Chapter V: Part 5

so freshly green, so flower-strewn and fragrant, so musical with birds, and with the continual caressing of summer waves. Now and then a bobolink pays us a flying visit, and, tilting on a blackberry spray, pours out his intoxicating song; some morning is heard the fairy bugling of an oriole; a scarlet tanager honors the place with half a day’s sojourn, to be the wonder of all eyes; but commonly the swallows hold it in undisputed possession. The air is woven through and through with the gleam of their burnished wings and their clear, happy cries. They are so tame, knowing how well they are beloved, that they gather on the window-sills, twittering and fluttering, gay and graceful, turning their heads this way and that, eying you askance without a trace of fear. All day they build their nests about the eaves, nor heed how loving eyes do watch their charming toil. Walking abroad in these pleasant evenings, many a little sparrow’s nest one finds low down in the bayberry-bushes,--smooth, brown cups of woven grass, wherein lie the five speckled eggs, each full of silent music, each dumb miracle waiting for the finger of God to wake, to be alive, to drink the sunshine and the breeze, to fill the air with blissful sound. At the water’s edge one finds the long ledges covered with barnacles, and from each rough shell a tiny, brown, filmy hand is thrust out, opening and shutting in gladness beneath the coming tide, feeling the freshness of the flowing water. The shore teems with life in manifold forms. As the darkness gathers, the ripples begin to break in pale flame against the rocks; if the tide is low enough, it is charming to steal down in the shadow, and, drawing aside the curtain of coarse sea-weed that drapes the face of some smooth rock, to write on the surface beneath: the strange fire follows your finger; and there is your name in weird flame, all alive, quivering and trembling, and finally fading and disappearing. In a still pool you drop a stone or touch the water with your hand: instantly a thousand stars break out and burn and vanish in a moment! It used to be a pleasant thing to bring a piece of drift-wood, water-soaked, and shaggy with fine seaweed, up from the shore, and from some dark corner suddenly sweep my hand across it: a sheet of white flame followed, startling the beholder.

June is of course the most delightful month here, everything is yet so fresh; later the hot sun dries and scorches the thin soil, and partially destroys the little vegetation which finds room upon the island. But through this month the ground is beautiful with starry, purple stonewort; like little suns the blossoms of the lion’s-foot shine in the thinnest of the soil; herb-robert blossoms; the slender arenaria steals up among the bushes, lifting a little white flower to the sun; here and there the sorrel lies in crimson stains; in wet places sturdy clumps of fern unroll their golden green with splendid vigor of growth; sundew and partridge-berry creep at their feet; and from the swamp the rushes rise in ranks, like a faint, green vapor, slowly, day by day. The few wild-cherry bushes have each its inevitable caterpillars’ nest; one can but wonder how caterpillars and canker-worms find their way across the water. The presence of green snakes on these rocks may be explained by their having been found coiled on a piece of drift-wood many miles out at sea. Bees find their way out from the land in companies, seeking the white clover-blossoms that rise in cool, creamy, fragrant globes through the dark leaves and grass. The clover here is peculiarly rich. Many varieties of butterflies abound, the handsome moth of the American silkworm among them. One night in June, at sunset, we were kindling the lamps in the lighthouse, and because it was so mild and still outside, the little iron door of the lantern was left open. No breeze came in to stir the flame that quivered in the centre of each shining reflector, but presently glided through the door the pale-green, exquisite Luna moth, with its wonderful crescents, its lines of velvet brown, and long under wings drawn out like the tail of a swallow. It sailed slowly round and round the dome above the lamps at first, but soon became agitated, and would have dashed itself against the flames but that I caught it. What a marvel it was! I never dreamed of the existence of so beautiful a creature. Titania herself could not have been more interesting to me.

