Come in! I find my friends still at their long table at the kitchen’s farther end. Supper is just about over. Somebody went fishing yesterday, and on the table a great tureen, once full of good fish chowder, stands at dead low tide.... Sit down and have a cup of coffee with us.... Thanks, I’d love to.... Follows a shoving about of chairs to make room, and presently I am seated at the board, talking beach gossip, eating coast guard doughnuts, and sipping brown-black coffee from a giant white coffee cup of the armour-plate variety. The good hot “mug-up” of coffee, thus hospitably poured, is pleasant after my long, cold walk. My table mates are all young men, some of them scarce more than strapping boys on the threshold of the twenties. Here are the names of my hosts: Captain George B. Nickerson, Commanding Officer; Alvin Newcomb, Surfman No. 1; Russell Taylor, No. 2; Zenas Adams, No. 3; William Eldredge, No. 4; Andrew Wetherbee, No. 5; Albert Robbins, No. 6; Everett Gross, No. 7; Malcolm Robbins, No. 8; Effin Chalke, No. 9. Other old friends have finished their enlistments or been transferred—Wilbur Chase, John Blood, Kenneth Young, and Yngve Rongner, who gave me my swordfish sword.
The captains of the various stations are well-known men and rank high in the community. When I first came to Eastham, Nauset was under the command of my kind friend Captain Abbott H. Walker, an expert among surfmen and boatmen, and one of the best liked and most respected men on all Cape Cod. Two years ago, after having been in command of Nauset for twenty-six stirring years, he retired to his pleasant house on Orleans Bay. The station was fortunate in having as his successor a distinguished younger officer, Captain George B. Nickerson of Chatham. Nauset is a busy station, and Captain Nickerson has already added new laurels to its splendid history.
The table talk is good, the speech racy and vigorous. Sipping coffee, I hear of a battle at sea fought that very morning between some large unknown fish and unseen enemies—“right off the station”—the fish leaping clear, a great wound or spot visible in its side.... Here, have another cup....
“No, going out in a gale isn’t as bad as facing ‘the sand.’ Rather face a nor’easter any time.”
Every once in a while, usually in autumn, a dry gale will descend upon the beach and stir up a sandstorm worthy of the Sahara. I chanced to see such a storm three years ago. The simoon began, I remember, with a sunset of fiery rose deepening to smoky carmine, the sky being empty save for a few thin, sailing wisps. With the smouldering out of this strange sky and the arrival of starlight, a north wind which had blown vigorously all day was taken over by a devil. It shifted its quarter, began to blow directly down the beach, and increased enormously in force. Within half an hour, the whole world of beach and dune was one screaming, smoky, inhuman arabia of flying sand. Sucking up the sand from strewn miles of driftage, tearing at the roots of everything movable, the wind torrent rushed along the beach as down a channel. Presently pebbles, sticks, barrel staves, sides of old fruit crates, hoops, tufts of whipped-out beach grass, clots of breaker spume, and a world of nameless dark lumps joined the general rush through the demoniac and smothering gloom. I myself sailed before the storm, my head turtled down into the very shoulders of a canvas coat, my eyes blinking and painful from the stabs of sand, my nostrils hot and dry with the breathing of it, my mouth much occupied in spitting out grits. And I wondered who was on north patrol that night—walking into it, his head turned sideways and down, and a board held up before his face.
Once upon a time, so runs a service story, a surfman was walking the beach on one of these nights of sand when he heard behind him a strange and uncanny moan. Startled, he turned round, squinted for a second into the gale, and saw coming toward him a great, dark, bounding thing which moaned as it ran. The surfman ran. The thing followed, gaining every instant and sounding its ghostly cry. Out of breath at last, the fugitive fell flat, caught hold of the sand, and gasped out this valedictory, “If ye want me, come and git me.” A moment later, an enormous empty cask rolled over the prostrate figure and disappeared down the beach toward Monomoy. The bung halfway up its side was open, and every time the hole had rolled up into the wind, the whistling moan had terrified the night.
Who goes first south to-night? Malcolm Robbins, he goes first south, and Long, he goes at two-thirty.
Time to tidy up. Each man carries his plate and cutlery to the sink, the cook of the day puts on coal, there is talk, the vigorous clank of the kitchen pump, the sound of a dish pan filling, a smell of pipe tobacco. The surfman who has been on watch in the station tower during the meal comes in and eats alone at the cleared-off and deserted board. Clatter of dish and spoon ... voices. Baseball prospects? Radio news? Station happenings? Somebody opens a window on the last of the chill spring afternoon, and suddenly, in an unexpected instant of quiet, I hear the thundering overspill and ebbing roar of a single giant sea.