horizon, but none equalled him. They all seemed to think it necessary
to shut their eyes and squirm like nothing human during the process
of singing a song, and they “pitched the tune” so high that no human
voice ever could hope to reach it in safety. “Tew high, Bill, tew
high,” one would say to the singer, with slow solemnity; so Bill tried
again. “Tew high again, Bill, tew high.” “Wull, _you_ strike it, Obed,”
Bill would say in despair; and Obed would “strike,” and hit exactly
the same impossible altitude, whereat Bill would slap his knee, and
cry in glad surprise, “D--d if he ain’t got it!” and forth, with catch
Obed and launch on his perilous flight, and grow red in the face with
the mighty effort of getting up there, and remaining there through the
intricacies and variations of the melody. One could but wonder whence
these queer tunes came,--how they were created; some of them reminded
one of the creaking and groaning of windlasses and masts, the rattling
of rowlocks, the whistling of winds among cordage, yet with less of
music in them than these natural sounds. The songs of the sailors
heaving up the anchor are really beautiful often, the wild chant that
rises sometimes into a grand chorus, all the strong voices borne out on
the wind in the cry of
“Yo ho, the roaring river!”
But these Shoals performances are lacking in any charm, except that of
the broadest fun.
The process of dunning, which made the Shoals fish so famous a century
ago, is almost a lost art, though the chief fisherman at Star still
“duns” a few yearly. A real dunfish is handsome, cut in transparent
strips, the color of brown sherry wine. The process is a tedious
one: the fish are piled in the storehouse and undergo a period of
“sweating” after the first drying, then are carried out into sun and
wind, dried again slightly, and again piled in the warehouse, and so on
till the process is complete. Drying fish in the common fashion is more
difficult than might be imagined: it is necessary to watch and tend
them continually as they lie on the picturesque “flakes,” and if they
are exposed at too early a stage to a sun too hot they burn as surely
as a loaf of bread in an intemperate oven, only the burning does not
crisp, but liquefies their substance.
For the last ten years fish have been caught about the Shoals by
trawl and seine in such quantities that they are thinning fast, and
the trade bids fair to be much less lucrative before many years have
elapsed. The process of drawing the trawl is very picturesque and
interesting, watched from the rocks or from the boat itself. The buoy
being drawn in, then follow the baited hooks one after another. First,
perhaps, a rockling shows his bright head above water; a pull, and in
he comes flapping, with brilliant red fins distended, gaping mouth,
indigo-colored eyes, and richly mottled skin: a few futile somersets,
and he subsides into slimy dejection. Next, perhaps, a big whelk is
tossed into the boat; then a leaden-gray haddock, with its dark stripe
of color on each side; then, perhaps, follow a few bare hooks; then
a hake, with horrid, cavernous mouth; then a large purple star-fish,
or a clattering crab; then a ling,--a yellow-brown, wide-mouthed piece
of ugliness never eaten here, but highly esteemed on the coast of
Scotland; then more cod or haddock, or perhaps a lobster, bristling
with indignation at the novel situation in which he finds himself;
then a cusk, long, smooth, compact, and dark; then a catfish. Of all
fiends commend me to the catfish as the most fiendish! Black as night,
with thick and hideous skin, which looks a dull, mouldy green beneath
the water, a head shaped as much like a cat’s as a fish’s head can
be, in which the devil’s own eyes seem to glow with a dull, malicious
gleam,--and such a mouth! What terrible expressions these cold
creatures carry to and fro in the vast, dim spaces of the sea! All fish
have a more or less imbecile and wobegone aspect; but this one looks
absolutely evil, and Schiller might well say of him that he “grins
through the grate of his spiky teeth,” and sharp and deadly are they;
every man looks out for his boots when a catfish comes tumbling in, for
they bite through leather, flesh, and bones. They seize a ballast-stone
between their jaws, and their teeth snap and fly in all directions. I
have seen them bite the long blade of a sharp knife so fiercely, that,
when it was lifted and held aloft, they kept their furious gripe, and
dangled, flapping all their clumsy weight, hanging by their teeth to
the blade. Sculpins abound, and are a nuisance on the trawls. Ugly and
grotesque as are the full-grown fish, there is nothing among the finny
tribe more dainty, more quaint and delicate, than the baby sculpin.