In the quiet little coves troops of butterflies are often seen, anchored for the night, clinging to the thistle-blossoms to be safe from assailing winds. Crickets are never heard here till after the 1st of August. On the mainland they begin, about the 28th of May, a sad and gentle autumnal undertone, which from that time accompanies the jubilant chorus of summer in a gradual _crescendo_, till finally the days pass on to no other music save their sweet, melancholy chirrup. In August comes the ruby-throated humming-bird, and several pairs flutter about the little gardens for weeks. By the 1st of July the wild roses blossom, and every bit of swampy ground is alive with the waving flags of the iris, each flower of which is full of exquisite variety of tint and shade of gold and violet. All over the island patches of it diversify the surface, set like amethysts in the rich greens and browns of turf and mossy spaces. Through the tangle of leaves and grasses the spikes of golden-rod make their way upward slowly day by day, to be ready at the first beckoning of Autumn’s finger to light their torches and join the fair procession; the green hollows are filled with blossoming elder, white as a lake of milk; the pimpernel is awake; and the heavy, stout stalks of the mulleins uprear their woolly buds, that soon will break into squares of pallid gold. The world is at high tide of delight. Along the coast-line the mirage races in flowing undulations of heat, changing the hill ranges into a solid wall, to dissolve them, and again reunite them into clusters of gigantic towers and battlements; trees, spires, chimneys, lighthouses become roofs and minarets and domes of some stately city of the clouds, and these melt in their turn, and the whole coast shrinks away to the merest line on the horizon immeasurably removed. Each of these changes, and the various aspects of their little world, are of inestimable value to the lonely children living always in that solitude. Nothing is too slight to be precious: the flashing of an oar-blade in the morning light; the twinkling of a gull’s wings afar off, like a star in the yellow sunshine of the drowsy summer afternoon; the water-spout waltzing away before the wild wind that cleaves the sea from the advancing thunder-cloud; the distant showers that march about the horizon, trailing their dusky fringes of falling rain over sea and land; every phase of the great thunder-storms that make glorious the weeks of July and August, from the first floating film of cloud that rises in the sky till the scattered fragments of the storm stream eastward to form a background for the rainbow,--all these things are of the utmost importance to dwellers at the Isles of Shoals. There is something especially delightful in the perfumes which stream across the sea after showers, like a heavenly greeting from the land: scents of hay and of clover, spice of pine woods, balm of flowers come floating over the cool waves on the wings of the west wind, and touch one like a breath from Paradise. Few sounds from the shore reach the islands; the booming of guns is audible, and sometimes, when the wind is west, the air is pierced with distant car-whistles, so very remote, however, that they are hardly to be recognized except by a practised ear.

* * * * *

There is a superstition among the islanders that Philip Babb, or some evil-minded descendant of his, still haunts Appledore; and no consideration would induce the more timid to walk alone after dark over a certain shingly beach on that island, at the top of a cove bearing Babb’s name,--for there the uneasy spirit is oftenest seen. He is supposed to have been so desperately wicked when alive that there is no rest for him in his grave. His dress is a coarse, striped butcher’s frock, with a leather belt, to which is attached a sheath containing a ghostly knife, sharp and glittering, which it is his delight to brandish in the face of terrified humanity. One of the Shoalers is perfectly certain that he and Babb have met, and he shudders with real horror, recalling the meeting. This is his story. It was after sunset (of course), and he was coming round the corner of a work-shop, when he saw a wild and dreadful figure advancing toward him; his first thought was that some one wished to make him the victim of a practical joke, and he called out something to the effect that he “wasn’t afraid”; but the thing came near with ghastly face and hollow eyes, and, assuming a fiendish expression, took out the knife from its belt and flourished it in the face of the Shoaler, who fled to the house and entered breathless, calling for the person who he supposed had tried to frighten him. That person was quietly eating his supper; and when the poor fellow saw him he was so much agitated that he nearly fainted, and his belief in Babb was fixed more firmly than ever. One spring night some one was sitting on the broad piazza at sunset; it was calm and mild; the sea murmured a little; birds twittered softly; there was hardly a waft of wind in the still atmosphere. Glancing toward Babb’s Cove, he saw a figure slowly crossing the shingle to the path which led to the house. After watching it a moment he called to it, but there was no reply; again he called, still no answer; but the dark figure came slowly on; and then he reflected that he had heard no step on the loose shingle that was wont to give back every footfall, and, somewhat puzzled, he slowly descended the steps of the piazza and went to meet it. It was not so dark but that he could see the face and recognize the butcher’s frock and leather belt of Babb, but he was not prepared for the devilish expression of malice in that hollow face, and, spite of his prosaic turn of mind, he was chilled to the marrow at the sight. The white stripes in the frock gleamed like phosphorescent light, so did the awful eyes. Again he called aloud, “Who are you? What do you want?” and still advanced, when suddenly the shape grew indistinct, first thick and cloudy, then thin, dissolving quite away, and, much amazed, he turned and went back to the house, perplexed and thoroughly dissatisfied. These tales I tell as they were told to me. I never saw Babb, nor ever could, I think. The whole Babb family are buried in the valley of Appledore where the houses stand, and till this year a bowling-alley stood upon the spot, and all the balls rolled over the bones of all the Babbs; that may have been one reason why the head of the family was so restless; since the last equinoctial gale blew the building down, perhaps he may rest more peacefully. Babb’s is, I believe, the only real ghost that haunts the islands; though in the loft at the parsonage on Star (a mere creep-hole under the eaves, unattainable by any steps or ladder) there is, in windy weather, the most extraordinary combination of sounds, as if two bluff old fellows were swearing at each other, gruffly, harshly, continually, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause. Really, it is a most disagreeable racket! A lean, brown, hollow-eyed old woman from Star used to tell how her daughter-in-law died, in a way that took the color out of childish cheeks to hear; for the dying woman thought the ghosts were scratching for her outside, against the house. “‘Ma’y Hahner’” (Mary Hannah), “she said to me, a whisperin’, says she, ‘Who’s that scratching, tearing the house down underneath the window?’ ‘No, it ain’t nothin’,’ says I; ‘Ma’y Hahner, there ain’t nobody a tearin’ the house down underneath the winder.’ ‘Yes, yes, there is,’ says she, ‘there is! I hear ’em scratching, scratching, tearing the house down underneath the winder!’ And then I know’d Ma’y Hahner was goin’ to die, and so she did afore mornin’.”

