Part 11

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.