THE MORNING ROUND
All the morning after the wreck the people along shore were searching amidst the tangled masses of drift and sea-wrack the storm had cast up for the remains of the crew. They were too much mangled for recognition, except in a single instance. Captain G——, a passenger, had by accident put on his red-flannel drawers the wrong side out the morning the Isidore sailed, observing to his wife that, as it was good luck, he would not change them. One leg was found encased in the drawers. The mutilated fragments were brought to the village, and buried in a common grave.
Some of the old people at the Port declare to this day that on the night of the wreck they heard shrieks as plainly as ever issued from human throats; and you could not argue it out of them, though the spot where the Isidore's anchors were found is ten miles away. As for Joe B——, the runaway, he can not refrain from shedding tears when the Isidore is mentioned.
"But, Ben, do you believe in dreams?" I asked, with my hand on the latch.
"B'leeve in dreams!" he repeated; "why, Joe's a living man; but where's his mates?"
Perhaps they
"Died as men should die, clinging round their lonely wreck,
Their winding-sheet the sky, and their sepulchre the deck;
And the steersman held the helm till his breath
Grew faint and fainter still;
There was one short fatal thrill,
Then he sank into the chill
Arms of Death."
I turned away from the spot with the old sailor's words in mind: "A wicked place where she struck; and the sea drove right on. A ragged place, sir—ragged."
Leaving the cliff, I struck across the pastures to the road, making no farther halt except to gather a few huckleberries that grew on high bushes by the roadside. The fruit is large, either black or blue, with an agreeable though different flavor from any of the low-bushed varieties. The local name for the shrub is "bilberry." It frequently grows higher than a man's head, and a single one will often yield nearly a quart.