Part 10

I know nothing sadder than their aspect in the light of the winter sunsets, as they vanish in the cold east, blushing for a fleeting moment, sweetly, faintly, under the last touch of the dropping day. To a child’s imagination they are all full of charm and of mystery, freighted with heavenly dreams. “The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,” and the watching of the sails filled the lonely, lovely summer days of one young Shoaler with joy enough and to spare. How many pictures linger in my mind,--splendid, stately apparitions of full-rigged, slender schooners, passing very near early in the breezy mornings of spring, every inch of canvas in a blaze of white light, and the whole vessel alive from keel to topmast. And well I remember on soft May evenings how they came dropping down from Cape Ann, while the sunset, streaming through low bars of cloud, just touched them with pale gold, and made them half luminous and altogether lovely; and how the fog clung in silver strips to the dark, wet sails of vessels lying becalmed when all the air about was clear and free from mist; how the mackerel fleet surrounded the islands, five hundred craft sometimes between the islands and the coast, so that one might almost walk on shore from deck to deck. It was wonderful to wake on some midsummer morning and find the sea gray-green, like translucent chrysoprase, and the somewhat stormy sunrise painting the sails bright flame-color as they flew before the warm, wild wind that blew strongly from the south. At night, sometimes, in a glory of moonlight, a vessel passed close in with all sail set, and only just air enough to fill the canvas, enough murmur from the full tide to drown the sound of her movement,--a beautiful ghost stealing softly by, and passing in mysterious light beyond the glimmering headland out of sight. Here was suggestion enough for a night full of visions! Then the scudding of sails before a storm,--how they came rushing in from the far, dim sea-line, racing by to Portsmouth Harbor, close-reefed, or under darkened mainsail and jib only, leaping over the long swell, and plunging their sharp bowsprits into a cloud of snowy spray at every leap! Then when the storm had spent itself, how beautiful to see them stealing tranquilly forth from the river’s mouth, flocking seaward again, shining white in the peaceful morning sunshine! Watching them in all their endless variety, coming and going, dreaming, drifting, or flying, many a time these quaint old rhymes occurred to me:--

“Ships, ships, I will descrie you Amidst the main, I will come and try you What you are protecting, And projecting, What’s your end and aim? Some go abroad for merchandise and trading, Another stays to keep his country from invading, A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading. Halloo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go?”

As the winter is doubly hard, so are the gentler seasons doubly sweet and delightful, when one is shut out with them, as it were, and forced to observe all their changes and peculiarities, with so few human interests to interrupt one’s intercourse with nature. The rainy days in May at the Isles of Shoals have seemed to me more lovely than the sunshine in Paradise could be, so charming it was to walk in the warm showers over our island, and note all the mosses and lichens drenched and bright with the moisture, thick, sweet buds on the bayberry bushes, rich green leaves unfolding here and there among the tangled vines, and bright anemones growing up between. The lovely eyebright glimmers everywhere. The rain, if it continues for several days, bleaches the sea-weed about the shores to a lighter and more golden brown, the sea is gray, and the sky lowers; but all these neutral tints are gentle and refreshing. The coasters rock lazily on the long swell toward Cape Ann, dim through low-hanging clouds; clearly the sandpipers call, and always the song-sparrows freshly surprise you with their outburst of cheerful music. In the last weeks of May comes a period of balmy days, with a gentle, incessant southwest wind, the sea a wonderful gray-blue, with the faint, impalpable haze lying over sails, islands, sea, and coast. A brooding warmth is everywhere. The sky is cloudless, but opaque,--a kind of milky effect in the atmosphere, through which the sun is seen as through smoked glass, and long before it sets one can bear to look at the crimson ball slow sinking in the rich, red west; and the moon is like copper, throwing no light on the water. The islanders call this a “smoky sou’wester.” Now come delicious twilights, with silence broken only by mysterious murmurs from the waves, and sweet, full cries from the sandpipers fluttering about their nests on the margin of the beaches,--tender, happy notes that thrill the balmy air, and echo softly about the silent, moonlit coves. Sails in this twilight atmosphere gather the dusk within their folds; if the warm wind is blowing softly, there is enchantment in the sound of the lazily-flapping canvas and in the long creak of the mast. A human voice borne through this breathing wind comes like a waft of music faintly heard across the water. The mornings now are exquisite, the delicate flush of the sunrise through this beautiful haze is indescribable. The island is indeed like

