Blowing weather

by John T. McIntyre

"There's the house you mean," said the boatman to Anthony.

It stood upon a dune and overlooked both the bay and the sea; it was low and strong and had small windows much like ships' dead-lights; the timbers plainly were parts of vessels, broken by the sea and cast ashore.

"'Twas built years ago by a man who lived by what he took out of the bay and what he found on the beach," the boatman told Anthony. "But it's seldom used now by any one; this beach is not much frequented; you'd go many a mile along it and never see a soul."

The man helped Anthony carry his provisions along what remained of a track across the meadows; then his bedding and blankets and other equipment followed. The door was fast only by a wooden latch; inside, the place resembled a ship's cabin; and after the boatman had gone Anthony opened the small, round windows and permitted the fresh sea air to blow through it; then he sat down upon a keg and looked around.

The timbers of the hut were massive, and had been hewn to fit; the crevices were overlapped outside by scantling; there were shelves over the windows and the door; in one corner was a rough cupboard, in another a bunk; and there were chairs and a table made up of materials cast up on the shore. A battered brass ship's lamp hung from the center of the ceiling by a chain. Through the open door he saw the dunes and the sea and the sky, like a picture set in a frame—the dunes with their sparse, strong grass, and mist-like blue that blurred the glare of the sun; the sea heaved, green and endless, breaking white upon the bars; the sky carried soft, floating draperies over its deep bosom, and, far out, stooped suddenly to meet the lifting waters.

Anthony cut some soft branches from a small cedar-tree which grew near the hut and fashioned himself a broom; with this he swept the walls and floor; then he unrolled his bedding and made up the bunk, sailor-fashion, stowed his salt beef and dried fish and fruit, his flour and beans and peas, and meal and tea; a well sunken from the top of a neighboring dune was cleaned and made sweet, the roof was seen to, to guard against possible rains. Then Anthony cleared the fireplace of the ash of an ancient fire, and laid some sticks for the building of a new one; he placed a thin array of books upon a shelf over a window, hung a fowling-piece and the pistol which Tom Horn had given him upon the wall; he saw to it that his powder was protected from the damp, and began to feel at home.

Toward evening he set out for a tramp on the beach; it was broad and steep; the broken waves would rush up the incline frothing, and then go swirling dangerously back. High on the horizon-line he saw some filled topsails; and to the northeast he saw a shoal which ran as far as his vision carried, and the hurrying waves broke over its bars in a cloud of mist.

"That," said Anthony, "must be the point Tom Horn spoke of. And I can see well how the 'white ghosts would move through the night when the winds blew.'"

It was dark when he returned to the hut; he lighted two candles, and, when he had a good bed of coals in the fireplace, cooked his supper, which he ate with great comfort. The sea air was thin and chill after the sun had gone; so with the fire built up, the candles drawn close, and a blanket thrown over the biggest of the arm-chairs, he sat with a book until almost midnight; after that he rolled himself up in his bunk and slept soundly.

Next morning he bent a sail on a boat he'd brought from the mainland and prowled about among the coves of the bay; in the afternoon he explored the island to the north, and found it abruptly cut by a swift and dangerous-looking inlet, at the mouth of which began the range of shoals and bars he'd noticed the evening before.