Sometimes in a pool of crystal water one comes upon him unawares,--a
fairy creature, the color of a blush-rose, striped and freaked and
pied with silver and gleaming green, hanging in the almost invisible
water as a bird in air, with broad, transparent fins suffused with a
faint pink color, stretched wide like wings to upbear the supple form.
The curious head is only strange, not hideous as yet, and one gazes
marvelling at all the beauty lavished on a thing of so little worth.
Wolf-fish, first cousins to the catfish, are found also on the trawls;
and dog-fish, with pointed snouts and sand-paper skins, abound to
such an extent as to drive away everything else sometimes. Sand-dabs,
a kind of flounder, fasten their sluggish bodies to the hooks, and a
few beautiful red fish, called bream, are occasionally found; also a
few blue-fish and sharks; frequently halibut,--though these latter
are generally caught on trawls which are made especially for them.
Sometimes is caught on a trawl a monstrous creature of horrible aspect,
called the nurse-fish,--an immense fish weighing twelve hundred pounds,
with a skin like a nutmeg-grater, and no teeth,--a kind of sucker,
hence its name. I asked a Shoaler what the nurse-fish looked like, and
he answered promptly, “Like the Devil!” One weighing twelve hundred
pounds has “two barrels of liver,” as the natives phrase it, which is
very valuable for the oil it contains. One of the fishermen described a
creature which they call mud-eel,--a foot and a half long, with a mouth
like a rat, and two teeth. The bite of this water-snake is poisonous,
the islanders aver, and tell a story of a man bitten by one at Mount
Desert last year, “who did not live long enough to get to the doctor.”
They bite at the hooks on the trawl, and are drawn up in a lump of mud,
and the men cut the ropes and mangle their lines to get rid of them.
Huge sunfish are sometimes harpooned, lying on the top of the water,--a
lump of flesh like cocoanut meat encased in a skin like rubber cloth,
with a most dim and abject hint of a face, absurdly disproportionate
to the size of the body, roughly outlined on the edge. Sword-fish are
also harpooned, weighing eight hundred pounds and upward; they are very
delicate food. A sword-fish swimming leaves a wake a mile long on a
calm day, and bewilders the imagination into a belief in sea-serpents.
There’s a legend that a torpedo was caught here once upon a time; and
the thrasher, fox-shark, or sea-fox occasionally alarms the fisherman
with his tremendous flexible tail, that reaches “from the gunnel to
the mainmast-top” when the creature comes to the surface. Also they
tell of skip-jacks that sprang on board their boats at night when
they were hake-fishing,--“little things about as large as mice, long
and slender, with beaks like birds.” Sometimes a huge horse-mackerel
flounders in and drives ashore on a ledge, for the gulls to scream
over for weeks. Mackerel, herring, porgies, and shiners used to abound
before the seines so thinned them. Bonito and blue-fish and dog-fish
help drive away the more valuable varieties. It is a lovely sight
to see a herring-net drawn in, especially by moonlight, when every
fish hangs like a long silver drop from the close-set meshes. Perch
are found in inexhaustible quantities about the rocks, and lump or
butter fish are sometimes caught; pollock are very plentiful,--smooth,
graceful, slender creatures! It is fascinating to watch them turning
somersets in the water close to the shore in full tides, or following a
boat at sunset, and breaking the molten gold of the sea’s surface with
silver-sparkling fin and tail. The rudder-fish is sometimes found, and
alewives and menhaden. Whales are more or less plentiful in summer,
“spouting their foam-fountains in the sea.” Beautiful is the sparkling
column of water rising suddenly afar off and falling noiselessly back
again. Not long ago a whale twisted his tail in the cable of the
schooner Vesper, lying to the eastward of the Shoals, and towed the
vessel several miles, at the rate of twenty knots an hour, with the
water boiling all over her from stem to stern!
