6. IN A WHERRY.
WE have a phrase in Oldport, "What New-Yorkers call poverty: to be reduced to a
pony phaeton." In consequence of a November
gale, I am reduced to a similar state of destitution,
from a sail-boat to a wherry; and, like others of
the deserving poor, I have found many compensa-tions in my humbler condition. Which is the
more enjoyable, rowing or sailing? If you sail
before the wind, there is the glorious vigor of the
breeze that fills your sails; you get all of it you
have room for, and a ship of the line could do no
more; indeed, your very nearness to the water
increases the excitement, since the water swirls
and boils up, as it unites in your wake, and seems
to clutch at the low stern of your sail-boat, and
to menace the hand that guides the helm. Or
if you beat to windward, it is as if your boat
climbed a liquid hill, but did it with bounding and
dancing, like a child; there is the plash of the
lighter ripples against the bow, and the thud of
the heavier waves, while the same blue water is
now transformed to a cool jet of white foam over
your face, and now to a dark whirlpool in your lee.
Sailing gives a sense of prompt command, since
by a single movement of the tiller you effect so
great a change of direction or transform motion
into rest; there is, therefore, a certain magic in it:
but, on the other hand, there is in rowing a more
direct appeal to your physical powers; you do not
evade or cajole the elements by a cunning device
of keel and canvas, you meet them man-fashion
and subdue them. The motion of the oars is like
the strong motion of a bird's wings; to sail a boat
is to ride upon an eagle, but to row is to be an
eagle. I prefer rowing, — at least till I can afford
another sail-boat.
What is a good day for rowing? Almost any
day that is good for living. Living is not quite
agreeable in the midst of a tornado or an equinoc-tial storm, neither is rowing. There are days
when rowing is as toilsome and exhausting a pro-cess as is Bunyan's idea of virtue; while there are
other days, like the present, when it seems a
mere Oriental passiveness and the forsaking of
works, — just an excuse to Nature for being out
among her busy things. For even at this stillest
of hours there is far less repose in Nature than we
imagine. What created thing can seem more
patient than yonder kingfisher on the sea-wall?
Yet, as we glide near him, we shall see that no
creature can be more full of concentrated life; all
his nervous system seems on edge, every instant
he is rising or lowering on his feet, the tail vibrates,
the neck protrudes or shrinks again, the feathers
ruffle, the crest dilates; he talks to himself with
an impatient
chirr, then presently hovers and dives
for a fish, then flies back disappointed. We say
"free as birds," but their lives are given over to
arduous labors. And so, when our condition seems
most dreamy, our observing faculties are sometimes
desperately on the alert, and we find afterwards,
to our surprise, that we have missed nothing. The
best observer in the end is not he who works at
the microscope or telescope most unceasingly, but
he whose whole nature becomes sensitive and re-ceptive, drinking in everything, like a sponge that
saturates itself with all floating vapors and odors,
though it seems inert and unsuspicious until you
press it and it tells the tale.
Most men do their work out of doors and their
dreaming at home; and those whose work is done
at home need something like a wherry in which
to dream out of doors. On a squally day, with
the wind northwest, it is a dream of action, and
to round yonder point against an ebbing tide
makes you feel as if you were Grant before Rich-mond; when you put about, you gallop like Sheri-dan, and the winds and waves become a cavalry
escort. On other days all elements are hushed
into a dream of peace, and you look out upon
those once stormy distances as Landseer's sheep
look into the mouth of the empty cannon on a
dismantled fort. These are the days for revery,
and your thoughts fly forth, gliding without fric-tion over this smooth expanse; or, rather, they are
like yonder pair of white butterflies that will flut-ter for an hour just above the glassy surface,
traversing miles of distance before they alight
again.