There is a superstition here and along the coast to this effect. A man gathering drift-wood or whatever it may be, sees a spade stuck in the ground as if inviting him to dig. He isn’t quite ready, goes and empties his basket first, then comes back to investigate, and lo! there’s nothing there, and he is tormented the rest of his life with the thought that probably untold wealth lay beneath that spade, which he might have possessed had he only been wise enough to seize the treasure when it offered itself. A certain man named William Mace, living at Star, long, long ago, swore that he had had this experience; and there’s a dim tradition that another person, seeing the spade, passed by about his business, but hastening back, arrived just in time to see the last of the sinking tool, and to perceive also a golden flat-iron disappearing into the earth. This he seized, but no human power could extricate it from the ground, and he was forced to let go his hold and see it sink out of his longing ken.

Some young people, camping on the south side of Appledore, one summer, among the ancient graves, dug up a skeleton; the bones crumbled to dust, but the skull remained intact, and I kept it for a long time. The Shoalers shook their heads. “Hog Island would have no ‘luck’ while that skull remained above ground.” It had lain so long in the earth that it was no more repulsive than a bit of stone, yet a nameless dread invested it. At last I took it in my hands and pored over it till the shudder passed away forever, and then I was never weary of studying it. Sitting by the driftwood blaze late into the still autumn nights alone at my desk, it kept me company,--a vase of brilliant flowers on one side, the skull on the other, and the shaded lamp between, equally lighting both. A curious head it was, thick as an Ethiop’s, with no space above the eyes, high above the ears, and heavy behind them. But O, those hollows where the eyes once looked out, beholding the same sea and sky we see to-day! Those great, melancholy, empty hollows,--what sort of creature gazed from them? Cunning and malice, anger and hate, may have burned within them in sullen flame; who shall say if any beauty ever illumined them? If hate smouldered here, did love ever look out and transfigure the poor, dull face? did any spark from the far heaven even brighten it? any touch of lofty thought or aspiration turn the clay to fire? And when, so many years ago, this being glided away from behind these awful windows and left them empty for ever and ever, did he find what in his life here he could not have possessed, with this head, which he did not make, and therefore was not responsible for? Many and many a question I put silently to the silent casket which had held a human soul; there was no sound to answer me save only the great, gentle whisper of the sea without the windows, and now and then a sigh from the autumn wind. There came to me a sense of the pathos of the infinite patience of humanity, waiting so helplessly and blindly for the unravelling of the riddle that has troubled every thoughtful soul since the beginning of time. Little roots of plants were clasped about the temples. Behind the right ear were three indentations, as if made by some sharp instrument, suggesting foul play. An Indian tomahawk might have made those marks, or a pirate’s cutlass: who can say? What matter is it now? I kept the relic for months, till it crumbled so fast when I daily dusted it that I feared it would disappear entirely; so I carried it quietly back and laid it in the grave from which it had been taken, wondering, as I drew the shallow earth over it, who had stood round about when it was buried for the first time, centuries ago; what manner of people, and were they afraid or sorry. But there was no voice to answer me.