Last winter some of the Shoalers were drawing a trawl between the
Shoals and Boone Island, fifteen miles to the eastward. As they drew in
the line and relieved each hook of its burden, lo! a horror was lifted
half above the surface,--part of a human body, which dropped off the
hooks and was gone, while they shuddered, and stared at each other,
aghast at the hideous sight.
Porpoises are seen at all seasons. I never saw one near enough to
gain a knowledge of its expression, but it always seemed to me that
these fish led a more hilarious life than the greater part of their
race, and I think they must carry less dejected countenances than
most of the inhabitants of the sea. They frisk so delightfully on
the surface, and ponderously plunge over and over with such apparent
gayety and satisfaction! I remember being out one moonless summer
night beyond the lighthouse island, in a little boat filled with gay
young people. The sea was like oil, the air was thick and warm, no
star broke the upper darkness, only now and then the lighthouse threw
its jewelled track along the water, and through the dense air its long
rays stretched above, turning solemnly, like the luminous spokes of a
gigantic wheel, as the lamps slowly revolved. There had been much talk
and song and laughter, much playing with the warm waves (or rather
smooth undulations of the sea, for there wasn’t a breath of wind to
make a ripple), which broke at a touch into pale-green, phosphorescent
fire. Beautiful arms, made bare to the shoulder, thrust down into
the liquid darkness, shone flaming silver and gold; from the fingers
playing beneath, fire seemed to stream; emerald sparks clung to the
damp draperies; and a splashing oar-blade half revealed sweet faces and
bright young eyes. Suddenly a pause came in talk and song and laughter,
and in the unaccustomed silence we seemed to be waiting for something.
At once out of the darkness came a slow, tremendous sigh that made
us shiver in the soft air, as if all the woe and terror of the sea
were condensed in that immense and awful breath; and we took our oars
and pulled homeward, with the weird fires flashing from our bows and
oar-blades. “Only a porpoise blowing,” said the initiated, when we told
our tale. It may have been “only a porpoise blowing”; but the leviathan
himself could hardly have made a more prodigious sound.
* * * * *
Within the lovely limits of summer it is beautiful to live almost
anywhere; most beautiful where the ocean meets the land; and here
particularly, where all the varying splendor of the sea encompasses
the place, and the ceaseless changing of the tides brings continual
refreshment into the life of every day. But summer is late and slow to
come; and long after the mainland has begun to bloom and smile beneath
the influence of spring, the bitter northwest winds still sweep the
cold, green water about these rocks, and tear its surface into long
and glittering waves from morning till night, and from night till
morning, through many weeks. No leaf breaks the frozen soil, and no
bud swells on the shaggy bushes that clothe the slopes. But if summer
is a laggard in her coming, she makes up for it by the loveliness of
her lingering into autumn; for when the pride of trees and flowers is
despoiled by frost on shore, the little gardens here are glowing at
their brightest, and day after day of mellow splendor drops like a
benediction from the hand of God. In the early mornings in September
the mists draw away from the depths of inland valleys, and rise into
the lucid western sky,--tall columns and towers of cloud, solid,
compact, superb; their pure, white, shining heads uplifted into the
ether, solemn, stately, and still, till some wandering breeze disturbs
their perfect outline, and they melt about the heavens in scattered
fragments as the day goes on. Then there are mornings when “all in
the blue, unclouded weather” the coast-line comes out so distinctly
that houses, trees, bits of white beach, are clearly visible, and with
a glass, moving forms of carriages and cattle are distinguishable
nine miles away. In the transparent air the peaks of Mounts Madison,
Washington, and Jefferson are seen distinctly at a distance of one
hundred miles. In the early light even the green color of the trees
is perceptible on the Rye shore. All through these quiet days the air
is full of wandering thistle-down, the inland golden-rod waves its
plumes, and close by the water’s edge, in rocky clefts, its seaside
sister blossoms in gorgeous color; the rose-haws redden, the iris
unlocks its shining caskets, and casts its closely packed seeds about,
gray berries cluster on the bayberry-bushes, the sweet life-everlasting
