The station stands on the mainland of the Cape just where the dunes begin; it is a white wooden building built snug and low like a Cape Cod cottage; indeed, it rather resembles a Cape cottage in its design. On the ground floor is the boat room, a kitchen-dining room, a living room, and the captain’s quarters; on the floor above are two dormitory spaces. From the west dormitory, a ship’s ladder leads through a trapdoor to the tower.
My neighbours of Nauset live there much as men might on a small vessel. They have drills and duties, their definite enlistments—the first enlistment is for three years—their pay days, their service discipline, their uniforms, and days of leave. Breakfast at seven, drills in the morning—surfboat drill to-day, resuscitation drill or blinker and flag drill to-morrow—dinner at eleven, tower watch in turn through all the day, sleep and recreation in the late afternoon, supper at four-thirty, then sundown, night, and the long miles of loneliness and ocean. In winter the guards wear a uniform of dark navy blue and a blue flannel shirt; in summer they shift into sailor whites, broad collar, white hat, and all. Officially, the men are known as “surfmen” and are ranked by number according to their standing and length of service.
A fine group, these wardens of the Cape. Into the worst storm they go—without a question, with never a hesitation—a storm in which life would seem impossible. The door clangs behind them, the sleet screams at the windows, the very earth of the old Cape shakes to the thunder of the seas, but they are already on the moors, fighting on into the gale; fighting on, crawling on, for seven dreadful miles. Yet the men make nothing of it and scarcely ever talk about it—they simply take their black oilskins and rubber boots from a locker, get into them by lantern light, and go.
I owe the Nauset crew a very genuine debt. Without their friendly interest and aid, without their hospitality and continuing good-will, my experiment might well have been both over-solitary and difficult. Those long winter nights in the lamplit domesticity of my house, the rising wail of the wind on the dunes, the flash of the surfman’s light in the whirls of snow, the moment’s reunion with mankind, the pause on the beach, the moment’s talk by the fire—all that is written deep. The winter long, in foul weather, I kept a night lamp burning in a window and a pot of coffee a-simmer on the hearth. Sometimes I heard steps on the little deck of the Fo’castle, sometimes no one came, and the light guttered out unvisited in the dawn.
The majority of my neighbours are of Cape Cod stock. Born of Cape blood and reared in the Cape atmosphere, even men who have never been to sea have an instinctive turn for the sea and the ways of ships. But these wardens of the Cape are not sailors ashore; they are “surfmen.” The name is a wise one—men of the great beach, inheritors of a long, local tradition concerning surf and all its ways. These men have heard the roar of the great beach sounding about their cradles. As I have already written, the sight of the surf in a great gale on the Cape is a spectacle of mingled exaltation, magnificence, and terror, while to venture it in a boat would strike any landsman as a lunatic performance. On such occasions, the sound, traditional surf knowledge of Cape men comes into play. Captains of coast guard crews here choose their launching ground, choose their moment, choose their wave. All together now, go!—and out she runs, the captain standing astern, facing the breakers and steering, the men pulling for their lives.
A Surfman of the Cape
V
Five o’clock in the afternoon, and I have arrived at Nauset Station after a walk up the beach in a cold head-wind. I slip my pack from my back and stand my beach staff in a corner of the little entry way outside the kitchen door. The great storm tore down so much of the bank that the water in the kitchen well now has an odd taste to it, and the men have had to bring drinking water from the village; a ship’s cask and a spring-water bottle stand on the entry floor. In the pink-buff walls are various locker doors.
The four-thirty supper is drawing to a close, but my neighbours are still at table, for I can hear voices and discussion at the board. I know each familiar tone. Having an ancient prejudice against disturbing friends at meals, I wait a little while ... the minutes pass ... I knock at the kitchen door.