I have before me a weird, romantic legend of these islands, in a time-stained, battered newspaper of forty years ago. I regret that it is too long to be given entire, for the unknown writer tells his story well. He came to the Shoals for the benefit of his failing health, and remained there late into the autumn of 1826, “in the family of a worthy fisherman.” He dilates upon the pleasure he found in the loneliness of the place, “the vast solitude of the sea; no one who has not known it can imbibe the faintest idea of it.” “From the hour I learned the truth,” he says, “that all which lives must die, the thought of dissolution has haunted me;--the falling of a leaf, a gray hair, or a faded cheek, has power to chill me. But here in the recesses of these eternal rocks, with only a cloudless sky above and an ocean before me, for the first time in my life have I shaken off the fear of death and believed myself immortal.”

He tells his strange story in this way: “It was one of those awfully still mornings which cloud-gazeers will remember as characterizing the autumn months. There was not a single vapor-wreath to dim the intense blue of the sky, or a breath to ruffle the almost motionless repose of the great deep; even the sunlight fell seemingly with stiller brightness on the surface of it.” He stood on a low, long point fronting the east, with the cliffs behind him, gazing out upon the calm, when suddenly he became aware of a figure standing near him. It was a woman wrapped closely in a dark sea-cloak, with a profusion of light hair flowing loosely over her shoulders. Fair as a lily and as still, she stood with her eyes fixed on the far distance, without a motion, without a sound. “Thinking her one of the inhabitants of a neighboring island who was watching for the return of a fishing-boat, or perhaps a lover, I did not immediately address her; but seeing no appearance of any vessel, at length accosted her with, ‘Well, my pretty maiden, do you see anything of him?’ She turned instantly, and fixing on me the largest and most melancholy blue eyes I ever beheld, said quietly, ‘He _will_ come again.’” Then she disappeared round a jutting rock and left him marvelling, and though he had come to the island (which was evidently Appledore) for a forenoon’s stroll, he was desirous to get back again to Star and his own quarters after this interruption. Fairly at home again, he was inclined to look upon his adventure as a dream, a mere delusion arising from his illness, but concluded to seek in his surroundings something to substantiate, or remove the idea. Finding nothing,--no woman on the island resembling the one he had met,--and “hearing of no circumstance which might corroborate the unaccountable impression,” he resolved to go again to the same spot. This time it blew half a gale; the fishermen in vain endeavored to dissuade him. He was so intensely anxious to be assured of the truth or fiction of the impression of the day before, that he could not refrain, and launched his boat, “which sprang strongly upon the whitened waters,” and, unfurling his one sail, he rounded a point and was soon safely sheltered in a small cove on the leeward side of the island, probably Babb’s Cove.

Then he leaped the chasms and made his way to the scene of his bewilderment. The sea was rolling over the low point; the spot where he had stood the day before, “was a chaos of tumult, yet even then I could have sworn that I heard with the same deep distinctness, the quiet words of the maiden, ‘He _will_ come again,’ and then a low, remotely-ringing laughter. All the latent superstition of my nature rose up over me, overwhelming as the waves upon the rocks.” After that, day after day, when the weather would permit, he visited the desolate place, to find the golden-haired ghost, and often she stood beside him, “silent as when I first saw her, except to say, as then, ‘He _will_ come again,’ and these words came upon the mind rather than upon the ear. I was conscious of them rather then heard them,--it was all like a dream, a mysterious intuition. I observed that the shells never crashed beneath her footsteps, nor did her garments rustle. In the bright, awful calm of noon and in the rush of the storm there was the same heavy stillness over her. When the winds were so furious that I could scarcely stand in their sweep, the light hair lay upon the forehead of the maiden without lifting a fibre. Her great blue eyeballs never moved in their sockets, and always shone with the same fixed, unearthly gleam. The motion of her person was imperceptible; I knew that she was here, and that she was gone.”