sends out its wonderful, delicious fragrance, and the pale asters
spread their flowers in many-tinted sprays. Through October and into
November the fair, mild weather lasts. At the first breath of October,
the hillside at Appledore fires up with the living crimson of the
huckleberry-bushes, as if a blazing torch had been applied to it; the
slanting light at sunrise and sunset makes a wonderful glory across
it. The sky deepens its blue; beneath it the brilliant sea glows into
violet, and flashes into splendid purple where the “tide-rip,” or
eddying winds, make long streaks across its surface (poets are not
wrong who talk of “purple seas,”) the air is clear and sparkling,
the lovely summer haze withdraws, all things take a crisp and tender
outline, and the cry of the curlew and the plover is doubly sweet
through the pure, cool air. Then sunsets burn in clear and tranquil
skies, or flame in piled magnificence of clouds. Some night a long
bar lies, like a smouldering brand, along the horizon, deep carmine
where the sun has touched it; and out of that bar breaks a sudden
gale before morning, and a fine fury and tumult begins to rage. Then
comes the fitful weather,--wild winds and hurrying waves, low, scudding
clouds, tremendous rains that shut out everything; and the rocks lie
weltering between the sea and sky, with the brief fire of the leaves
quenched and swept away on the hillside,--only rushing wind and
streaming water everywhere, as if a second deluge were flooding the
world.
After such a rain comes a gale from the southeast to sweep the sky
clear,--a gale so furious that it blows the sails straight out of the
bolt-ropes, if any vessel is so unfortunate as to be caught in it with
a rag of canvas aloft; and the coast is strewn with the wrecks of such
craft as happen to be caught on the lee shore, for
“Anchors drag, and topmasts lap,”
and nothing can hold against this terrible, blind fury. It is appalling
to listen to the shriek of such a wind, even though one is safe upon a
rock that cannot move; and more dreadful is it to see the destruction
one cannot lift a finger to avert.
As the air grows colder, curious atmospheric effects become visible. At
the first biting cold the distant mainland has the appearance of being
taken off its feet, as it were,--the line shrunken and distorted,
detached from the water at both ends: it is as if one looked under it
and saw the sky beyond. Then, on bright mornings with a brisk wind,
little wafts of mist rise between the quick, short waves, and melt away
before noon. At some periods of intense cold these mists, which are
never in banks like fog, rise in irregular, whirling columns reaching
to the clouds,--shadowy phantoms, torn and wild, that stalk past
like Ossian’s ghosts, solemnly and noiselessly throughout the bitter
day. When the sun drops down behind these weird processions, with a
dark-red, lurid light, it is like a vast conflagration, wonderful and
terrible to see. The columns, that strike and fall athwart the island,
sweep against the windows with a sound like sand, and lie on the ground
in ridges, like fine, sharp hail; yet the heavens are clear, the
heavily rolling sea dark-green and white, and, between the breaking
crests, the misty columns stream toward the sky.
Sometimes a totally different vapor, like cold, black smoke, rolls
out from the land, and flows over the sea to an unknown distance,
swallowing up the islands on its way. Its approach is hideous to
witness. “It’s all thick o’ black vapor,” some islander announces,
coming in from out of doors; just as they say, “It’s all thick o’ white
foam,” when the sudden squall tears the sea into fringes of spray.
In December the colors seem to fade out of the world, and utter
ungraciousness prevails. The great, cool, whispering, delicious sea,
that encircled us with a thousand caresses the beautiful summer
through, turns slowly our sullen and inveterate enemy; leaden it lies
beneath a sky like tin, and rolls its “white, cold, heavy-plunging
foam” against a shore of iron. Each island wears its chalk-white
girdle of ice between the rising and falling tides (edged with black
at low-water, where the lowest-growing seaweed is exposed), making the
stern bare rocks above more forbidding by their contrast with its stark
whiteness,--and the whiteness of salt-water ice is ghastly. Nothing
stirs abroad, except perhaps
“A lonely sea-bird crosses,
With one waft of wing,”
your view, as you gaze from some spray-incrusted window; or you behold
the weather-beaten schooners creeping along the blurred coast-line from
Cape Elizabeth and the northern ports of Maine towards Cape Ann, laden
with lumber or lime, and sometimes, rarely, with hay or provisions.