“A precious stone set in the silver sea,”

so freshly green, so flower-strewn and fragrant, so musical with birds, and with the continual caressing of summer waves. Now and then a bobolink pays us a flying visit, and, tilting on a blackberry spray, pours out his intoxicating song; some morning is heard the fairy bugling of an oriole; a scarlet tanager honors the place with half a day’s sojourn, to be the wonder of all eyes; but commonly the swallows hold it in undisputed possession. The air is woven through and through with the gleam of their burnished wings and their clear, happy cries. They are so tame, knowing how well they are beloved, that they gather on the window-sills, twittering and fluttering, gay and graceful, turning their heads this way and that, eying you askance without a trace of fear. All day they build their nests about the eaves, nor heed how loving eyes do watch their charming toil. Walking abroad in these pleasant evenings, many a little sparrow’s nest one finds low down in the bayberry-bushes,--smooth, brown cups of woven grass, wherein lie the five speckled eggs, each full of silent music, each dumb miracle waiting for the finger of God to wake, to be alive, to drink the sunshine and the breeze, to fill the air with blissful sound. At the water’s edge one finds the long ledges covered with barnacles, and from each rough shell a tiny, brown, filmy hand is thrust out, opening and shutting in gladness beneath the coming tide, feeling the freshness of the flowing water. The shore teems with life in manifold forms. As the darkness gathers, the ripples begin to break in pale flame against the rocks; if the tide is low enough, it is charming to steal down in the shadow, and, drawing aside the curtain of coarse sea-weed that drapes the face of some smooth rock, to write on the surface beneath: the strange fire follows your finger; and there is your name in weird flame, all alive, quivering and trembling, and finally fading and disappearing. In a still pool you drop a stone or touch the water with your hand: instantly a thousand stars break out and burn and vanish in a moment! It used to be a pleasant thing to bring a piece of drift-wood, water-soaked, and shaggy with fine seaweed, up from the shore, and from some dark corner suddenly sweep my hand across it: a sheet of white flame followed, startling the beholder.

June is of course the most delightful month here, everything is yet so fresh; later the hot sun dries and scorches the thin soil, and partially destroys the little vegetation which finds room upon the island. But through this month the ground is beautiful with starry, purple stonewort; like little suns the blossoms of the lion’s-foot shine in the thinnest of the soil; herb-robert blossoms; the slender arenaria steals up among the bushes, lifting a little white flower to the sun; here and there the sorrel lies in crimson stains; in wet places sturdy clumps of fern unroll their golden green with splendid vigor of growth; sundew and partridge-berry creep at their feet; and from the swamp the rushes rise in ranks, like a faint, green vapor, slowly, day by day. The few wild-cherry bushes have each its inevitable caterpillars’ nest; one can but wonder how caterpillars and canker-worms find their way across the water. The presence of green snakes on these rocks may be explained by their having been found coiled on a piece of drift-wood many miles out at sea. Bees find their way out from the land in companies, seeking the white clover-blossoms that rise in cool, creamy, fragrant globes through the dark leaves and grass. The clover here is peculiarly rich. Many varieties of butterflies abound, the handsome moth of the American silkworm among them. One night in June, at sunset, we were kindling the lamps in the lighthouse, and because it was so mild and still outside, the little iron door of the lantern was left open. No breeze came in to stir the flame that quivered in the centre of each shining reflector, but presently glided through the door the pale-green, exquisite Luna moth, with its wonderful crescents, its lines of velvet brown, and long under wings drawn out like the tail of a swallow. It sailed slowly round and round the dome above the lamps at first, but soon became agitated, and would have dashed itself against the flames but that I caught it. What a marvel it was! I never dreamed of the existence of so beautiful a creature. Titania herself could not have been more interesting to me.

