THE BOGY OF THE BEACH
Strange things happen on that Beach and have happened. My experience was no new one, but it takes hold of a man, nevertheless, and he can’t shake it off for months. Ever since white men frequented that Beach, some one at intervals has undergone the same foreboding experience.
In the early part of the last century a whaling crew, half Indians, had their hut east of [Quanch]. They used to land and come off at the point there, where the water is deep, called Whale House Point till this day. From the days of the earliest settlement, whaling crews used to go on the Beach. They would live there during the season and watch the sea day by day, ready to launch their boats and push off whenever they saw a whale blow. Their supplies were brought from the north side of the Island, and fires were built on Long Point as a signal for the crew to come off. The Long Point of those days is now Ireland’s Point, which pushes out into the bay a mile, about, west of the mouth of Carman’s river.
When a fire flashed up at night, part of the crew would row across the bay, heading directly for the fire. After they had put the supplies in their boat and were ready to return, they would throw sand on the fire and put it out. Soon after it disappeared a fire would blaze up on the Beach to guide them back. In that way Fire Place got its old name. That was a name that had something behind it and never ought to have been changed.
This crew had been expecting for three days the signal fire. They were getting short of supplies. People didn’t get around lively in those times, you know. The trouble was that they hadn’t much to get around lively with.
For two nights until nearly midnight—all this I heard from my great-grandfather—the crew had set a watch on the top of Quanch Hill to look out for the signal fire upon Long Point. Now the curious thing about this is that a man named Jonas was the watch both nights. The first night was his regular watch, but the second night he volunteered to take the place of another member of the crew. The men in the hut spoke about this during the evening. None of them, however, knew that Jonas’s idea was to satisfy himself as to whether the strange experience he had had the night before would repeat itself. That Beach, you know, is one of the most lonely places in the world. There are times when it’s awful on there. Take it on a dark night with the wind wild and the sea mad.
That night Jonas made up his mind to walk eastward a mile and a half. Frequently he would go down in the hollows and stop to listen. He heard the sound of the wind in the grass, and the beat of the surf—each of these distinctly. And yet something more. His heart began to thump and his own breathing interfered with his judgment. He tried hard to listen. Could he be deceived? he asked himself. Suddenly he turned and walked to the top of a hill where no grass grew. He got his breath and then held it. He heard even the delicate beat of the particles of sand blown by the wind, and he was sure that besides he recognized what he had heard in the hollow. He could not be mistaken. Farther away now, moving among the hills—almost gone, then quite gone. The thought occurred to him then that he had forgotten he was on the lookout. Immediately he scanned the horizon to the northeast of him but discerned no spot of flickering red. He looked up at the stars to see how far they had moved westward. Some drifting clouds obscured two or three stars he knew best, so he waited till the clouds had shifted, and then he knew it was near midnight. There was no use to watch longer, for those who brought supplies never made a fire after midnight. He turned to make his way toward the hut. He had not taken three steps, when he stopped and stood stock-still again. He heard distinctly the rumble and beat of the surf, the sifting of the sand, the sound of the wind in the dried beach grass, yet plainly apart from these something else. It moved on the wind rapidly away and away, and was gone. But as he stood thinking of it, it came again, stronger than before. This time not eastward of him, but clearly westward. His head grew hot. It moved farther and farther to the west, rising and falling, then with sudden increasing force stopped abruptly. He made his way to the hut and crept into his bunk. It was two hours before he got to sleep.
The next morning a whale was sighted close in shore. The crew launched their whale-boat and put off for him. They calculated where he would next rise and rowed to the spot. He came up lengthwise of the boat, just far enough ahead to smash it with his flukes. It was a right whale, and they strike sideways, you know, with their tail.
“Stern all,” was the order quickly uttered. A short distance back, they whirled the boat around, and then pulled at the order. [Whale-boats], I suppose you know, are sharp at both ends.
