"This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and salt and candle-lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule."
_A Lyke-Wake Dirge_.
The October days grow rapidly shorter, and brighten with more
concentrated light. It is but half past five, yet the sun dips redly
behind Conanicut, the sunset-gun booms from our neighbor's yacht, the
flag glides down from his mainmast, and the slender pennant, running
swiftly up the opposite halyards, dances and flickers like a flame, and
at last perches, with dainty hesitation, at the mast-head. A tint of
salmon-color, burnished into long undulations of lustre, overspreads
the shallower waves; but a sober gray begins to steal in beneath the
sunset rays, and will soon claim even the brilliant foreground for its
own. Pile a few more fragments of drift-wood upon the fire in the great
chimney, little maiden, and then couch yourself before it, that I may
have your glowing childhood as a foreground for those heaped relics of
shipwreck and despair. You seem, in your scarlet boating-dress, Annie,
like some bright tropic bird, alit for a moment beside that other bird
of the tropics, flame.
Thoreau thought that his temperament dated from an earlier period than
the agricultural, because he preferred woodcraft to gardening; and it
is also pleasant to revert to the period when men had invented neither
saws nor axes, but simply picked up their fuel in forests or on
ocean-shores. Fire is a thing which comes so near us, and combines
itself so closely with our life, that we enjoy it best when we work for
it in some way, so that our fuel shall warm us twice, as the country
people say,--once in the getting, and again in the burning. Yet no work
seems to have more of the flavor of play in it than that of collecting
drift-wood on some convenient beach, or than this boat-service of ours,
Annie, when we go wandering from island to island in the harbor, and
glide over sea-weedgroves and the habitations of crabs,--or to the
flowery and ruined bastions of Rose Island,--or to those caves at
Coaster's Harbor where we played Victor Hugo, and were eaten up in
fancy by a cuttle-fish. Then we voyaged, you remember, to that further
cave in, the solid rock, just above low-water-mark, a cell
unapproachable by land, and high enough for you to stand erect. There
you wished to play Constance in Marmion, and to be walled up alive, if
convenient; but as it proved impracticable on that day, you helped me
to secure some bits of drift-wood instead. Longer voyages brought waifs
from remoter islands,--whose very names tell, perchance, the changing
story of mariners long since wrecked,--isles baptized Patience and
Prudence, Hope and Despair. And other relics bear witness of more
distant beaches, and of those wrecks which still lie, sentinels of
ruin, along Brenton's Point and Castle Hill.
To collect drift-wood is like botanizing, and one soon learns to
recognize the prevailing species, and to look with pleased eagerness
for new. It is a tragic botany indeed, where, as in enchanted gardens,
every specimen has a voice, and, as you take each from the ground, you
expect from it a cry like the mandrake's. And from what a garden it
comes! As one walks round Brenton's Point after an autumnal storm, it
seems as if the passionate heaving of the waves had brought wholly new
tints to the surface, hues unseen even in dreams before, greens and
purples impossible in serener days. These match the prevailing green
and purple of the slate-cliffs; and Nature in truth carries such fine
fitnesses yet further. For, as we tread the delicate seaside turf,
which makes the farthest point seem merely the land's last bequest of
emerald to the ocean, we suddenly come upon curved lines of lustrous
purple amid the grass, rows on rows of bright muscle-shells, regularly
traced as if a child had played there,--the graceful high-water-mark of
the terrible storm.
It is the crowning fascination of the sea, the consummation of such
might in such infantine delicacy. You may notice it again in the
summer, when our bay is thronged for miles on miles with inch-long
jelly-fishes,--lovely creatures, in shape like disembodied
gooseberries, and shot through and through in the sunlight with all
manner of blue and golden glistenings, and bearing tiny rows of
fringing oars that tremble like a baby's eyelids. There is less of
gross substance in them than in any other created thing,--mere water
and outline, destined to perish at a touch, but seemingly never
touching, for they float secure, finding no conceivable cradle so soft
as this awful sea. They are like melodies amid Beethoven's Symphonies,
or like the songs that wander through Shakespeare, and that seem things
too fragile to risk near Cleopatra's passion and Hamlet's woe. Thus
tender is the touch of ocean; and look, how around this piece of oaken
timber, twisted and torn and furrowed,--its iron bolts snapped across
as if bitten,--there is yet twined a gay garland of ribbon-weed,
bearing on its trailing stem a cluster of bright shells, like a
mermaid's chatelaine.