In the quiet little coves troops of butterflies are often seen, anchored for the night, clinging to the thistle-blossoms to be safe from assailing winds. Crickets are never heard here till after the 1st of August. On the mainland they begin, about the 28th of May, a sad and gentle autumnal undertone, which from that time accompanies the jubilant chorus of summer in a gradual _crescendo_, till finally the days pass on to no other music save their sweet, melancholy chirrup. In August comes the ruby-throated humming-bird, and several pairs flutter about the little gardens for weeks. By the 1st of July the wild roses blossom, and every bit of swampy ground is alive with the waving flags of the iris, each flower of which is full of exquisite variety of tint and shade of gold and violet. All over the island patches of it diversify the surface, set like amethysts in the rich greens and browns of turf and mossy spaces. Through the tangle of leaves and grasses the spikes of golden-rod make their way upward slowly day by day, to be ready at the first beckoning of Autumn’s finger to light their torches and join the fair procession; the green hollows are filled with blossoming elder, white as a lake of milk; the pimpernel is awake; and the heavy, stout stalks of the mulleins uprear their woolly buds, that soon will break into squares of pallid gold. The world is at high tide of delight. Along the coast-line the mirage races in flowing undulations of heat, changing the hill ranges into a solid wall, to dissolve them, and again reunite them into clusters of gigantic towers and battlements; trees, spires, chimneys, lighthouses become roofs and minarets and domes of some stately city of the clouds, and these melt in their turn, and the whole coast shrinks away to the merest line on the horizon immeasurably removed. Each of these changes, and the various aspects of their little world, are of inestimable value to the lonely children living always in that solitude. Nothing is too slight to be precious: the flashing of an oar-blade in the morning light; the twinkling of a gull’s wings afar off, like a star in the yellow sunshine of the drowsy summer afternoon; the water-spout waltzing away before the wild wind that cleaves the sea from the advancing thunder-cloud; the distant showers that march about the horizon, trailing their dusky fringes of falling rain over sea and land; every phase of the great thunder-storms that make glorious the weeks of July and August, from the first floating film of cloud that rises in the sky till the scattered fragments of the storm stream eastward to form a background for the rainbow,--all these things are of the utmost importance to dwellers at the Isles of Shoals. There is something especially delightful in the perfumes which stream across the sea after showers, like a heavenly greeting from the land: scents of hay and of clover, spice of pine woods, balm of flowers come floating over the cool waves on the wings of the west wind, and touch one like a breath from Paradise. Few sounds from the shore reach the islands; the booming of guns is audible, and sometimes, when the wind is west, the air is pierced with distant car-whistles, so very remote, however, that they are hardly to be recognized except by a practised ear.

* * * * *

There is a superstition among the islanders that Philip Babb, or some evil-minded descendant of his, still haunts Appledore; and no consideration would induce the more timid to walk alone after dark over a certain shingly beach on that island, at the top of a cove bearing Babb’s name,--for there the uneasy spirit is oftenest seen. He is supposed to have been so desperately wicked when alive that there is no rest for him in his grave. His dress is a coarse, striped butcher’s frock, with a leather belt, to which is attached a sheath containing a ghostly knife, sharp and glittering, which it is his delight to brandish in the face of terrified humanity. One of the Shoalers is perfectly certain that he and Babb have met, and he shudders with real horror, recalling the meeting. This is his story. It was after sunset (of course), and he was coming round the corner of a work-shop, when he saw a wild and dreadful figure advancing toward him; his first thought was that some one wished to make him the victim of a practical joke, and he called out something to the effect that he “wasn’t afraid”; but the thing came near with ghastly face and hollow eyes, and, assuming a fiendish expression, took out the knife from its belt and flourished it in the face of the Shoaler, who fled to the house and entered breathless, calling for the person who he supposed had tried to frighten him. That person was quietly eating his supper; and when the poor fellow saw him he was so much agitated that he nearly fainted, and his belief in Babb was fixed more firmly than ever. One spring night some one was sitting on the broad piazza at sunset; it was calm and mild; the sea murmured a little; birds twittered softly; there was hardly a waft of wind in the still atmosphere. Glancing toward Babb’s Cove, he saw a figure slowly crossing the shingle to the path which led to the house. After watching it a moment he called to it, but there was no reply; again he called, still no answer; but the dark figure came slowly on; and then he reflected that he had heard no step on the loose shingle that was wont to give back every footfall, and, somewhat puzzled, he slowly descended the steps of the piazza and went to meet it. It was not so dark but that he could see the face and recognize the butcher’s frock and leather belt of Babb, but he was not prepared for the devilish expression of malice in that hollow face, and, spite of his prosaic turn of mind, he was chilled to the marrow at the sight. The white stripes in the frock gleamed like phosphorescent light, so did the awful eyes. Again he called aloud, “Who are you? What do you want?” and still advanced, when suddenly the shape grew indistinct, first thick and cloudy, then thin, dissolving quite away, and, much amazed, he turned and went back to the house, perplexed and thoroughly dissatisfied. These tales I tell as they were told to me. I never saw Babb, nor ever could, I think. The whole Babb family are buried in the valley of Appledore where the houses stand, and till this year a bowling-alley stood upon the spot, and all the balls rolled over the bones of all the Babbs; that may have been one reason why the head of the family was so restless; since the last equinoctial gale blew the building down, perhaps he may rest more peacefully. Babb’s is, I believe, the only real ghost that haunts the islands; though in the loft at the parsonage on Star (a mere creep-hole under the eaves, unattainable by any steps or ladder) there is, in windy weather, the most extraordinary combination of sounds, as if two bluff old fellows were swearing at each other, gruffly, harshly, continually, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause. Really, it is a most disagreeable racket! A lean, brown, hollow-eyed old woman from Star used to tell how her daughter-in-law died, in a way that took the color out of childish cheeks to hear; for the dying woman thought the ghosts were scratching for her outside, against the house. “‘Ma’y Hahner’” (Mary Hannah), “she said to me, a whisperin’, says she, ‘Who’s that scratching, tearing the house down underneath the window?’ ‘No, it ain’t nothin’,’ says I; ‘Ma’y Hahner, there ain’t nobody a tearin’ the house down underneath the winder.’ ‘Yes, yes, there is,’ says she, ‘there is! I hear ’em scratching, scratching, tearing the house down underneath the winder!’ And then I know’d Ma’y Hahner was goin’ to die, and so she did afore mornin’.”

