Will The Ocean Take To Itself
This Frail Foothold?
- We queried.
Will it
ingulf us in its insatiable maw, as the whale did
Jonah? There was no subsidence, no pause in
the storm. It howled, bellowed, and screeched
like a legion of demons, so that the crashing of
falling trees, and the twisting of the sturdy
live oak's toughest limbs, could hardly be heard in
the din. Yet during this wild night my
storm-hardened companion sat with his pretty wife by
the open fireplace, as unmoved as though we
were in the shelter of a mountain side, while he
calmly discoursed of storms, shipwrecks, and
terrible struggles for life that this lonely coast
had witnessed, which sent thrills of horror to
my heart.
While traversing the beach during the
afternoon, as wreck after wreck, the gravestones of
departed ships, projected their timbers from the
sands, I had made a calculation of the number
of vessels which had left their hulls to rot on
Hatteras beach since the ships of Sir Walter
Raleigh had anchored above the cape, and it
resulted in making one continuous line of vessels,
wreck touching wreck, along the coast for many,
many miles. Hundreds of miles of the Atlantic
coast beaches would have been walled in by the
wrecks could they have come on to the strand
at one time, and all the dwellers along the coast,
outside of the towns, would have been placed
in independent circumstances by wrecking their
cargoes.
During this wild night, while the paper canoe
was safely stowed in the rushes of the marsh at
the cape, and its owner was enjoying the warmth
of the young astronomer's fire at the inlet, less
than twenty miles from us, on the dangerous
edge of Ocracoke shoals, the searching party of
the yacht Julia were in momentary expectation
of going to the bottom of the sound. For hours
the gallant craft hung to her anchors, which
were heavily backed by all the iron ballast that
could be attached to the cables. Wave after
wave swept over her, and not a man could put
his head above the hatches. Then, as she rolled
in the sea, her cabin-windows went under, and
streams of water were forced through the ports
into the confined space which was occupied by the
little party. For a time they were in imminent
danger, for the vessel dragged anchor to the edge
of the shoal, and with a heavy thud the yacht
struck on the bottom. All hopes of ever
returning to Newbern were lost, when the changing
tide swung the boat off into deeper water, where
she rode out the storm in safety.
Before morning the wind shifted, and by nine
o'clock I retraced my steps to the cape, and on
Tuesday rowed down to Hatteras Inlet, which
was reached a little past noon. Before
attempting to cross this dangerous tidal gate-way of the
ocean I hugged the shore close to its edge, and
paused to make myself familiar with the
sandhills of the opposite side, a mile away, which
were to serve as the guiding-beacons in the
passage. How often had I, lying awake at night,
thought of and dreaded the crossing of this
ill-omened inlet! It had given me much mental
suffering. Now it was before me. Here on my
right was the great sound, on my left the
narrow beach island, and out through the portal
of the open inlet surged and moaned under a
leaden sky that old ocean which now seemed to
frown at me, and to say: "Wait, my boy, until
the inlet's waves deliver you to me, and I will
put you among my other victims for your
temerity."
As I gazed across the current I remarked that
it did not seem very rough, though a strong ebb
was running out to the sea, and if crossed
immediately, before the wind arose, there could be
no unreasonable risk. My canvas deck-cover
was carefully pulled close about my waist, and a
rigid inspection of oars and row-locks was made;
then, with a desire to reserve my strength for
any great demand that might be made upon it a
little later, I rowed with a steady stroke out into
Hatteras Inlet. There was no help nearer than
Styron's, two miles away on the upper shore,
while the beach I was approaching on the other
side was uninhabited for nearly sixteen miles, to
the village at its southern end, near Ocracoke
Inlet. Upon entering the swash I thought of the
sharks which the Hatteras fishermen had told
me frequently seized their oars, snapping the
thin blades in pieces, assuring me, at the same
time, that mine would prove very attractive,
being so white and glimmering in the water, and
offering the same glittering fascination as a
silver-spoon bait does to a blue-fish. These
cheerful suggestions caused a peculiar creeping
sensation to come over me, but I tried to quiet
myself with the belief that the sharks had
followed the blue-fish into deeper water, to escape
cold weather.
The canoe crossed the upper ebb, and entered
an area where the ebb from the opposite side of
the inlet struck the first one. While crossing
the union of the two currents, a wind came in at
the opening through the beach, and though not
a strong one, it created a great agitation of the
water. The dangerous experience at
Watchapreague Inlet had taught me that when in such
a sea one must pull with all his strength, and
that the increased momentum would give greater
buoyancy to the shell; for while under this
treatment she bounced from one irregular wave to
another with a climbing action which greatly
relieved my anxiety. The danger seemed to be
decreasing, and I stole a furtive glance over my
shoulder at the low dunes of the beach shore
which I was approaching, to see how far into the
inlet the tide had dragged me.
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