By a happy trait of our midsummer, these
various phases of wind and water may often be
included in a single day. On three mornings out
of four the wind blows northwest down our bay,
then dies to a calm before noon. After an hour
or two of perfect stillness, you see the line of blue
ripple coming up from the ocean till it conquers
all the paler water, and the southwest breeze
sets in. This middle zone of calm is like the
noonday of the Romans, when they feared to
speak, lest the great god Pan should be awakened.
While it lasts, a thin, aërial veil drops over the
distant hills of Conanicut, then draws nearer and
nearer till it seems to touch your boat, the very
nearest section of space being filled with a faint
disembodied blueness, like that which fills on
winter days, in colder regions, the hollows of
the snow. Sky and sea show but gradations of the
same color, and afford but modifications of the
same element. In this quietness, yonder schooner
seems not so much to lie at anchor in the water
as to anchor the water, so that both cease to move;
and though faint ripples may come and go else-where on the surface, the vessel rests in this liquid
island of absolute calm. For there certainly is else-
where a sort of motionless movement, as Keats
speaks of "a little noiseless noise among the leaves,"
or as the summer clouds form and disappear with-out apparent wind and without prejudice to the
stillness. A man may lie in the profoundest
trance and still be breathing, and the very pulsa-tions of the life of nature, in these calm hours, are
to be read in these changing tints and shadows
and ripples, and in the mirage-bewildered outlines
of the islands in the bay. It is this incessant shift-ing of relations, this perpetual substitution of
fantastic for real values, this inability to trust
your own eye or ear unless the mind makes its
own corrections, — that gives such an inexhausti-ble attraction to life beside the ocean. The sea-change comes to you without your waiting to be
drowned. You must recognize the working of
your own imagination and allow for it. When,
for instance, the sea-fog settles down around us at
nightfall, it sometimes grows denser and denser till
it apparently becomes more solid than the pave-ments of the town, or than the great globe
itself; and when the fog-whistles go wailing on
through all the darkened hours, they seem to be
signalling not so much for a lost ship as for a lost
island.
How unlike are those weird and gloomy nights
to this sunny noon, when I rest my oars in this
sheltered bay, where a small lagoon makes in be-hind Coaster's Harbor Island, and the very last
breath and murmur of the ocean are left outside!
The coming tide steals to the shore in waves so
light they are a mere shade upon the surface till
they break, and ten die speechless for one that has a
voice. And even those rare voices are the very
most confidential and silvery whispers in which
Nature ever spoke to man; the faintest summer
insect seems resolute and assured beside them;
and yet it needs but an indefinite multiplication
of these sounds to make up the thunder of the surf.
It is so still that I can let the wherry drift idly
along the shore, and can watch the life beneath
the water. The small fry cluster and evade be-tween me and the brink; the half-translucent
shrimp glides gracefully undisturbed, or glances
away like a flash if you but touch the surface;
the crabs waddle or burrow, the smaller species
mimicking unconsciously the hue of the soft green
sea-weed, and the larger looking like motionless
stones, covered with barnacles and decked with
fringing weeds. I am acquainted with no better
Darwinian than the crab; and however clumsy he
may be when taken from his own element, he has
a free and floating motion which is almost grace-ful in his own yielding and buoyant home. It is
so with all wild creatures, but especially with
those of water and air. A gull is not reckoned an
especially graceful bird, but yonder I see one,
snowy white, that has come to fish in this safe
lagoon, and it dips and rises on its errands as
lightly as a butterfly or a swallow. Beneath that
neighboring causeway the water-rats run over the
stones, lithe and eager and alert, the body carried
low, the head raised now and then like a hound's,
the tail curving gracefully and aiding the poise;
now they are running to the water as if to drink,
now racing for dear life along the edge, now fairly
swimming, then devoting an interval to reflection,
like squirrels, then again searching over a pile of
sea-weed and selecting some especial tuft, which
is carried, with long, sinuous leaps, to the unseen
nest. Indeed, man himself is graceful in his un-
conscious and direct employments: the poise of a
fisherman, for instance, the play of his arm, the
cast of his line or net, — these take the eye as do
the stealthy movements of the hunter, the fine
attitudes of the wood-chopper, the grasp of the
sailor on the helm. A haystack and a boat are
always picturesque objects, and so are the men
who are at work to build or use them. So is yon-der stake-net, glistening in the noonday light, —
the innumerable meshes drooping in soft arches
from the high stakes, and the line of floats stretch-ing shoreward, like tiny stepping-stones; two or
three row-boats are gathered round it, with fisher-men in red or blue shirts, while one white sail-boat hovers near. And I have looked down on
our beach in spring, at sunset, and watched them
drawing nets for the young herring, when the
rough men looked as graceful as the nets they
drew, and the horseman who directed might have
been Redgauntlet on the Solway Sands.
