Legends of Fire Island Beach and the South Side

by Edward R. Shaw

Ten years had passed since the first time which laid the habit of wandering along the surf-shore apparently in search of whatever the sea had cast up. Sometimes a spar, sometimes sheets of copper torn from a wreck and carried by a high surf far along the strand, sometimes a vessel’s gilded name, at other times only scattered drift-wood were the rewards of these lonely walks.

People about the neighborhood where the Captain lived, knew that at one time or another he brought these relics from the Beach; yet no one supposed that the finding of them was related to his life in any other way than mere happen so. Anyone who went upon the Bay at all was likely to land at the Beach. Once there, it was a natural impulse to go across and walk along the ocean side; for, at that time, early in the thirties, it was widely believed that the sea had wealth, and often threw it up upon the shore. Never, however, was it in the least surmised by the Captain’s neighbors that these solitary excursions had woven themselves in as a part of the texture of his life.

Had, though, these good neighbors been quick to perceive they would have noticed one characteristic of the Captain, sufficiently manifest at times—that he was always in the best of spirits when a storm was raging. At such times he had been heard to remark, “This is a wild day, my friend, but just such days is needed.”

And it was not till years afterward that neighbor Rob’son actually understood the import of a strange remark made to him by the Captain one stormy night, when the wind blew fiercely from the south-east, and drove aslant the thin rain which the low scudding black clouds let down.

Mr. Rob’son had been belated and was hurrying to get home. The Captain, meeting him, called out in the most cheerful of tones, “Hello, is that you, neighbor Rob’son?” and giving him time for merely a bare “Yes,” he continued, “This is a monstrous night. Do you hear the ocean pound over on the Beach? There’ll be tons of sand shifted to-night—tons of it; more’n all the men out on a gen’ral trainin’ day could shovel in a year. You’re in a hurry, I see, neighbor. I ain’t. I’m in no haste to get in-doors. A great night like this fits me. Somehow it puts new spirit into me.”

Was it the storm that made the Captain’s heart so buoyant and his mind so cheerful? or was it because such days and nights made more certain the realization of that secret hope which had possessed him for years?

So secret was this hope that even his wife surmised nothing of it; for, happily, she was not one of those unfortunate women who are endowed with satanic intuition, and whose lives thereby are made miserable until they have followed up and chased into clear daylight all the dusky suspicions that flit, perchance, into their minds.

But although a matter-of-fact wife, she had, it must be confessed, noticed more closely than her neighbors the effect a storm had upon her husband; and she had learned to put off until such a time those various little requests about the house, which appear in a man’s eyes so great a matter to get about, and which he usually puts off and shirks with an unaccountable dread. Every little change, therefore, she needed, of driving a nail here, putting a shelf there, or the mending perhaps of a churn-dasher, he cheerfully made at those times; and she would often remark to him, “It’s astonishin’ how much you’ll get done on a stormy day, and the harder the storm the more you’ll manage to get through with.”

If, however, these odds and ends were not finished during the storm, they were suffered to go over, as the Captain was certain to leave home early the next morning; and to any neighbor who chanced to inquire for him, the reply was made that he had gone upon the Bay.

“Gone upon the Bay.” That expression was in those days a most convenient one for a bay-man. The persistent following of the Bay for a livelihood at the present time causes each man to hold closely to one kind of work. But then, there was no telling when a man set out from home how his day would be spent—he might go oystering or gunning, he might cast his nets or waste his time sailing in search of what he deemed better luck. Varying conditions of wind and weather and tide offered, one day, one thing, and the next day, something else; and what use a bay man would make of his day grew out of these conditions and his own ambition.