Thus adorned, we place it on the blaze. As night gathers without, the
gale rises. It is a season of uneasy winds, and of strange, rainless
storms, which perplex the fishermen, and indicate rough weather out at
sea. As the house trembles and the windows rattle, we turn towards the
fire with a feeling of safety. Representing the fiercest of all
dangers, it yet expresses security and comfort.
Should a gale tear the roof from over our heads and show the black sky
alone above us, we should not feel utterly homeless while this fire
burned,--at least I can recall such a feeling of protection when once
left suddenly roofless by night in one of the wild gorges of Mount
Katahdin. There is a positive demonstrative force in an open fire,
which makes it your fit ally in a storm. Settled and obdurate cold may
well be encountered by the quiet heat of an invisible furnace. But this
howling wind might depress one's spirits, were it not met by a force as
palpable,--the warm blast within answering to the cold blast without.
The wide chimney then becomes the scene of contest: wind meets wind,
sparks encounter rain-drops, they fight in the air like the visioned
soldiers of Attila; sometimes a daring drop penetrates, and dies,
hissing, on the hearth; and sometimes a troop of sparks may make a
sortie from the chimney-top. I know not how else we can meet the
elements by a defiance so magnificent as that from this open hearth;
and in burning drift-wood, especially, we turn against the enemy his
own ammunition. For on these fragments three elements have already done
their work. Water racked and strained the hapless ships, air hunted
them, and they were thrown at last upon earth, the sternest of all. Now
fire takes the shattered remnants, and makes them a means of comfort
and defence.
It has been pointed out by botanists, as one of Nature's most graceful
retributions, that, in the building of the ship, the apparent balance
of vegetable forces is reversed, and the herb becomes master of the
tree, when the delicate, blue-eyed flax, taking the stately pine under
its protection, stretches over it in cordage, or spreads in sails. But
more graceful still is this further contest between the great natural
elements, when this most fantastic and vanishing thing, this delicate
and dancing flame, subdues all these huge vassals to its will, and,
after earth and air and water have done their utmost, comes in to
complete the task, and to be crowned as monarch. "The sea drinks the
air," said Anacreon, "and the sun the sea." My fire is the child of the
sun.
I come back from every evening stroll to this gleaming blaze; it is a
domestic lamp, and shines for me everywhere. To my imagination it burns
as a central flame among these dark houses, and lights up the whole of
this little fishing hamlet, humble suburb of the fashionable
watering-place. I fancy that others too perceive the light, and that
certain huge visitors are attracted, even when the storm keeps
neighbors and friends at home. For the slightest presage of foul
weather is sure to bring to yonder anchorage a dozen silent vessels,
that glide up the harbor for refuge, and are heard but once, when the
chain-cable rattles as it runs out, and the iron hand of the anchor
grasps the rock. It always seems to me that these unwieldy creatures
are gathered, not about the neighboring lighthouse only, but around our
ingle-side. Welcome, ye great winged strangers, whose very names are
unknown! This hearth is comprehensive in its hospitalities; it will
accept from you either its fuel or its guests; your mariners may warm
themselves beside it, or your scattered timbers may warm me. Strange
instincts might be supposed to thrill and shudder in the ribs of ships
that sail toward the beacon of a drift-wood fire. Morituri salutant. A
single shock, and all that magnificent fabric may become mere fuel to
prolong the flame.
Here, beside the roaring ocean, this blaze represents the only
receptacle more vast than ocean. We say, "unstable as water." But there
is nothing unstable about the flickering flame; it is persistent and
desperate, relentless in following its ends. It is the most tremendous
physical force that man can use. "If drugs fail," said Hippocrates,
"use the knife; should the knife fail, use fire." Conquered countries
were anciently given over to fire and sword: the latter could only
kill, but the other could annihilate. See how thoroughly it does its
work, even when domesticated: it takes up everything upon the hearth
and leaves all clean. The Greek proverb says, that "the sea drinks up
all the sins of the world." Save fire only, the sea is the most
capacious of all things.
