WHERE THE SEA-GULLS COME
Like a pair of Titanic spectacles joined with a bridge of granite, the
two halves of Rockhaven faced the Atlantic billows, as grim and defiant
as when Leif Ericson's crew of fearless Norsemen sailed into its
beautiful harbor. With a coast line of bold cliffs, indented by
occasional fissures and crested with stunted spruce, the interior,
sloping toward the centre, hears only the whisper of the ocean winds.
Rockhaven has a history, and it is one filled with the pathos of
poverty, from that day, long ago, when Captain Carver first sailed into
its land-locked harbor to split, salt, and dry his sloop load of cod on
the sunny slope of a granite ledge, until now, when two straggling
villages of tiny houses, interspersed with racks for drying cod, a few
untidy fishing smacks tied up at its small wharves, and a little
steamboat that daily journeys back and forth to the main land, thirty
miles distant, entitles it to be called inhabited. In that history also
is incorporated many ghastly tales of shipwreck on its forbidding and
wave-beaten shores, of long winters when its ledges and ravines were
buried beneath a pall of snow, its little fleet of fishermen
storm-stayed in the harbor, and food and fuel scarce. It also has its
romantic tales of love and waiting to end in despair, when some fisher
boy sailed away and never came back; and one that had a tragic ending,
when a fond and foolish maiden ended years of waiting by hanging herself
in the old tide mill.
And, too, it has had its religious revival, when a wave of Bible reading
and conversion swept over its poorly fed people, to be followed by a
split in its one Baptist church on the merits and truths of close
communion or its opposite, to end in the formation of another.
It also had its moods, fair and charming when the warm south wind barely
ripples the blue sea about, the wild roses smile between its granite
ledges, and the sea-gulls sail leisurely over them; or else gloomy and
solemn when it lies hid under a pall of fog while the ocean surges boom
and bellow along its rock-ribbed shore.
On the inner and right-hand shore of the secure harbor, a small fishing
village fringes both sides of a long street, and at the head of the
harbor, one mile away, stands another hamlet. The first and larger
village is called Rockhaven, the other Northaven. Each has its little
church and schoolhouse, also used for town meetings, its one or two
general stores, and a post-office. Those in Rockhaven, where fishing is
the sole industry, are permeated with that salty odor of cured fish,
combined with tar, coffee, and kerosene; and scattered over the interior
are a score of modest farmhouses.
At one end of the harbor, and where the village of Northaven stands, a
natural gateway of rock almost cuts off a portion of the harbor, and
here was an old tide mill, built of unhewn stone, but now unused, its
roof fallen in, its gates rotted away, and the abutments that once held
it in place now used to support a bridge.
On one of the headlands just north of Rockhaven village, and known as
Norse Hill, stands a peculiar structure, a circular stone tower open at
the top and with an entrance on the inner or landward side. Tradition
says this was built by the Norsemen as a place of worship. Beyond this
hill, at the highest point of the island, is a deep fissure in the
coast, ending in a small open cave above tidewater and facing the south.
This is known as the Devil's Oven. On either side of this gorge, and
extending back from it, is a thicket of stunted spruce. The bottom and
sides of this inlet, semicircular in shape, are coated thick with
rockweed and bare at low tide. On the side of the harbor opposite
Rockhaven, and facing it, is a small granite quarry owned and
occasionally operated by one of the natives, a quaint old bachelor named
Jesse Hutton. In summer, and until late in the fall, each morning a
small fleet of fishing craft spread their wings and sail away, to return
each night. On the wharves and between most of the small brown houses
back of them, are fish racks of various sizes, interspersed with tiny
sheds built beside rocks, old battered boats, piles of rotting nets,
broken lobster pots, and a medley of wrack of all sorts and kinds,
beaten and bleached by the salty sea.
In summer, too, a white-winged yacht, trim and trig, with her brass
rails, tiny cannon, and duck-clad crew, occasionally sails into the
harbor and anchors, to send her complement of fashionable
pleasure-seekers ashore. Here they ramble along the one main street,
with its plank walk, peeping curiously into the open doors and windows
of the shops, at the simply clad women and barefooted children who eye
them with awe. Each are as wide apart from the other as the poles in
their dress, manners, and ways of living, and each as much a curiosity
to the other.