There is a superstition here and along the coast to this effect. A man gathering drift-wood or whatever it may be, sees a spade stuck in the ground as if inviting him to dig. He isn’t quite ready, goes and empties his basket first, then comes back to investigate, and lo! there’s nothing there, and he is tormented the rest of his life with the thought that probably untold wealth lay beneath that spade, which he might have possessed had he only been wise enough to seize the treasure when it offered itself. A certain man named William Mace, living at Star, long, long ago, swore that he had had this experience; and there’s a dim tradition that another person, seeing the spade, passed by about his business, but hastening back, arrived just in time to see the last of the sinking tool, and to perceive also a golden flat-iron disappearing into the earth. This he seized, but no human power could extricate it from the ground, and he was forced to let go his hold and see it sink out of his longing ken.

Some young people, camping on the south side of Appledore, one summer, among the ancient graves, dug up a skeleton; the bones crumbled to dust, but the skull remained intact, and I kept it for a long time. The Shoalers shook their heads. “Hog Island would have no ‘luck’ while that skull remained above ground.” It had lain so long in the earth that it was no more repulsive than a bit of stone, yet a nameless dread invested it. At last I took it in my hands and pored over it till the shudder passed away forever, and then I was never weary of studying it. Sitting by the driftwood blaze late into the still autumn nights alone at my desk, it kept me company,--a vase of brilliant flowers on one side, the skull on the other, and the shaded lamp between, equally lighting both. A curious head it was, thick as an Ethiop’s, with no space above the eyes, high above the ears, and heavy behind them. But O, those hollows where the eyes once looked out, beholding the same sea and sky we see to-day! Those great, melancholy, empty hollows,--what sort of creature gazed from them? Cunning and malice, anger and hate, may have burned within them in sullen flame; who shall say if any beauty ever illumined them? If hate smouldered here, did love ever look out and transfigure the poor, dull face? did any spark from the far heaven even brighten it? any touch of lofty thought or aspiration turn the clay to fire? And when, so many years ago, this being glided away from behind these awful windows and left them empty for ever and ever, did he find what in his life here he could not have possessed, with this head, which he did not make, and therefore was not responsible for? Many and many a question I put silently to the silent casket which had held a human soul; there was no sound to answer me save only the great, gentle whisper of the sea without the windows, and now and then a sigh from the autumn wind. There came to me a sense of the pathos of the infinite patience of humanity, waiting so helplessly and blindly for the unravelling of the riddle that has troubled every thoughtful soul since the beginning of time. Little roots of plants were clasped about the temples. Behind the right ear were three indentations, as if made by some sharp instrument, suggesting foul play. An Indian tomahawk might have made those marks, or a pirate’s cutlass: who can say? What matter is it now? I kept the relic for months, till it crumbled so fast when I daily dusted it that I feared it would disappear entirely; so I carried it quietly back and laid it in the grave from which it had been taken, wondering, as I drew the shallow earth over it, who had stood round about when it was buried for the first time, centuries ago; what manner of people, and were they afraid or sorry. But there was no voice to answer me.

I have before me a weird, romantic legend of these islands, in a 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.”