Before they were in position, however, to row straight on to the whale and keep clear of his flukes, he started. Quebax, the harpooneer, fastened his oar, grasped the harpoon, rose up in the bow and threw it. It was a long throw, fifteen feet, but it was the only chance. The harpoon entered the side of the whale and must have held securely. But the whale turned suddenly and struck the boat with his head. The crew sprang overboard just in time, for the next moment the whale stove the boat into flinders. The wind, so it happened, favored them, as it was blowing directly on shore. All the crew reached the Beach except Quebax. He was missing, nor was his body ever found. The bow of the boat, to which the line was fastened never came ashore, so it was thought that Quebax got entangled in the line. It was toward the end of the season—this whale would have made their sixth—and the disaster broke up their whaling for that year.
No man of that crew felt the great sense of relief at leaving the Beach that Jonas did, and never after would he go on there to remain overnight. He said nothing at the time about his weird experience among those Beach hills the night before Quebax was lost, but in later years he told it all.
And then, again, I have heard it said that for several nights before that awful catastrophe at Old Inlet, at the time of the War of 1812, the same strange calling and shouting was heard among the hills.
Old Uncle Payne, whose gunning house stood east of Molasses Island Point near Quanch, declared that twice in his life he heard at midnight the moaning in the hills, and each time thereafter had found bodies washed ashore.
But at [Fiddleton], at Watch Hill, and through all the hollows there, down around Pickety Rough, even on Flat Beach, the eerie holloing, the shouting and calling, unlike any human voice, that was heard on different nights, suddenly changing, too, from one spot of the beach to another, foreboded the drowning of those fifteen buccaneers from the Money Ship and the burying in the sea for all time of their blood spent treasure. Yet having heard all this, though years before, I joined the first life-saving crew of Station No. —. The season then was a short one. Regular patrols of the Beach with exchange of checks for tally was then a thing undreamt of. Only in thick, foggy, or stormy weather did we walk the Beach. I can’t see any use of patrolling that Beach in good weather and wearing the crew out. To my thinking all that is necessary on bright days or on clear starlight and moonlight nights is to keep a man on the lookout with a good glass beside him, and so save the crew; for there come times when the rescuing of life depends upon the reserve strength of the men. Yes, there come emergencies on that coast when power of endurance is the important, the decisive thing. The way to meet such unexpected demands and emergencies is to give the crew a chance to store up reserve force, power to hold on, to make a great effort for a night and a day, perhaps. This is what counts when a vessel is ashore far more than any regular patrolling, with the men on the go bright weather as well as bad weather.
We had pretty good weather that year till after the holidays had passed. Then there came a spell of thick weather. I remember distinctly how it set in. The day had been a very bright one, with a tinge of warmth in it. But at nightfall an ominous murky drift of cloud gathered in the southwest, a lee set for a northeaster.
The order was given for patrol that night, and the eastern beat fell to me. When the tide began to rise the wind hauled northeast by east and blew lightly down the coast. It didn’t seem to portend snow, but the weather began to thicken. I faced the wind and walked briskly, but it bit my face and searched under my clothing as only a northeast wind will do. When within a quarter of a mile of the end of my beat, I struck a match and held it between my two hands as a sort of a shield, and let it burn. If you have never tried this, you have no idea how far such a light may be seen in the darkness or how large a spot of light it appears to make. Lanterns are of no account on that Beach. No lantern will burn when a high wind is blowing sand before it. They choke up and go out. And as about the only time when they would be of use is when they won’t burn, they’re not carried. Then, after all, it’s no place for them. They’ll do round the barnyard, but the coast is no place for a light, down almost on the surf’s edge, bobbing and moving along in the darkness.
I lit another match and still another, but got no answer, so I concluded that the patrol up from the next station was returning. I reached the end of my beat, and waited some time under the lee of a hill, and near midnight began my patrol back. Passing a deep opening between the hills, my attention was attracted by a low moaning. At first I gave little heed to it. Then later I walked up to the top of one of the hills that flank the strand all along and listened. I faced the wind; then I stood back to it. I turned my ear in every direction, even bent my head down to render my hearing more acute. I could not distinguish any strange sound. No sooner, however, had I descended to the strand and resumed my walk than the moaning began again, seeming as before to be just over behind the hills. It was continuous but uneven, like the wind. It moved down the Beach as I walked, just abreast of me apparently, but over behind the hills, considerably farther, however, toward the bayside when I passed any low spot of beach. When within half a mile of the station, it was gone. I noticed instantly when it ceased.