After winter has fairly set in, the lonely dwellers at the Isles of
Shoals find life quite as much as they can manage, being so entirely
thrown upon their own resources that it requires all the philosophy
at their disposal to answer the demand. In the village, where several
families make a little community, there should be various human
interests outside each separate fireside; but of their mode of life
I know little. Upon three of the islands live isolated families, cut
off by the “always wind-obeying deep” from each other and from the
mainland, sometimes for weeks together, when the gales are fiercest,
with no letters nor intercourse with any living thing. Some sullen day
in December the snow begins to fall, and the last touch of desolation
is laid upon the scene; there is nothing any more but white snow
and dark water, hemmed in by a murky horizon; and nothing moves or
sounds within its circle but the sea harshly assailing the shore, and
the chill wind that sweeps across. Toward night the wind begins to
rise, the snow whirls and drifts, and clings wherever it can find a
resting-place; and though so much is blown away, yet there is enough
left to smother up the rock and make it almost impossible to move about
on it. The drifts sometimes are very deep in the hollows; one winter,
sixteen sheep were buried in a drift, in which they remained a week,
and, strange to say, only one was dead when they were discovered. One
goes to sleep in the muffled roar of the storm, and wakes to find
it still raging with senseless fury; all day it continues; towards
night the curtain of falling flakes withdraws, a faint light shows
westward; slowly the clouds roll together, the lift grows bright with
pale, clear blue over the land, the wind has hauled to the northwest,
and the storm is at an end. When the clouds are swept away by the
besom of the pitiless northwest, how the stars glitter in the frosty
sky! What wondrous streamers of northern lights flare through the
winter darkness! I have seen the sky at midnight crimson and emerald
and orange and blue in palpitating sheets along the whole northern
half of the heavens, or rosy to the zenith, or belted with a bar of
solid yellow light from east to west, as if the world were a basket,
and it the golden handle thereto. The weather becomes of the first
importance to the dwellers on the rock; the changes of the sky and sea,
the flitting of the coasters to and fro, the visits of the sea-fowl,
sunrise and sunset, the changing moon, the northern lights, the
constellations that wheel in splendor through the winter night,--all
are noted with a love and careful scrutiny that is seldom given by
people living in populous places. One grows accustomed to the aspect
of the constellations, and they seem like the faces of old friends
looking down out of the awful blackness; and when in summer the great
Orion disappears, how it is missed out of the sky! I remember the
delight with which we caught a glimpse of the planet Mercury, in March,
1868, following close at the heels of the sinking sun, redly shining in
the reddened horizon,--a stranger mysterious and utterly unknown before.
For these things make our world: there are no lectures, operas,
concerts, theatres, no music of any kind, except what the waves may
whisper in rarely gentle moods; no galleries of wonders like the
Natural History rooms, in which it is so fascinating to wander; no
streets, shops, carriages, no postman, no neighbors, not a door-bell
within the compass of the place! Never was life so exempt from
interruptions. The eight or ten small schooners that carry on winter
fishing, flying to and fro through foam and squall to set and haul
in their trawls, at rare intervals bring a mail,--an accumulation of
letters, magazines, and newspapers that it requires a long time to plod
through. This is the greatest excitement of the long winters; and no
one can truly appreciate the delight of letters till he has lived where
he can hear from his friends only once in a month.
But the best balanced human mind is prone to lose its elasticity, and
stagnate, in this isolation. One learns immediately the value of work
to keep one’s wits clear, cheerful, and steady; just as much real work
of the body as it can bear without weariness being always beneficent,
but here indispensable. And in this matter women have the advantage of
men, who are condemned to fold their hands when their tasks are done.
No woman need ever have a vacant minute,--there are so many pleasant,
useful things which she may, and had better do. Blessed be the man
who invented knitting! (I never heard that a woman invented this or
any other art.) It is the most charming and picturesque of quiet
occupations, leaving the knitter free to read aloud, or talk, or think,
while steadily and surely beneath the flying fingers the comfortable
stocking grows.