I suppose it is from this look of natural fitness
that a windmill is always such an appropriate ob-ject by the sea-shore. It is simply a four-masted
schooner, stranded on a hill-top, and adapting itself
to a new sphere of duty. It can have needed
but a slight stretch of invention in some seaman to
combine these lofty vans, and throw over them a
few remodelled sails. The principle of their mo-tion is that by which a vessel beats to windward;
the miller spreads or reefs his sails, like a sailor,
— reducing them in a high wind to a mere "pigeon-wing" as it is called, two or three feet in length,
or in some cases even scudding under bare poles.
The whole structure vibrates and creaks under
rapid motion, like a mast; and the angry vans,
disappointed of progress, are ready to grind to
powder all that comes within their grasp, as they
revolve hopelessly in this sea of air.
When the sun grows hot, I like to take refuge
in a sheltered nook beside Goat Island Light-house, where the wharf shades me, and the reso-nant plash of waters multiplies itself among the
dark piles, increasing the delicious sense of cool-ness. While the noonday bells ring twelve, I
take my rest. Round the corner of the pier the
fishing-boats come gliding in, generally with a boy
asleep forward, and a weary man at the helm; one
can almost fancy that the boat itself looks weary,
having been out since the early summer sunrise.
In contrast to this expression of labor ended, the
white pleasure-boats seem but to be taking a care-less stroll by water; while a skiff full of girls drifts
idly along the shore, amid laughter and screaming
and much aimless splash. More resolute and
business-like, the boys row their boat far up the
bay; then I see a sudden gleam of white bodies,
and then the boat is empty, and the surrounding
water is sprinkled with black and bobbing heads.
The steamboats look busier yet, as they go puffing
by at short intervals, and send long waves up to
my retreat; and then some schooner sails in, full
of life, with a white ripple round her bows, till she
suddenly rounds to drops anchor, and is still.
Opposite me, on the landward side of the bay, the
green banks slope to the water; on yonder cool
piazza there is a young mother who swings her
baby in the hammock, or a white-robed figure
pacing beneath the trailing vines. Peace and
lotus-eating on shore; on the water, even in the
stillest noon, there are life and sparkle and con-tinual change.
One of those fishermen whose boats have just
glided to their moorings is to me a far more in-teresting person than any of his mates, though he
is perhaps the only one among them with whom I
have never yet exchanged a word. There is good
reason for it; he has been deaf and dumb since
boyhood. He is reported to be the boldest sailor
among all these daring men; he is the last to re-treat before the coming storm; the first after the
storm to venture through the white and whirling
channels, between dangerous ledges, to which
others give a wider berth. I do not wonder at
this, for think how much of the awe and terror of
the tempest must vanish if the ears be closed!
The ominous undertone of the waves on the beach
and the muttering thunder pass harmless by him.
How infinitely strange it must be to have the sight
of danger, but not the sound! Fancy such a dep-rivation in war, for instance, where it is the
sounds, after all, that haunt the memory the long-est; the rifle's crack, the irregular shots of skir-mishers, the long roll of alarm, the roar of great
guns. This man would have missed them all.
Were a broadside from an enemy's gunboat to be
discharged above his head, he would not hear it;
he would only recognize, by some jarring of his
other senses, the fierce concussion of the air.
