III
I have now to tell of the great northeast storm of February 19th and 20th. They say here that it was the worst gale known on the outer Cape since the Portland went down with all hands on that terrible November night in ’98.
It began after midnight on a Friday night, and the barometer gave but little warning of its coming. That Friday afternoon I had walked up the beach to Nauset Station, found Bill Eldredge on watch in the tower, and asked him to wake me up when he went by at midnight. “Never mind if you don’t see a light,” I said. “Come in anyway and wake me up. I may go down the beach with you.” I often made the patrols with the men at the station, for I liked to walk the beach by night.
Shortly after midnight, Bill came to the door, but I did not get up and dress to go down the beach with him, for I was rather tired from piling up a mass of driftwood, so I sat up in bed and talked to him by the dying light of my fire. On bitter nights, I used to put a big log on in the hope that it might flicker and smoulder till morning, but on average nights, I let the fire die down to a bed of ashes, for I am a light sleeper, and the little play of flames on the hearth kept me awake. Living in outer nature keeps the senses keen, and living alone stirs in them a certain watchfulness.
The coast guardsman stood against the brick fireplace, his elbow propped for a moment on the shelf; I scarce could see his blue-clad figure in the gloom. “It’s blowing up,” he said. “I think we are going to have a northeaster.” I apologized for not getting up, pleaded weariness, and, after a little talk, Bill said that he must be going, and returned to the beach. I saw him use his flashlight a moment as he plunged down the dune.
I woke in the morning to the dry rattle of sleet on my eastern windows and the howling of wind. A northeaster laden with sleet was bearing down on the Cape from off a furious ocean, an ebbing sea fought with a gale blowing directly on the coast; the lonely desolation of the beach was a thousand times more desolate in that white storm pouring down from a dark sky. The sleet fell as a heavy rain falls when it is blown about by the wind. I built up my fire, dressed, and went out, shielding my face from the sleet by pulling my head down into the collar of my coat. I brought in basket after basket of firewood, till the corner of the room resembled a woodshed. Then I folded up the bedclothes, threw my New Mexican blanket over the couch, lighted the oil stove, and prepared breakfast. An apple, oatmeal porridge, toast made at the fireplace, a boiled egg, and coffee.
Sleet and more of it, rushes of it, attacks of it, screaming descents of it; I heard it on the roof, on the sides of the house, on the windowpanes. Within, my fire fought against the cold, tormented light. I wondered about a small fishing boat, a thirty-foot “flounder dragger” that had anchored two miles or so off the Fo’castle the evening before. I looked for her with my glass, but could not see into the storm.
Streaming over the dunes, the storm howled on west over the moors. The islands of the marsh were brownish black, the channels leaden and whipped up by the wind; and along the shores of the desolate islands, channel waves broke angrily, chidingly, tossing up heavy ringlets of lifeless white. A scene of incredible desolation and cold. All day long I kept to my house, building up the fire and keeping watch from the windows; now and then I went out to see that all was well with the Fo’castle and its foundations, and to glimpse what I could, through the sleet, of the storm on the sea. For a mile or so offshore the North Atlantic was a convulsion of elemental fury whipped by the sleety wind, the great parallels of the breakers tumbling all together and mingling in one seething and immense confusion, the sound of this mile of surf being an endless booming roar, a seethe, and a dread grinding, all intertwined with the high scream of the wind. The rush of the inmost breakers up the beach was a thing of violence and blind will. Darkness coming early, I closed my shutters on the uproar of the outer world, all save one shutter on the landward side.
With the coming of night the storm increased; the wind reaching a velocity of seventy to eighty miles an hour. It was at this time, I am told, that friends on the mainland began to be worried about me, many of them looking for my light. My lamp, a simple kerosene affair with a white china shade, stood on a table before the unshuttered window facing the land. An old friend said he would see it or think that he saw it for a half minute or so, and then it would vanish for hours into the darkness of the gale. It was singularly peaceful in the little house. Presently, the tide, which had ebbed a little during the afternoon, turned and began to come in. All afternoon long the surf had thundered high upon the beach, the ebb tide backed up against the wind. With the turn of the tide came fury unbelievable. The great rhythm of its waters now at one with the rhythm of the wind, the ocean rose out of the night to attack the ancient rivalry of earth, hurling breaker after thundering breaker against the long bulwark of the sands. The Fo’castle, being low and strongly built, stood solid as a rock, but its walls thrummed in the gale. I could feel the vibration in the bricks of the chimney, and the dune beneath the house trembled incessantly with the onslaught of the surf.