But its task is left incomplete: it only hides its records, while fire
destroys them. In the Norse Edda, when the gods try their games, they
find themselves able to out-drink the ocean, but not to eat like the
flame. Logi, or fire, licks up food and trencher and all. This chimney
is more voracious than the sea. Give time enough, and all which yonder
depths contain might pass through this insatiable throat, leaving only
a few ashes and the memory of a flickering shade,--pulvis et umbra. We
recognize this when we have anything to conceal. Deep crimes are buried
in earth, deeper are sunk In water, but the deepest of all are confided
by trembling men to the profounder secrecy of flame. If every old
chimney could narrate the fearful deeds whose last records it has
cancelled, what sighs of undying passion would breathe from its dark
summit,--what groans of guilt! Those lurid sparks that whirl over
yonder house-top, tossed aloft as if fire itself could not contain
them, may be the last embers of some written scroll, one rescued word
of which might suffice for the ruin of a household, and the crushing of
many hearts.
But this domestic hearth of ours holds only, besides its drift-wood,
the peaceful records of the day,--its shreds and fragments and fallen
leaves. As the ancients poured wine upon their flames, so I pour
rose-leaves in libation; and each morning contributes the faded petals
of yesterday's wreaths. All our roses of this season have passed up
this chimney in the blaze. Their delicate veins were filled with all
the summer's fire, and they returned to fire once more,--ashes to
ashes, flame to flame. For holding, with Bettina, that every flower
which is broken becomes immortal in the sacrifice, I deem it more
fitting that their earthly part should die by a concentration of that
burning element which would at any rate be in some form their ending;
so they have their altar on this bright hearth.
Let us pile up the fire anew with drift-wood, Annie. We can choose at
random; for our logs came from no single forest. It is considered an
important branch of skill in the country to know the varieties of
firewood, and to choose among them well. But to-night we have the whole
Atlantic shore for our wood-pile, and the Gulf Stream for a teamster.
Every foreign tree of rarest name may, for aught we know, send its
treasures to our hearth. Logwood and satinwood may mingle with cedar
and maple; the old cellar floors of this once princely town are of
mahogany, and why not our fire? I have a very indistinct impression
what teak is; but if it means something black and impenetrable and
nearly indestructible, then there is a piece of it, Annie, on the
hearth at this moment.
It must be owned, indeed, that timbers soaked long enough in salt-water
seem almost to lose their capacity of being burnt. Perhaps it was for
this reason that, in the ancient "lyke-wakes" of the North of England,
a pinch of salt was placed upon the dead body, as a safeguard against
purgatorial flames. Yet salt melts ice, and so represents heat, one
would think; and one can fancy that these fragments should be doubly
inflammable, by their saline quality, and by the unmerciful rubbing
which the waves have given them. I have noticed what warmth this
churning process communicates to the clotted foam that lies in
tremulous masses among the rocks, holding all the blue of ocean in its
bubbles. After one's hands are chilled with the water, one can warm
them in the foam. These drift-wood fragments are but the larger foam of
shipwrecks.
What strange comrades this flame brings together! As foreign sailors
from remotest seas may sit and chat side by side, before some
boarding-house fire in this seaport town, so these shapeless sticks,
perhaps gathered from far wider wanderings, now nestle together against
the backlog, and converse in strange dialects as they burn. It is
written in the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma, that, "as two planks,
floating on the surface of the mighty receptacle of the waters, meet,
and having met are separated forever, so do beings in this life come
together and presently are parted." Perchance this chimney reunites the
planks, at the last moment, as death must reunite friends.
And with what wondrous voices these strayed wanderers talk to one
another on the hearth! They bewitch us by the mere fascination of their
language. Such a delicacy of intonation, yet such a volume of sound.