How much deeper seems his solitude than that
of any other "lone fisher on the lonely sea"! Yet
all such things are comparative; and while the
others contrast that wave-tossed isolation with
the cheeriness of home, his home is silent too. He
has a wife and children; they all speak, but he
hears not their prattle or their complaints. He
summons them with his fingers, as he summons
the fishes, and they are equally dumb to him. Has
he a special sympathy with those submerged and
voiceless things? Dunfish, in the old newspapers,
were often called "dumb'd fish"; and they per-chance come to him as to one of their kindred.
They may have learned, like other innocent things,
to accept this defect of utterance, and even imitate
it. I knew a deaf-and-dumb woman whose chil-dren spoke and heard; but while yet too young for
words, they had learned that their mother was not
to be reached in that way; they never cried or
complained before her, and when most excited
would only whisper. Her baby ten months old,
if disturbed in the night, would creep to her and
touch her lips, to awaken her, but would make no
noise.
One might fancy that all men who have an ago-nizing sorrow or a fearful secret would be drawn by
irresistible attraction into the society of the deaf
and dumb. What awful passions might not be
whispered, what terror safely spoken, in the
charmed circle round yonder silent boat, — a circle
whose centre is a human life which has not all the
susceptibilities of life, a confessional where even
the priest cannot hear! Would it not relieve sor-row to express itself, even if unheeded? What
more could one ask than a dumb confidant? and if
deaf also, so much the safer. To be sure, he would
give you neither absolution nor guidance; he could
render nothing in return, save a look or a clasp
of the hand; nor can the most gifted or eloquent
friendship do much more. Ah! but suddenly the
thought occurs, suppose that the defect of hearing,
as of tongue, were liable to be loosed by an over-mastering emotion, and that by startling him with
your hoarded confidence you were to break the
spell! The hint is too perilous; let us row away.
A few strokes take us to the half-submerged
wreck of a lime-schooner that was cut to the
water's edge, by a collision in a gale, twelve months
ago. The water kindled the lime, the cable was
cut, the vessel drifted ashore and sunk, still blaz-ing, at this little beach. When I saw her, at sun-set, the masts had been cut away, and the flames
held possession on board. Fire was working away
in the cabin, like a live thing, and sometimes
glared out of the hatchway; anon it clambered
along the gunwale, like a school-boy playing, and
the waves chased it as in play; just a flicker of
flame, then a wave would reach up to overtake it;
then the flames would be, or seem to be, where
the water had been; and finally, as the vessel lay
careened, the waves took undisturbed possession
of the lower gunwale, and the flames of the upper.
So it burned that day and night; part red with
fire, part black with soaking; and now twelve
months have made all its visible parts look dry
and white, till it is hard to believe that either
fire or water has ever touched it. It lies over on
its bare knees, and a single knee, torn from the
others, rests imploringly on the shore, as if
that had worked its way to land, and perished
in act of thanksgiving. At low tide, one half the
frame is lifted high in air, like a dead tree in the
forest.
Perhaps all other elements are tenderer in their
dealings with what is intrusted to them than is
the air. Fire, at least, destroys what it has ruined;
earth is warm and loving, and it moreover con-ceals; water is at least caressing, — it laps the great-er part of this wreck with protecting waves, covers
with sea-weeds all that it can reach, and protects
with incrusting shells. Even beyond its grasp it
tosses soft pendants of moss that twine like vine-tendrils, or sway in the wind. It mellows harsh
colors into beauty, and Ruskin grows eloquent
over the wave-washed tint of some tarry, weather-beaten boat. But air is pitiless: it dries and stiffens
all outline, and bleaches all color away, so that you
can hardly tell whether these ribs belonged to a
ship or an elephant; and yet there is a certain cold
purity in the shapes it leaves, and the birds it
sends to perch upon these timbers are a more
graceful company than lobsters or fishes. After
all, there is something sublime in that sepulture
of the Parsees, who erect near every village a
dokhma, or Tower of Silence, upon whose summit
they may bury their dead in air.
