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PEAK'S ISLAND
A ROMANCE
OF
BUCCANEER DAYS
BY
FORD PAUL
PORTLAND, MAINE
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
1892
PRESS OF BROWN THURSTON CO., PORTLAND
DEDICATED TO
Cora Caroline Clifford
AS A SMALL TRIBUTE OF GREAT LOVE
BY THE AUTHOR
FORD PAUL
CHAPTER I.
Roll on thou deep and dark blue ocean roll;
. . . . . . Upon the watery plain.
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
SEPTEMBER 27, 1607.
Dead bodies everywhere. The ocean, lashed to fury by the gale of
yesterday, came booming and hissing upon the beach in great breakers
white with foam; each billow as it dashed upon the jagged and broken
rocks bore in its terrible embrace still more human victims, or some
portion of the two unlucky ships that were fast breaking up. One wedged
in between two rocks with just sufficient play to allow of its heaving
from side to side, with every wave that struck it. The other and much
larger vessel, the Queen Elizabeth, a fine British ship, which had
sailed from England freighted with a cargo of general merchandise for
the colony of Virginia, went crashing up against the cruel stone teeth
of the cliff which overhung and projected into the angry sea; dismasted,
her bulwarks and rigging torn away she floated out into deeper water
only to be driven back again upon the rocks, by the violence of the wind
and the rapidly incoming tide.
Another crash and another, the forecastle carried away, the decks
opening, bales, chests, cordage, stores of all sorts tossed high up on
the shore, more dead bodies--chiefly of men, for they had some time
before given up to the few women and children the now capsized and
shattered boats. All along the shore, as far as eye could see, the beach
was composed of a heterogeneous mass of enormous fragments of rock
thrown together and piled up on each other, leaving here and there in
their midst a separate pool of sea water; in some of these pools was a
dead body or two, but by far the greater number were lying in every
imaginable, distorted position among the huge, irregular blocks of
stone. Many, who had been washed in sufficiently far to escape drowning,
were killed by the force with which they were dashed on shore: there,
with broken bones and gnashed and blood-stained bodies, they slept in
death, like men who had fallen in some great battle. It was noon, but
not a ray of sunlight glinted across the ghastly scene. Every sound was
lost in the terrific roar of the great, heaving hills of water, which
rolled in continuously; huge masses of wet gray cloud hung over all,
obscuring or transforming every visible object. Far up among the shingle
lay one human form which still bore signs of life. It was that of a
young lady, attired in deep mourning, a stream of blood trickled down
the pale face, and from time to time one hand moved convulsively toward
a deep cut in her head as if to assuage the pain; presently in
half-consciousness she whispered "Do not tell my mother I am hurt, it
would grieve her. She has had too much sorrow already."
The beloved mother, and all others who had made life precious to the
speaker, had three years previously been tenderly laid to rest in their
quiet graves thousands of miles away; but at this moment the mind had
only half awakened. A few minutes later her brain was clear and active,
and the truth flashed upon her in all its force. The recollection of her
bereavement and the fact of her being utterly alone in life, were the
first thoughts that came and the thoughts which dominated. And so it is
that all who are called upon to endure a great sorrow, acutely realize
that sorrow again and again with each return of the mind to the
consciousness of human existence, whether it be after the delerium of
fever, the stunning from an accident, or the awaking each morning to
daily life. With the awaking to our senses assuredly comes the old
heartache; nay, before we awake it is there, and before we are conscious
of aught else we are conscious of the grief which weighs heaviest on our
soul. Thus it was with Anna Vyvyan: the awaking to life brought with it
the pain in all its intensity, although she lay there on the cold
stones, her clothing drenched through and through, bareheaded, her hair
matted together with the sea water, bruised and cut and faint from
exhaustion, still the present physical suffering seemed by comparison
nothing to her. Everything was buried in the sorrow of the past, the
sorrow that she had lived through, but had not left behind.