, sides of old fruit crates,

hoops, tufts of whipped-out beach grass, clots of breaker spume, and

a world of nameless dark lumps joined the general rush through the

demoniac and smothering gloom. I myself sailed before the storm, my

head turtled down into the very shoulders of a canvas coat, my eyes

blinking and painful from the stabs of sand, my nostrils hot and dry

with the breathing of it, my mouth much occupied in spitting out grits.

And I wondered who was on north patrol that night--walking into it, his

head turned sideways and down, and a board held up before his face.

Once upon a time, so runs a service story, a surfman was walking the

beach on one of these nights of sand when he heard behind him a strange

and uncanny moan. Startled, he turned round, squinted for a second

into the gale, and saw coming toward him a great, dark, bounding thing

which moaned as it ran. The surfman ran. The thing followed, gaining

every instant and sounding its ghostly cry. Out of breath at last,

the fugitive fell flat, caught hold of the sand, and gasped out this

valedictory, “If ye want me, come and git me.” A moment later, an

enormous empty cask rolled over the prostrate figure and disappeared

down the beach toward Monomoy. The bung halfway up its side was open,

and every time the hole had rolled up into the wind, the whistling moan

had terrified the night.

Who goes first south to-night? Malcolm Robbins, he goes first south,

and Long, he goes at two-thirty.

Time to tidy up. Each man carries his plate and cutlery to the sink,

the cook of the day puts on coal, there is talk, the vigorous clank

of the kitchen pump, the sound of a dish pan filling, a smell of pipe

tobacco. The surfman who has been on watch in the station tower during

the meal comes in and eats alone at the cleared-off and deserted board.

Clatter of dish and spoon ... voices. Baseball prospects? Radio news?

Station happenings? Somebody opens a window on the last of the chill

spring afternoon, and suddenly, in an unexpected instant of quiet, I

hear the thundering overspill and ebbing roar of a single giant sea.

_Chapter VII_