So sweet a ghost was hardly a salutary influence in the life of our invalid. She “held him with her glittering eye” till he grew quite beside himself. This is so good a description I cannot choose but quote it: “The last time I stood with her, was just at the evening of a tranquil day. It was a lovely sunset. A few gold-edged clouds crowned the hills of the distant continent, and the sun had gone down behind them. The ocean lay blushing beneath the blushes of the sky, and even the ancient rocks seemed smiling in the glance of the departing day. Peace, deep peace was the pervading power. The waters, lapsing among the caverns, spoke of it, and it was visible in the silent motion of the small boats, which, loosening their white sails in the cove of Star Island, passed slowly out, one by one, to the night-fishing.” In the glow of sunset he fancied the ghost grew rosy and human. In the mellow light her cold eyes seemed to soften. But he became suddenly so overpowered with terror that “kneeling in shuddering fearfulness, he swore never more to look upon that spot, and never did again.”

Going back to Star he met his old fisherman, who without noticing his agitation, told him quietly that he knew where he had been and what he had seen; that he himself had seen her, and proceeded to furnish him with the following facts. At the time of the first settlement, the islands were infested by pirates,--the bold Captain Teach, called Blackbeard, being one of the most notorious. One of Teach’s comrades, a Captain Scot, brought this lovely lady hither. They buried immense treasure on the islands; that of Scot was buried on an island apart from the rest. Before they departed on a voyage, “to plunder, slash, and slay,” (in which, by the way, they were involved in one awful doom by the blowing up of a powder magazine), the maiden was carried to the island where her pirate lover’s treasure was hidden, and made to swear with horrible rites that until his return, if it were not till the day of judgment, she would guard it from the search of all mortals. So there she paces still, according to our story-teller. Would I had met this lily-fair ghost! Is it she, I wonder, who laments like a Banshee before the tempests, wailing through the gorges at Appledore, “He will _not_ come again”? Perhaps it was she who frightened a merry party of people at Duck Island, whither they had betaken themselves for a day’s pleasure a few summers ago. In the centre of the low island stood a deserted shanty which some strange fishermen had built there several years before, and left empty, tenanted only by the mournful winds. It was blown down the September following. It was a rude hut with two rough rooms and one square window, or rather opening for a window, for sash or glass there was none. One of our party proposed going to look after the boats, as the breeze freshened and blew directly upon the cove where we had landed. We were gathered on the eastern end of the island when he returned, and, kneeling on the withered grass where we were grouped, he said suddenly, “Do you know what I have seen? Coming back from the boats, I faced the fish-house, and as I neared it I saw some one watching me from the window. Of course I thought it was one of you, but when I was near enough to have recognized it, I perceived it to be the strange countenance of a woman, wan as death; a face young, yet with a look in it of infinite age. Old! it was older than the Sphinx in the desert! It looked as if it had been watching and waiting for me since the beginning of time. I walked straight into the hut. There wasn’t a vestige of a human being there; it was absolutely empty.” All the warmth and brightness of the summer day could hardly prevent a chill from creeping into our veins as we listened to this calmly delivered statement, and we actually sent a boat back to Appledore for a large yacht to take us home, for the wind rose fast and “gurly grew the sea,” and we half expected the wan woman would come and carry our companion off bodily before our eyes.

Since writing these imperfect sketches of the Shoals it has become an historical fact for the records of the State of New Hampshire that the town of Gosport has disappeared, is obliterated from the face of the earth, nearly all the inhabitants having been bought out, that the place might be converted into a summer resort. Upon Appledore a large house of entertainment has been extending its capabilities for many years, and the future of the Shoals as a famous watering-place may be considered certain.

The slight sprinkling of inhabitants yet remaining on Smutty-nose and elsewhere, who seem inclined to make of the place a permanent home, are principally Swedes and Norwegians; and a fine, self-respecting race they are, so thrifty, cleanly, well-mannered, and generally excellent that one can hardly say enough in their praise. It is to be hoped that a little rill from the tide of emigration which yearly sets from those countries toward America may finally people the unoccupied portions of the Shoals with a colony that will be a credit to New England.

=Transcriber’s Notes=

Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation and compound words have been maintained
as printed.