The murmur of the surf is not so soft or so solemn. There are the
merest hints and traceries of tones,--phantom voices, more remote from
noise than anything which is noise; and yet there is an undertone of
roar, as from a thousand cities, the cities whence these wild voyagers
came. Watch the decreasing sounds of a fire as it dies,--for it seems
cruel to leave it, as we do, to die alone. I watched beside this hearth
last night. As the fire sank down, the little voices grew stiller and
more still, and at last there came only irregular beats, at varying
intervals, as if from a heart that acted spasmodically, or as if it
were measuring off by ticks the little remnant of time. Then it said,
"Hush!" two or three times, and there came something so like a sob that
it seemed human; and then all was still.
If these dying voices are so sweet and subtile, what legends must be
held untold by yonder fragments that lie unconsumed! Photography has
familiarized us with the thought that every visible act, since the
beginning of the world, has stamped itself upon surrounding surfaces,
even if we have not yet skill to discern and hold the image. And
especially, in looking on a liquid expanse, such as the ocean in calm,
one is haunted with these fancies. I gaze into its depths, and wonder
if no stray reflection has been imprisoned there, still accessible to
human eyes, of some scene of passion or despair it has witnessed; as
some maiden visitor at Holyrood Palace, looking in the ancient metallic
mirror, might start at the thought that perchance some lineament of
Mary Stuart may suddenly look out, in desolate and forgotten beauty,
mingled with her own. And if the mere waters of the ocean, satiate and
wearied with tragedy as they must be, still keep for our fancy such
records, how much more might we attribute a human consciousness to
these shattered fragments, each seared by its own special grief.
Yet while they are silent, I like to trace back for these component
parts of my fire such brief histories as I share. This block, for
instance, came from the large schooner which now lies at the end of
Castle Hill Beach, bearing still aloft its broken masts and shattered
rigging, and with its keel yet stanch, except that the stern-post is
gone,--so that each tide sweeps in its green harvest of glossy kelp,
and then tosses it in the hold like hay, desolately tenanting the place
which once sheltered men. The floating weed, so graceful in its own
place, looks but dreary when thus confined. On that fearfully cold
Monday of last winter (January 8, 1866) when the mercury stood at -10
deg.; even in this mildest corner of New England,--this vessel was
caught helplessly amid the ice that drifted out of the west passage of
Narragansett Bay, before the fierce north-wind. They tried to beat into
the eastern entrance, but the schooner seemed in sinking condition, the
sails and helm were clogged with ice, and every rope, as an eye-witness
told me, was as large as a man's body with frozen sleet. Twice they
tacked across, making no progress; and then, to save their lives, ran
the vessel on the rocks and got ashore. After they had left her, a
higher wave swept her off, and drifted her into a little cove, where
she has ever since remained.
There were twelve wrecks along this shore last winter,--more than
during any season for a quarter of a century. I remember when the first
of these lay in great fragments on Graves Point, a schooner having been
stranded on Cormorant Rocks outside, and there broken in pieces by the
surf. She had been split lengthwise, and one great side was leaning up
against the sloping rock, bows on, like some wild sea-creature never
before beheld of men, and come there but to die. So strong was this
impression that when I afterwards saw men at work upon the wreck,
tearing out the iron bolts and chains, it seemed like torturing the
last moments of a living thing. At my next visit there was no person in
sight; another companion fragment had floated ashore, and the two lay
peacefully beside the sailors' graves (which give the name to the
point), as if they found comfort there. A little farther on there was a
brig ashore and deserted. A fog came in from the sea; and, as I sat by
the graves, some unseen passing vessel struck eight bells for noon. For
a moment I fancied that it came from the empty brig,--a ghostly call,
to summon phantom sailors.