An experience of this kind disturbs a man’s soul, and the more he fights it the greater trouble it becomes and the more uneasiness it gives him. But I said nothing about it at the station.
The thick weather continued. A seething, boiling surf was running, showing that there had been a big storm off shore. Such a surf always indicates that. We couldn’t see much beyond the outer bar for several days.
In the next patrol at night I felt sure I should hear the moaning again, and I did. It followed abreast of me on my patrol out, and was gone as I approached the meeting-place at the end of my beat. But on my return it came again and followed in the same way as before. I didn’t stop once to bother with it, but kept walking steadily back. It left me when about the same distance from the house as on the first night.
The next night my patrol began at midnight on the short beat to the west. I heard nothing out of the usual course of nature till I got within three-quarters of a mile of the half-way hut. Then I heard not only the moaning, but other noises not human, and a clapping or beating as with two flat sticks. All this was confined to one spot, and I could locate that spot exactly: in a rather deep hollow, with three hills butting up around. The wind from some cause always drew down into that hollow and kept its whole surface smooth, not a spear or root of grass there, and as round as the inside of a cup.
As I heard the voice, its hideous changes, which at times seemed to run into a part of some strange and weird tune, and the clapping along with it, I knew that all this foreboded some dreadful thing.
Hot flushes came over me and I sweat at every pore. But I kept on walking just as steadily as I could. I didn’t want to quicken my pace a bit, and I had to hold myself down in order not to do it. I left the noises and clapping farther and farther behind, till at last I could not hear them. They didn’t move, however, but remained right in that hollow. At length I came to the place where the half-way hut was, and turned up from the strand to go to it.
This hut stood well up in a sort of narrow pass that opened in a northwesterly direction through the surf hills. You could see the hut, coming from the east, but not from the west. It was built of old timbers and covered with seaweed and sand.
I entered, glad to get in there, and began to blow up a fire from the embers left by the patrolman from the west. I loaded my pipe and lit it, and the fire gave me some cheer. I stayed there an hour, I should think, dreading awfully to go. But the thing had to be done, so I buttoned up my coat and started. As I came down to the strand suddenly I caught sight of something coming toward me dripping wet. The strength went out of my legs as quick as lightning, and my knees gave way. I nerved myself up at once, and there was need of it, too, for a voice—a human voice—called to me for help. It was a sailor who had just crawled up out of the surf. Instinctively I looked off shore and saw a vessel on the outer bar. She was not there an hour back, when I passed by.
The sailor sank down exhausted after he called to me. I helped him into the hut and blew up the fire.
“Are there any others?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “I am the only one.”
I laid on more fuel, left him, and walked along shore, looking into the surf with the keenest eye I had. I set off lights, but no answer. Then I went back to the hut, and the sailor had recovered sufficiently to give me a full account of how the vessel came on.
“We had thick weather for several days,” he said, “and had lost our reckoning. We struck heavily on the bar off here, sounded, and made up our minds that we were on Nantucket Shoals, and that the only thing for us to do was to land. We hauled the boat up on the leeward side, the men got in, and I stood on the rail to cast off. Just as I had thrown down the painter, a big sea, coming round the stern of the vessel, struck the boat and turned her bottom side up. It happened in less than no time, for I had let go and had to jump. I struck on the bottom of the yawl and slid off into the sea. When I came up and put out my arms to swim, I struck an oar in front of me. This saved me. With it I worked toward the shore, but there I had a fearful struggle. Eleven times the waves threw me up on shore, but the undertow was so strong it carried me back each time. My strength was about all gone. The twelfth time a large wave carried me farther up. I felt the moving sand under my feet, and, with the last remnant of strength, I dug both hands and feet into the sand with all my will, and just kept myself from being carried back again. I crawled up on the shore and rested. When I got up to look around, I saw a crack of light from the fire in this hut, and I staggered toward it.”
I summoned the rest of the crew, and we had tough work the rest of that night and for some days afterward.
But I was always apprehensive after this experience and it weighed on my mind. So in the spring I left the Beach, concluding that what I had heard and seen was enough for one lifetime.