Thus widely may one's thoughts wander from a
summer boat. But the season for rowing is a long
one, and far outlasts in Oldport the stay of our
annual guests. Sometimes in autumnal mornings
I glide forth over water so still, it seems as if satu-rated by the Indian-summer with its own indefina-ble calm. The distant islands lift themselves on
white pedestals of mirage; the cloud-shadows rest
softly on Conanicut; and what seems a similar
shadow on the nearer slopes of Fort Adams is in
truth but a mounted battery, drilling, which soon
moves and slides across the hazy hill like a cloud.
I hear across nearly a mile of water the faint, sharp
orders and the sonorous blare of the trumpet that
follows each command; the horsemen gallop and
wheel; suddenly the band within the fort strikes
up for guard-mounting, and I have but to shut my
eyes to be carried back to warlike days that passed
by, — was it centuries ago? Meantime, I float
gradually towards Brenton's Cove; the lawns that
reach to the water's edge were never so gorgeously
green in any summer, and the departure of the
transient guests gives to these lovely places an air
of cool seclusion; when fashion quits them, the
imagination is ready to move in. An agreeable
sense of universal ownership comes over the win-ter-staying mind in Oldport. I like to keep up
this little semblance of habitation on the part of
our human birds of passage; it is very pleasant to
me, and perhaps even pleasanter to them, that they
should call these emerald slopes their own for a
month or two; but when they lock the doors in
autumn, the ideal key reverts into my hands, and
it is evident that they have only been "tenants by
the courtesy," in the fine legal phrase. Provided
they stay here long enough to attend to their lawns
and pay their taxes, I am better satisfied than if
these estates were left to me the whole year
round.
The tide takes the boat nearer to the fort; the
horsemen ride more conspicuously, with swords
and trappings that glisten in the sunlight, while
the white fetlocks of the horses twinkle in unison
as they move. One troop-horse without a rider
wheels and gallops with the rest, and seems to
revel in the free motion. Here also the tide
reaches or seems to reach the very edge of the
turf; and when the light battery gallops this way,
it is as if it were charging on my floating fortress.
Upon the other side is a scene of peace; and a
fisherman sings in his boat as he examines the
floats of his stake-net, hand over hand. A white
gull hovers close above him, and a dark one above
the horsemen, fit emblems of peace and war. The
slightest sounds, the rattle of an oar, the striking
of a hoof against a stone, are borne over the water
to an amazing distance, as if the calm bay amid
its seeming quiet, were watchful of the slightest
noise. But look! in a moment the surface is rip-pled, the sky is clouded, a swift change comes over
the fitful mood of the season; the water looks colder
and deeper, the greensward assumes a chilly dark-ness, the troopers gallop away to their stables, and
the fisherman rows home. That indefinable ex-pression which separates autumn from summer
creeps almost in an instant over all. Soon, even
upon this Isle of Peace, it will be winter,
Each season, as winter returns, I try in vain to
comprehend this wonderful shifting of expres-sion that touches even a thing so essentially un-
changing as the sea. How delicious to all the
senses is the summer foam above yonder rock; in
winter the foam is the same, the sparkle as radi-ant, the hue of the water scarcely altered; and yet
the effect is, by comparison, cold, heavy, and leaden.
It is like that mysterious variation which chiefly
makes the difference between one human face and
another; we call it by vague names, and cannot
tell in what it lies; we only know that when ex-pression changes, all is gone. No warmth of color,
no perfection of outline can supersede those subtile
influences which make one face so winning that all
human affection gravitates to its spell, and another
so cold or repellent that it dwells forever in loneli-ness, and no passionate heart draws near. I can
fancy the ocean beating in vague despair against
its shores in winter, and moaning, "I am as beau-tiful, as restless, as untamable as ever: why are my
cliffs left desolate? why am I not loved as I was
loved in summer?"