That smouldering brand, which has alternately gleamed and darkened for
so many minutes, I brought from Price's Neck last winter, when the
Brenton's Reef Light-ship went ashore. Yonder the oddly shaped vessel
rides at anchor now, two miles from land, bearing her lanterns aloft at
fore and main top. She parted her moorings by night, in the fearful
storm of October 19, 1865; and I well remember, that, as I walked
through the streets that wild evening, it seemed dangerous to be out of
doors, and I tried to imagine what was going on at sea, while at that
very moment the light-ship was driving on toward me in the darkness. It
was thus that it happened:--
There had been a heavy gale from the southeast, which, after a few
hours of lull, suddenly changed in the afternoon to the southwest,
which is, on this coast, the prevailing direction. Beginning about
three o'clock, this new wind had risen almost to a hurricane by six,
and held with equal fury till midnight, after which it greatly
diminished, though, when I visited the wreck next morning, it was hard
to walk against the blast. The light-ship went adrift at eight in the
evening; the men let go another anchor, with forty fathoms of cable;
this parted also, but the cable dragged, as she drifted in, keeping the
vessel's head to the wind, which was greatly to her advantage. The
great waves took her over five lines of reef, on each of which her keel
grazed or held for a time. She came ashore on Price's Neck at last,
about eleven.
It was utterly dark; the sea broke high over the ship, even over her
lanterns, and the crew could only guess that they were near the land by
the sound of the surf. The captain was not on board, and the mate was
in command, though his leg had been broken while holding the tiller.
They could not hear each other's voices, and could scarcely cling to
the deck. There seemed every chance that the ship would go to pieces
before daylight. At last one of the crew, named William Martin, a
Scotchman, thinking, as he afterwards told me, of his wife and three
children, and of the others on board who had families,--and that
something must be done, and he might as well do it as anybody,--got a
rope bound around his waist, and sprang overboard. I asked the mate
next day whether he ordered Martin to do this, and he said, "No, he
volunteered it. I would not have ordered him, for I would not have done
it myself." What made the thing most remarkable was, that the man
actually could not swim, and did not know how far off the shore was,
but trusted to the waves to take him thither,--perhaps two hundred
yards. His trust was repaid. Struggling in the mighty surf, he
sometimes felt the rocks beneath his feet, sometimes bruised his hands
against them. At any rate he got on shore alive, and, securing his
rope, made his way over the moors to the town, and summoned his
captain, who was asleep in his own house. They returned at once to the
spot, found the line still fast, and the rest of the crew, four in
number, lowered the whaleboat, and were pulled to shore by the rope,
landing safely before daybreak.
When I saw the vessel next morning, she lay in a little cove, stern on,
not wholly out of water,--steady and upright as in a dry-dock, with no
sign of serious injury, except that the rudder was gone. She did not
seem like a wreck; the men were the wrecks. As they lay among the
rocks, bare or tattered, scarcely able to move, waiting for low tide to
go on board the vessel, it was like a scene after a battle. They
appeared too inert, poor fellows, to do anything but yearn toward the
sun. When they changed position for shelter, from time to time, they
crept along the rocks, instead of walking. They were like the little
floating sprays of sea-weed, when you take them from the water and they
become a mere mass of pulp in your hand. Martin shared in the general
exhaustion, and no wonder; but he told his story very simply, and
showed me where he had landed. The feat seemed to me then, and has
always seemed, almost incredible, even for an expert swimmer. He thus
summed up the motives for his action: "I thought that God was first,
and I was next, and if I did the best I could, no man could do more
than that; so I jumped overboard." It is pleasant to add, that, though
a poor man, he utterly declined one of those small donations of money
by which we Anglo-Saxons are wont clumsily to express our personal
enthusiasms; and I think I appreciated his whole action the more for
its coming just at the close of a war during which so many had readily
accepted their award of praise or pay for acts of less intrinsic daring
than his.
Stir the fire, Annie, with yonder broken fragment of a flag-staff; its
truck is still remaining, though the flag is gone, and every nation
might claim it. As you stir, the burning brands evince a remembrance of
their sea-lost life, the sparks drift away like foam-flakes, the flames
wave and flap like sails, and the wail of the chimney sings a second
shipwreck. As the tiny scintillations gleam and scatter and vanish in
the soot of the chimney-wall, instead of "There goes the parson, and
there goes the clerk," it must be the captain and the crew we watch. A
drift-wood fire should always have children to tend it; for there is
something childlike about it, unlike the steadier glow of walnut logs.
It has a coaxing, infantine way of playing with the oddly shaped bits
of wood we give it, and of deserting one to caress with flickering
impulse another; and at night, when it needs to be extinguished, it is
as hard to put to rest as a nursery of children, for some bright little
head is constantly springing up anew, from its pillow of ashes. And, in
turn, what endless delight children find in the manipulation of a fire!
