It needed not the fierce gusts of wind that
howled about the tall tower, causing it to vibrate
until water
Would be spilled out of a pail resting
upon the floor of the lantern, blowing one day
from one quarter of the compass, and changing
the next to another, to warn me that I was near
the Cape of Storms.
Refusing to continue longer with my new
friends, the canoe was put into the water on the
16th, and Captain Hatzel's two sons proceeded
in advance with a strong boat to break a
channelway through the thin ice which had formed in
the quiet coves. We were soon out in the sound,
where the boys left me, and I rowed out of the
southern end of Roanoke and entered upon the
wide area of Pamplico Sound. To avoid shoals,
it being calm, I kept about three miles from the
beach in three feet of water, until beyond Duck
Island, when the trees on Roanoke Island slowly
sank below the horizon; then gradually drawing
in to the beach, the two clumps of trees of north
and south Chicamicomio came into view. A
life-saving station had recently been erected
north of the first grove, and there is another
fourteen miles further south. The two
Chicamicomio settlements of scattered houses are
each nearly a mile in length, and are separated
by a high, bald sand-beach of about the same
length, which was once heavily wooded; but the
wind has blown the sand into the forest and
destroyed it.
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