In the morning a dull gray sky hung over the still-vext ocean, and upon its long swell a few fishing craft were riding at anchor. The view from the lighthouse, the lantern of which was presented to the United States by the French government, is worth all and far more than is ever likely to be passed through in reaching it. Block Island lay like a dark mark deepening the horizon-line, and to the south and east were ships passing gallantly out to sea. To the north the view was hazy, and to the west were the hills of Montauk and glimpses of its ponds. Round the point the water was comparatively still, but the long swell was breaking grandly among the boulders on the south. Below the lantern is the room in which the keepers maintain their vigils, listening to the roar of the wind, and occasionally feeling the tower vibrate to such an extent that the lantern ceases its revolutions. This, however, rarely happens. The tower is strongly built of stone and brick, and, although it has seen many a storm since 1795, it is staunch enough to weather many more.
Down under the cliffs, where the "cruel, hungry foam" is dashing among the rocks, the seaward view is grand and awful. In Turtle Bay, as we casually learned, the dead bodies of those shipwrecked farther up the coast generally come ashore, and a ghastly kind of interest attaches to the place. For miles along the shore the same sad tale is being continually told: it is the solemn burden of the sea's loud wail. We heard it at Fire Island; walking along the beach opposite Sayville, we heard it again in the billows that broke over the wreck of the Great Western; it haunted us at Quogue, and rang in our ears on the lovely beach at the Hamptons; it followed us to Amagansett, and within a few miles of the point we can sit in a veritable "graveyard" filled with beams, broken timbers and rusty iron bolts, the rejected spoils of the ocean. For the moment one cannot help sympathizing with the shepherd of the Noctes, who "couldna thole to lieve on the seashore." There is, in truth, something disturbing to the imagination and confusing to the senses in its everlasting thunder. We see it and leave it—perhaps for a month, possibly for a year—and it is hard to realize when we return that throughout the long interval it has never for a single moment been at rest.
But the time comes when we must retrace our steps to the world which seems so far away. Again we roll over the pasture-land, swept by constant winds, sometimes by storms, and long before we reach Neapeague have learned the truth and felt the sentiment that inspired Ayres's lines:
There is no country like Montauk's rude isle.
Strange are its rolling hills, its valleys' smile,
Its trees lone dying in their ancient place,
As if in sorrow for a dying race.
Jennie J. Young.
"FOR PERCIVAL."
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE RESULT OF PERCIVAL'S ECONOMY.