The Bank After a Storm
Where were my friends at Nauset Station, thought I, in this furious night. Who was on his way north, with seven miles of night and sleet to battle through before he returned to the shelter of the station and the warmth of that kitchen stove which is kept polished to a brilliance beyond all stoves? It was Bill, as a matter of fact, and because of the surf on the beach he was using the path which runs along the top of the cliff close by its brim, a path exposed to the full violence of the gale. As I mused thus, troubled about my friends, there came a knock at my open window, and then steps outside and a knock at the door. Letting my visitor in was easy enough, but to close the door after him was another matter. Closing the door against the force of the gale was like trying to close it upon something material; it was exactly as if I were pressing the door against a bulging mass of felt. My visitor was Albert Robbins, first man south from Nauset, a big powerful youngster and a fine lad; he was covered with sleet and sand, sand and sleet in his hair, in his eyebrows, in the corners of his eyes, in his ears, behind his ears, in the corners of his mouth, in his nostrils even. And a cheerful, determined grin!
“Wanted to see if you were still here,” he said humorously, rooting sand out of his eyes with a knuckle. I busied myself getting him a cup of steaming coffee.
“Any news? Anyone in trouble?” I asked.
“Yes, there’s a coast guard patrol boat off the Highland; something’s the matter with her engine. She’s anchored off there, and they’ve sent two destroyers out from Boston to get her.”
“When did you hear that?”
“This afternoon.”
“Didn’t hear anything else?”
“No, the wires blew down, and we can’t get beyond Cahoons.”
“Think they’ve got any chance if the destroyers haven’t got to them?”
“Gosh, I hope so,” he said; and then, after a pause, “but it don’t look like it.” And then, “So long,” and into the storm again.
I did not go to bed, for I wanted to be ready for any eventuality. As the hour of flood tide neared, I dressed as warmly as I could, turned down my lamp, and went out upon the dunes.
An invisible moon, two days past the full, had risen behind the rushing floor of cloud, and some of its wan light fell on the tortured earth and the torment of the sea. The air was full of sleet, hissing with a strange, terrible, insistent sound on the dead grass, and sand was being whirled up into the air. Being struck on the face by this sand and sleet was like being lashed by a tiny, pin-point whip. I have never looked on such a tide. It had crossed the beach, climbed the five-foot wall of the dune levels that run between the great mounds, and was hurling wreckage fifty and sixty feet into the starved white beach grass; the marsh was an immense flooded bay, and the “cuts” between the dunes and the marsh rivers of breakers. A hundred yards to the north of me was such a river; to the south, the surf was attempting to flank the dune, an attempt which did not succeed. Between these two onslaughts, no longer looking down upon the sea, but directly into it and just over it, the Fo’castle stood like a house built out into the surf on a mound of sand. A third of a mile or so to the north I chanced to see rather a strange thing. The dune bank there was washing away and caving in under the onslaught of the seas, and presently there crumbled out the blackened skeleton of an ancient wreck which the dunes had buried long ago. As the tide rose this ghost floated and lifted itself free, and then washed south close along the dunes. There was something inconceivably spectral in the sight of this dead hulk thus stirring from its grave and yielding its bones again to the fury of the gale.
As I walked in the night I wondered about the birds who live here in the marsh. That great population of gulls, ducks, and geese and their rivals and allies—where were they all crouching, where were they hidden in that wild hour?
All Sunday morning there was sleet—more sleet fell in this storm than the Cape had seen in a generation—and then, about the middle of the afternoon, the wind died down, leaving a wild sea behind. Going to Nauset Station, I had news of the disaster at the Highland. The destroyers, in spite of a splendid battle, had been unable to reach the disabled patrol boat, and the luckless ship had gone to pieces. It is thought that she dragged onto the outer bar. Nine men had perished. Two bodies came ashore next day; their watches had stopped at five o’clock, so we knew that the vessel had weathered the night and gone to pieces in the morning. What a night they must have had, poor souls!
There was wreckage everywhere, great logs, tree stumps, fragments of ships, planking, splintered beams, boards, rough timber, and, by itself in the surf, the enormous rudder of the Hickey, splintered sternpost and all. The day after the storm, people came down from Eastham in farm wagons and Fords, looked at the sea for a while, talked over the storm with whoever happened to be standing by, paid a call on the coast guards, and then went casually to work piling up the best of the timber. I saw Bill Eldredge in one of the cuts sorting out planks to be used in building a henhouse. Gulls were milling over the surf and spume—the greatest numbers gathering where the surf was most discoloured—and gulls were flying back and forth between the breakers and the marsh. From their point of view, perhaps, nothing had happened.