What a variety of playthings, too, in this fuel of ours; such
inexplicable pieces, treenails and tholepins, trucks and sheaves, the
lid of a locker, and a broken handspike. These larger fragments are
from spars and planks and knees. Some were dropped overboard in this
quiet harbor; others may have floated from Fayal or Hispaniola,
Mozambique or Zanzibar. This eagle figure-head, chipped and battered,
but still possessing highly aquiline features and a single eye, may
have tangled its curved beak in the vast weed-beds of the Sargasso Sea,
or dipped it in the Sea of Milk. Tell us your story, O heroic but
dilapidated bird! and perhaps song or legend may find in it themes that
shall be immortal.
The eagle is silent, and I suspect, Annie, that he is but a plain,
home-bred fowl after all. But what shall we say to this piece of plank,
hung with barnacles that look large enough for the fabled
barnacle-goose to emerge from? Observe this fragment a little. Another
piece is secured to it, not neatly, as with proper tools, but clumsily,
with many nails of different sizes, driven unevenly and with their
heads battered awry. Wedged clumsily in between these pieces, and
secured by a supplementary nail, is a bit of broken rope. Let us touch
that rope tenderly; for who knows what despairing hands may last have
clutched it when this rude raft was made? It may, indeed, have been the
handiwork of children, on the Penobscot or the St. Mary's River. But
its Condition betokens voyages yet longer; and it may just as well have
come from the stranded "Golden Rule" on Roncador Reef,--that
picturesque shipwreck where (as a rescued woman told me) the eyes of
the people in their despair seemed full of sublime resignation, so that
there was no confusion or outcry, and even gamblers and harlots looked
death in the face as nobly, for all that could be seen, as the saintly
and the pure. Or who knows but it floated round Cape Horn, from that
other wreck, on the Pacific shore, of the "Central America," where the
rough miners found that there was room in the boats only for their
wives and their gold; and where, pushing the women off, with a few men
to row them, the doomed husbands gave a cheer of courage as the ship
went down.
Here again is a piece of pine wood, cut in notches as for a tally, and
with every seventh notch the longest; these notches having been cut
deeply at the beginning, and feebly afterwards, stopping abruptly
before the end was reached. Who could have carved it? Not a school-boy
awaiting vacation, or a soldier expecting his discharge; for then each
tally would have been cut off, instead of added. Nor could it be the
squad of two soldiers who garrison Rose Island; for their tour of duty
lasts but a week. There are small barnacles and sea-weed too, which
give the mysterious stick a sort of brevet antiquity. It has been long
adrift, and these little barnacles, opening and closing daily their
minute valves, have kept meanwhile their own register, and with their
busy fringed fingers have gathered from the whole Atlantic that small
share of its edible treasures which sufficed for them. Plainly this
waif has had its experiences. It was Robinson Crusoe's, Annie, depend
upon it. We will save it from the flames, and when we establish our
marine museum, nothing save a veritable piece of the North Pole shall
be held so valuable as this undoubted relic from Juan Fernandez.
But the night deepens, and its reveries must end. With the winter will
pass away the winter-storms, and summer will bring its own more
insidious perils. Then the drowsy old seaport will blaze into splendor,
through saloon and avenue, amidst which many a bright career will end
suddenly and leave no sign. The ocean tries feebly to emulate the
profounder tragedies of the shore. In the crowded halls of gay hotels,
I see wrecks drifting hopelessly, dismasted and rudderless, to be
stranded on hearts harder and more cruel than Brenton's Reef, yet hid
in smiles falser than its fleecy foam. What is a mere forsaken ship,
compared with stately houses from which those whom I first knew in
their youth and beauty have since fled into midnight and despair?
But one last gleam upon our hearth lights up your innocent eyes, little
Annie, and dispels the gathering shade. The flame dies down again, and
you draw closer to my side. The pure moon looks in at the southern
window, replacing the ruddier glow; while the fading embers lisp and
prattle to one another, like drowsy children, more and more faintly,
till they fall asleep.