time-stained, battered newspaper of forty years ago. I regret that it
is too long to be given entire, for the unknown writer tells his story
well. He came to the Shoals for the benefit of his failing health, and
remained there late into the autumn of 1826, “in the family of a worthy
fisherman.” He dilates upon the pleasure he found in the loneliness
of the place, “the vast solitude of the sea; no one who has not known
it can imbibe the faintest idea of it.” “From the hour I learned
the truth,” he says, “that all which lives must die, the thought of
dissolution has haunted me;--the falling of a leaf, a gray hair, or a
faded cheek, has power to chill me. But here in the recesses of these
eternal rocks, with only a cloudless sky above and an ocean before me,
for the first time in my life have I shaken off the fear of death and
believed myself immortal.”
He tells his strange story in this way: “It was one of those awfully
still mornings which cloud-gazeers will remember as characterizing
the autumn months. There was not a single vapor-wreath to dim the
intense blue of the sky, or a breath to ruffle the almost motionless
repose of the great deep; even the sunlight fell seemingly with
stiller brightness on the surface of it.” He stood on a low, long
point fronting the east, with the cliffs behind him, gazing out upon
the calm, when suddenly he became aware of a figure standing near him.
It was a woman wrapped closely in a dark sea-cloak, with a profusion
of light hair flowing loosely over her shoulders. Fair as a lily and
as still, she stood with her eyes fixed on the far distance, without
a motion, without a sound. “Thinking her one of the inhabitants of a
neighboring island who was watching for the return of a fishing-boat,
or perhaps a lover, I did not immediately address her; but seeing
no appearance of any vessel, at length accosted her with, ‘Well, my
pretty maiden, do you see anything of him?’ She turned instantly, and
fixing on me the largest and most melancholy blue eyes I ever beheld,
said quietly, ‘He _will_ come again.’” Then she disappeared round a
jutting rock and left him marvelling, and though he had come to the
island (which was evidently Appledore) for a forenoon’s stroll, he was
desirous to get back again to Star and his own quarters after this
interruption. Fairly at home again, he was inclined to look upon his
adventure as a dream, a mere delusion arising from his illness, but
concluded to seek in his surroundings something to substantiate, or
remove the idea. Finding nothing,--no woman on the island resembling
the one he had met,--and “hearing of no circumstance which might
corroborate the unaccountable impression,” he resolved to go again to
the same spot. This time it blew half a gale; the fishermen in vain
endeavored to dissuade him. He was so intensely anxious to be assured
of the truth or fiction of the impression of the day before, that he
could not refrain, and launched his boat, “which sprang strongly upon
the whitened waters,” and, unfurling his one sail, he rounded a point
and was soon safely sheltered in a small cove on the leeward side of
the island, probably Babb’s Cove.
Then he leaped the chasms and made his way to the scene of his
bewilderment. The sea was rolling over the low point; the spot where
he had stood the day before, “was a chaos of tumult, yet even then I
could have sworn that I heard with the same deep distinctness, the
quiet words of the maiden, ‘He _will_ come again,’ and then a low,
remotely-ringing laughter. All the latent superstition of my nature
rose up over me, overwhelming as the waves upon the rocks.” After that,
day after day, when the weather would permit, he visited the desolate
place, to find the golden-haired ghost, and often she stood beside him,
“silent as when I first saw her, except to say, as then, ‘He _will_
come again,’ and these words came upon the mind rather than upon the
ear. I was conscious of them rather then heard them,--it was all like a
dream, a mysterious intuition. I observed that the shells never crashed
beneath her footsteps, nor did her garments rustle. In the bright,
awful calm of noon and in the rush of the storm there was the same
heavy stillness over her. When the winds were so furious that I could
scarcely stand in their sweep, the light hair lay upon the forehead
of the maiden without lifting a fibre. Her great blue eyeballs never
moved in their sockets, and always shone with the same fixed, unearthly
gleam. The motion of her person was imperceptible; I knew that she was
here, and that she was gone.”
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE SOUTHEASTERN POINT OF APPLEDORE.]
