A golden October when, for days, the sun shone and the beach was veiled
with faintly coloured mists; when the crack of duck hunters’ guns came
from over the bay; when the ocean advanced on the smoothly sanded shore
in long and majestic curves, so that to stand upon the dunes and look
at it was like looking down a flight of steps of boundless width....
The Atlantic made itself into a glittering staircase leading straight
to the sun.
October! Driftwood was gathered from the beach for burning in the
Biggles’s fireplace where it snapped and was consumed by the green and
blue and parti-coloured flames. Before the singing and rainbow fire
Mermaid often knelt at dusk. Mrs. Biggles would spread a slice of bread
for her with jelly made from the beach plums gathered a month earlier.
There is a wild-woodish, bitter-sweet flavour peculiar to beach plum
jelly and preserves. Mermaid loved it. To taste it while dreaming
before the magic fire was delicious beyond words.
October! It began to be sharp o’ nights. The men at the station rolled
themselves in blankets, as they slept without sheets in an unheated
attic. Only Mermaid had a regular bed with sheets and pillow cases and
a gay comforter. Stormy days began, and long, wonderful evenings about
the blazing stove in the station’s big room. Cap’n Smiley read aloud
and told stories; the men asked questions and spun yarns. Mermaid,
curled up in a corner, listened eagerly, hardly daring to speak lest
the hour be noted and they pack her off to bed.
Wild stories, weird stories. Cap’n Smiley is speaking.
“Ah,” says the keeper. “There was that steamship which broke her
machinery some way off here and could only move on reversed propellers.
She backed all the way from here to Sandy Hook. And there was that ship
with the cargo of salt. When she came ashore it salted the ocean; the
water was a little brinier for days. And we got aboard as she lay on
the bar at low tide, the sea having gone down. Not a soul. All swept
overboard and lost. We peered down a hatch, then I went down all alone.
I had an awful setback when, on my moving some sacks, out bobbed a
dead man staring straight at me. Dead, and propped up in the salt. But
the worst was the wreck of the _Farallone_. Some of you weren’t here
then and as for you, Joe”--he addressed the youngest surfman--“you
hadn’t been born. The _Farallone_. Yes.
“She came ashore on a night when you couldn’t see your upraised hand.
She struck hard on the outer bar and broached to in the trough of the
sea. It was freezing cold. We saw--nothing. Up there on the dunes we
fired shot after shot, sending out line after line; pure guesswork.
Finally one landed and was made fast. The crew began coming ashore.
About a dozen trips of the buoy, I think. And from what we could learn
the captain and the cook were left.
“The cook came along all right, and then we hauled the buoy back for
the skipper.
“At the signal--jerks on the line--we pulled. The buoy came along for
maybe fifteen feet and then checked. Dead stop. We couldn’t budge it a
foot farther. We hauled back and tried over again. Came just so far and
then stuck, immovable.
“You couldn’t see, you couldn’t hear. There was nothing to do but to
haul back and forward, back and forward about a hundred times. We wore
ourselves all out, though probably the work was all that kept us from
freezing to death. Some of us had frostbites. After a while a faint
light appeared. Dawn, frightened by that merciless gale. Dawn, and
then daylight; and at last we could see. The ocean went down; wind had
gone down in the night. What we saw was the body of the captain of the
_Farallone_ hanging stiffly in the buoy.
“The line had been made fast to the mast too near the deck. As we
hauled away each man, coming to the ship’s bulwark, had to lift his
body over it. The last man had been able to get into the buoy, but in
the minute or two before he reached the bulwark he had frozen helpless;
and when he came to it he couldn’t lift himself over.”
There was a silence in which men drew on their pipes. The hand of young
Joe Sayre, Surfman No. 7, rolling a cigarette, shook slightly. Mermaid
saw the scene. She burned to ask her Dad if he, or any of the others,
had seen the Duneswoman that night in the fearful storm. Had she walked
abroad on the waters, passing unharmed through the great breakers of
inky-black water with invisible crests of white and curling foam? Her
face--did no one see it beside the staring form of the dying skipper?
Did none see her arm about him? Why had she not lifted him over the
rail? See.... Dad had said no one could see anything. But you could
_always_: see the Duneswoman when she was about, however black the
night. Who was she? The little girl lost herself in a timid reverie.
“Lemons,” Uncle Ho was saying. “Oranges, onions--fine big Spanish
onions from Valencia; pineapples and pomegranates, even Havana see-gars
but mostly spoiled by salt water. Once, army blankets; we slept warm
that winter. Cocoanuts every little while. The next cocoanut I find
I’ll carve a mask out of for Mermaid.”
Her cheeks flushed and she tossed her hair and looked at him with
dancing eyes. Wasn’t Uncle Ho good! And he was wonderfully skillful
with a knife; a full rigged ship carved in a great glass bottle lay
in the keeper’s room to witness his craftsmanship. He did marvellous
things with bits of rope. He had promised to make her a hammock and
with some fine white rope he was braiding a mat to adorn the little
shelf which was her dressing table. Rose knots, diamond knots; knots
and hitches and splices without number--Uncle Ho was master of them
all. Mermaid listened to his further talk about the things that ships
jettison and the things that wash ashore.
“Even little girls come ashore,” said Uncle Ho with great seriousness
and nodding his head many times. “Not to speak of animals. We brought
a Shetland pony to land in the breeches buoy and, Mermaid, you should
have heard him squeal!” Mermaid gave a little squeal of her own. “Not
like that,” corrected Ho Ha. “He said, ‘Nay-ay-ay. Nay-yay-yay-yay!’
That means ‘No!’ Why, a Dutch ship, named the Dutch for good luck, had
a cow in the afterhold to provide the skipper with fresh milk every
morning. And lots of ships have pigs aboard ’em. Sheep, too. You might
get wool enough for a new suit of homespun.
“But the strangest thing was the animal ship. Mind I don’t say it _was_
Noah’s Ark, Mermaid. The skipper was a youngish man, not old enough to
be Noah. Maybe one of his sons. Now this Ark of Noah & Sons came ashore
in fine weather, but very thick. So much fog young Noah couldn’t tell
where he was. He couldn’t shoot the sun at noon. Well----
“He had pairs of almost all kinds of animals aboard. They were a
consignment to the big Zoo in New York. There was a pair of camels and
a pair of leopards and a pair of lions and pairs of snakes and two
beautiful giraffes with necks so long that they could see as well as a
man in the topgallant rigging. The Ark came on in fine weather but it
didn’t stay fine. Bad southeasterly storm blew up and when it abated
the Ark was so leaky that the skipper--young Noah--put the animals over
the side thinking they’d drown. He hated to do it, but the ship was all
going to pieces. But you know, Mermaid, that all animals can swim. And
most of these critters swam ashore. Little girl, you should have seen
them! But, no! I’m glad you weren’t here. Life wasn’t safe on the beach
here then with those pairs of animals ranging about. Finally we had to
shoot them all with the little brass cannon.”
Mermaid had been listening, at first doubtfully and with enchanted
pleasure; but now something about the story itself joined to some
oddity of expression in the faces of her other uncles caused her to say:
“Uncle Ho, that isn’t so, is it?”
“Not so, but so-so,” replied Ho Ha, persuasively. “If you mean, is it
true, why----”
“Oh, I don’t mind it’s not being true,” explained the little girl,
twisting her fingers. “It spoils things to have them true--just a
little--doesn’t it?”
The smile left Ho Ha’s face.
“By gracious! I believe that’s a fact!” he exclaimed.