a golden october when, for days, the sun shone and the beach was veiled with faintly coloured mists; when the crack of duck hunters’ guns came from over the bay; when the ocean advanced on the smoothly sanded shore in long and majestic curves, so that to stand upon the dunes and look at it was like looking down a flight of steps of boundless width.... the atlantic made itself into a glittering staircase leading straight to the sun.
october! driftwood was gathered from the beach for burning in the biggles’s fireplace where it snapped and was consumed by the green and blue and parti-coloured[38] flames. before the singing and rainbow fire mermaid often knelt at dusk. mrs. biggles would spread a slice of bread for her with jelly made from the beach plums gathered a month earlier. there is a wild-woodish, bitter-sweet flavour peculiar to beach plum jelly and preserves. mermaid loved it. to taste it while dreaming before the magic fire was delicious beyond words.
october! it began to be sharp o’ nights. the men at the station rolled themselves in blankets, as they slept without sheets in an unheated attic. only mermaid had a regular bed with sheets and pillow cases and a gay comforter. stormy days began, and long, wonderful evenings about the blazing stove in the station’s big room. cap’n smiley read aloud and told stories; the men asked questions and spun yarns. mermaid, curled up in a corner, listened eagerly, hardly daring to speak lest the hour be noted and they pack her off to bed.
wild stories, weird stories. cap’n smiley is speaking.
“ah,” says the keeper. “there was that steamship which broke her machinery some way off here and could only move on reversed propellers. she backed all the way from here to sandy hook. and there was that ship with the cargo of salt. when she came ashore it salted the ocean; the water was a little brinier for days. and we got aboard as she lay on the bar at low tide, the sea having gone down. not a soul. all swept overboard and lost. we peered down a hatch, then i went down all alone. i had an awful setback when,[39] on my moving some sacks, out bobbed a dead man staring straight at me. dead, and propped up in the salt. but the worst was the wreck of the farallone. some of you weren’t here then and as for you, joe”—he addressed the youngest surfman—“you hadn’t been born. the farallone. yes.
“she came ashore on a night when you couldn’t see your upraised hand. she struck hard on the outer bar and broached to in the trough of the sea. it was freezing cold. we saw—nothing. up there on the dunes we fired shot after shot, sending out line after line; pure guesswork. finally one landed and was made fast. the crew began coming ashore. about a dozen trips of the buoy, i think. and from what we could learn the captain and the cook were left.
“the cook came along all right, and then we hauled the buoy back for the skipper.
“at the signal—jerks on the line—we pulled. the buoy came along for maybe fifteen feet and then checked. dead stop. we couldn’t budge it a foot farther. we hauled back and tried over again. came just so far and then stuck, immovable.
“you couldn’t see, you couldn’t hear. there was nothing to do but to haul back and forward, back and forward about a hundred times. we wore ourselves all out, though probably the work was all that kept us from freezing to death. some of us had frostbites. after a while a faint light appeared. dawn, frightened by[40] that merciless gale. dawn, and then daylight; and at last we could see. the ocean went down; wind had gone down in the night. what we saw was the body of the captain of the farallone hanging stiffly in the buoy.
“the line had been made fast to the mast too near the deck. as we hauled away each man, coming to the ship’s bulwark, had to lift his body over it. the last man had been able to get into the buoy, but in the minute or two before he reached the bulwark he had frozen helpless; and when he came to it he couldn’t lift himself over.”
there was a silence in which men drew on their pipes. the hand of young joe sayre, surfman no. 7, rolling a cigarette, shook slightly. mermaid saw the scene. she burned to ask her dad if he, or any of the others, had seen the duneswoman that night in the fearful storm. had she walked abroad on the waters, passing unharmed through the great breakers of inky-black water with invisible crests of white and curling foam? her face—did no one see it beside the staring form of the dying skipper? did none see her arm about him? why had she not lifted him over the rail? see.... dad had said no one could see anything. but you could always: see the duneswoman when she was about, however black the night. who was she? the little girl lost herself in a timid reverie.
“lemons,” uncle ho was saying. “oranges,[41] onions—fine big spanish onions from valencia; pineapples and pomegranates, even havana see-gars but mostly spoiled by salt water. once, army blankets; we slept warm that winter. cocoanuts every little while. the next cocoanut i find i’ll carve a mask out of for mermaid.”
her cheeks flushed and she tossed her hair and looked at him with dancing eyes. wasn’t uncle ho good! and he was wonderfully skillful with a knife; a full rigged ship carved in a great glass bottle lay in the keeper’s room to witness his craftsmanship. he did marvellous things with bits of rope. he had promised to make her a hammock and with some fine white rope he was braiding a mat to adorn the little shelf which was her dressing table. rose knots, diamond knots; knots and hitches and splices without number—uncle ho was master of them all. mermaid listened to his further talk about the things that ships jettison and the things that wash ashore.
“even little girls come ashore,” said uncle ho with great seriousness and nodding his head many times. “not to speak of animals. we brought a shetland pony to land in the breeches buoy and, mermaid, you should have heard him squeal!” mermaid gave a little squeal of her own. “not like that,” corrected ho ha. “he said, ‘nay-ay-ay. nay-yay-yay-yay!’ that means ‘no!’ why, a dutch ship, named the dutch for good luck, had a cow in the afterhold to[42] provide the skipper with fresh milk every morning. and lots of ships have pigs aboard ’em. sheep, too. you might get wool enough for a new suit of homespun.
“but the strangest thing was the animal ship. mind i don’t say it was noah’s ark, mermaid. the skipper was a youngish man, not old enough to be noah. maybe one of his sons. now this ark of noah & sons came ashore in fine weather, but very thick. so much fog young noah couldn’t tell where he was. he couldn’t shoot the sun at noon. well——
“he had pairs of almost all kinds of animals aboard. they were a consignment to the big zoo in new york. there was a pair of camels and a pair of leopards and a pair of lions and pairs of snakes and two beautiful giraffes with necks so long that they could see as well as a man in the topgallant rigging. the ark came on in fine weather but it didn’t stay fine. bad southeasterly storm blew up and when it abated the ark was so leaky that the skipper—young noah—put the animals over the side thinking they’d drown. he hated to do it, but the ship was all going to pieces. but you know, mermaid, that all animals can swim. and most of these critters swam ashore. little girl, you should have seen them! but, no! i’m glad you weren’t here. life wasn’t safe on the beach here then with those pairs of animals ranging about. finally we had to shoot them all with the little brass cannon.”
mermaid had been listening, at first doubtfully and[43] with enchanted pleasure; but now something about the story itself joined to some oddity of expression in the faces of her other uncles caused her to say:
“uncle ho, that isn’t so, is it?”
“not so, but so-so,” replied ho ha, persuasively. “if you mean, is it true, why——”
“oh, i don’t mind it’s not being true,” explained the little girl, twisting her fingers. “it spoils things to have them true—just a little—doesn’t it?”
the smile left ho ha’s face.
“by gracious! i believe that’s a fact!” he exclaimed.