So sweet a ghost was hardly a salutary influence in the life of our
invalid. She “held him with her glittering eye” till he grew quite
beside himself. This is so good a description I cannot choose but quote
it: “The last time I stood with her, was just at the evening of a
tranquil day. It was a lovely sunset. A few gold-edged clouds crowned
the hills of the distant continent, and the sun had gone down behind
them. The ocean lay blushing beneath the blushes of the sky, and even
the ancient rocks seemed smiling in the glance of the departing day.
Peace, deep peace was the pervading power. The waters, lapsing among
the caverns, spoke of it, and it was visible in the silent motion of
the small boats, which, loosening their white sails in the cove of
Star Island, passed slowly out, one by one, to the night-fishing.” In
the glow of sunset he fancied the ghost grew rosy and human. In the
mellow light her cold eyes seemed to soften. But he became suddenly so
overpowered with terror that “kneeling in shuddering fearfulness, he
swore never more to look upon that spot, and never did again.”
Going back to Star he met his old fisherman, who without noticing his
agitation, told him quietly that he knew where he had been and what
he had seen; that he himself had seen her, and proceeded to furnish
him with the following facts. At the time of the first settlement,
the islands were infested by pirates,--the bold Captain Teach, called
Blackbeard, being one of the most notorious. One of Teach’s comrades,
a Captain Scot, brought this lovely lady hither. They buried immense
treasure on the islands; that of Scot was buried on an island apart
from the rest. Before they departed on a voyage, “to plunder, slash,
and slay,” (in which, by the way, they were involved in one awful doom
by the blowing up of a powder magazine), the maiden was carried to the
island where her pirate lover’s treasure was hidden, and made to swear
with horrible rites that until his return, if it were not till the day
of judgment, she would guard it from the search of all mortals. So
there she paces still, according to our story-teller. Would I had met
this lily-fair ghost! Is it she, I wonder, who laments like a Banshee
before the tempests, wailing through the gorges at Appledore, “He will
_not_ come again”? Perhaps it was she who frightened a merry party of
people at Duck Island, whither they had betaken themselves for a day’s
pleasure a few summers ago. In the centre of the low island stood a
deserted shanty which some strange fishermen had built there several
years before, and left empty, tenanted only by the mournful winds. It
was blown down the September following. It was a rude hut with two
rough rooms and one square window, or rather opening for a window, for
sash or glass there was none. One of our party proposed going to look
after the boats, as the breeze freshened and blew directly upon the
cove where we had landed. We were gathered on the eastern end of the
island when he returned, and, kneeling on the withered grass where we
were grouped, he said suddenly, “Do you know what I have seen? Coming
back from the boats, I faced the fish-house, and as I neared it I saw
some one watching me from the window. Of course I thought it was one
of you, but when I was near enough to have recognized it, I perceived
it to be the strange countenance of a woman, wan as death; a face
young, yet with a look in it of infinite age. Old! it was older than
the Sphinx in the desert! It looked as if it had been watching and
waiting for me since the beginning of time. I walked straight into the
hut. There wasn’t a vestige of a human being there; it was absolutely
empty.” All the warmth and brightness of the summer day could hardly
prevent a chill from creeping into our veins as we listened to this
calmly delivered statement, and we actually sent a boat back to
Appledore for a large yacht to take us home, for the wind rose fast and
“gurly grew the sea,” and we half expected the wan woman would come and
carry our companion off bodily before our eyes.
Since writing these imperfect sketches of the Shoals it has become
an historical fact for the records of the State of New Hampshire that
the town of Gosport has disappeared, is obliterated from the face of
the earth, nearly all the inhabitants having been bought out, that the
place might be converted into a summer resort. Upon Appledore a large
house of entertainment has been extending its capabilities for many
years, and the future of the Shoals as a famous watering-place may be
considered certain.
The slight sprinkling of inhabitants yet remaining on Smutty-nose and
elsewhere, who seem inclined to make of the place a permanent home, are
principally Swedes and Norwegians; and a fine, self-respecting race
they are, so thrifty, cleanly, well-mannered, and generally excellent
that one can hardly say enough in their praise. It is to be hoped that
a little rill from the tide of emigration which yearly sets from those
countries toward America may finally people the unoccupied portions of
the Shoals with a colony that will be a credit to New England.
[Illustration]
=Transcriber’s Notes=
Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have been maintained
as printed.