Of the social life of the island there is little to be said, for it is
as simple as the garb of its plain people, who never grow rich and are
seldom very poor. Each of the two villages is blessed with a diminutive
church, Baptist in denomination, the one at Rockhaven the oldest and
known as Hard-Shell; that at Northaven as Free-Will. Each calls together
most of the womenkind and grown-up children, as well as a few of the
men, every Sunday, while the rest of the men, if in summer, lounge
around the wharves smoking and swapping yarns. There is no great
interest in religion among either sex, and church attendance seems more
a social pleasure than a duty.
Occasionally a few of the young people will get together, as young folks
always do, to play games; and though it is in the creed of both churches
that dancing is to be abjured, nevertheless old Jess Hutton, whose
fiddle was his wife, child, and sole companion in his solitude, was
occasionally induced to play and call off for the lads and lasses of the
town, with a fringe of old folks around the walls as spectators.
"I like to see 'em dance," he always said, "fer they look so happy when
at it; 'sides, when they get old they won't want to. Dancin's as nat'ral
to young folks as grass growin' in spring."
Every small village has its oracle, whose opinion on all matters passes
current as law and gospel, whose stories and jokes are repeated by all,
and who is by tacit consent chosen moderator at town meetings, holds the
office of selectman and chairman of the school committee for life, is
accepted as referee in all disputes, and the friend, counsellor, and
adviser of all. Such a man in Rockhaven was Jesse Hutton. Though he
argued with the Rev. Jason Bush, who officiated at Rockhaven on Sundays,
about the unsocial nature of close communion, and occasionally met and
had a tilt with the Northaven minister, he was a friend to both.
"Goin' to church and believin' in a futur'," he would say, "is jest as
necessary to livin' and happiness as sparkin' on the part of young folks
is necessary to the makin' o' homes."
For Jesse Hutton, or simply Jess, as old and young called him, was in
his way a bit of a philosopher, and his philosophy may be summed up by
saying that he had the happy faculty of looking upon the dark side of
life cheerfully. It also may be said that he looked upon the cheerful
side of life temperately.
And here it may be prudent to insert a little of Jess Hutton's history.
He was the elder of two brothers, schoolboys on the island when its
population numbered less than one hundred, and one small brown
schoolhouse served as a place of worship on Sundays as well as a temple
of learning on week-days. Here the two boys Jesse and Jethro, received
scant education, and at the age of fourteen and sixteen, respectively,
knew more about the sailing of fishing smacks and the catching and
curing of cod and mackerel than of decimal fractions and the rule of
three.
And then the Civil War came on, and when its wave of patriotism reached
far-off Rockhaven, Jess Hutton, then a sturdy young man, enlisting in
the navy under Farragut, served his country bravely and well. Then Jess
came back, a limping hero, to find his brother Jethro deeply in love
with pretty Letty Carver, for whom Jess had cherished a boyish
admiration, and in a fair way to secure a home, with her as a chief
incentive. Jess made no comment when he saw which way the wind blew in
that quarter, but, philosopher that he was, even then, quietly but
promptly turned his face away from the island and for a score of years
Rockhaven knew not of his whereabouts. Gossips, recalling how he and
Letty, as grown-up school children, had played together along the sandy
beach of the little harbor or by the old tide mill, then grinding its
grist, asserted that Jess had been driven away by disappointment; but
beyond surmise they could not go, for to no one did he impart one word
of his reasons for leaving the island and the scenes of his boyhood.
Twenty years later, Letty Carver, who had become Mrs. Jethro Hutton, was
left a widow with one child, a little girl named Mona, a small white
cottage on Rock Lane, and, so far as any one knew, not much else.
And then Jess Hutton returned.
Once more the gossips became busy with what Jess would or should do,
especially as he seemed to have brought back sufficient means to at once
build a respectable dwelling place, the upper half fitted for a domicile
and the lower for a store.
But all surmise came to naught, together with all the well-meant and
excellent domestic paths mapped out by the busybodies for Jess and the
widow to follow, for when the combination house was done and the store
stocked, Jess Hutton attended regularly to the latter and kept
bachelor's hall in the former; and though he was an occasional caller at
the cottage in Rock Lane and usually walked to church with the widow and
little Mona on Sundays, the store and its customers by day or night were
his chief care, and his solitary home merely a place to sleep in. And
yet not; for beyond that, during his many years of wandering on the
mainland, he had contracted the habit of amusing himself with the
violin when lonesome, and Jess, the eccentric old bachelor, as some
termed him, and his fiddle became a curiosity among the odd and yet
simple people of Rockhaven. Then, too, the little girl, Mona, his niece,
became, as she grew up, his protegee and care, and he her one
inseparable friend and adviser.