第 18 页

With a quick glance at my stern range, a sandhill on the shore of the inlet, and another look over my shoulder for the sand dunes of the other side, I exerted every muscle to reach the beach; but my frisky friends were in no mood to leave me, but continued their fun with increased energy as reinforcements came up from all directions. The faster I rowed the more they multiplied, ploughing the sea in erratic courses. They were from five to seven feet in length, and must have weighed from two hundred to four hundred pounds each. Though their attentions were kindly meant, their brusqueness on such an unsteady footing was unpardonable. I most feared the strong, shooting movements of their tails in the sudden dives under my canoe, for one sportive touch of such a caudality would have rolled me over, and furnished material for a tale the very anticipation of which was unpleasant.

Crossing Hatteras Inlet (112K)

The aquatic gambols of the porpoises lasted but a few minutes after they had called in all their neighbors, and had chased me into three feet depth of water. They then spouted a nasal farewell, which sounded more catarrhal than guitaral, and left me for the more profitable occupation of fishing in the tide-way of the inlet, while I rowed into a shallow cove, out of the ebb, to rest, and to recover from the effects of my fright.

As I pulled along the beach the tide receded so rapidly that the canoe was constantly grounding, and wading became necessary, for I could not get within several feet of the shore. When five miles from Hatteras Inlet I espied an empty grass cabin, which the fishermen used in February while catching shad; and, as a southerly wind was now blowing from the sea, and rain was falling, it offered a night's shelter for the traveller. This Robinson Crusoe looking structure was located upon the low land near the sound, while bleak, sharp-pointed, treeless and grassless sandhills, blown into shape by the winds, arose in the background, and cut off a view of the ocean, which, judging from the low, melancholy moaning coming over the dunes, was in a sad mood.

The canoe was hauled into the bushes and tied securely for fear a deceptive tide might bear it away. The provisions, blankets, &c., were moved into the grass hut, which needed repairing. The holes in the south wall were soon thatched, and a bed easily prepared from the rushes of the marsh. It mattered not that they were wet, for a piece of painted canvas was spread over them, and the inviting couch finished.

As fresh water can usually be obtained on all these low beaches by digging two or three feet into the sand, I looked for a large clam-shell, and my search being rewarded, I was soon engaged in digging a well near the cabin.

Upon looking up from my work a curious sight met my gaze. In some mysterious way every sharp-pointed sand-hill had been covered by a black object, which swayed about and nodded up and down in a strange manner. As I watched the development of this startling phenomenon, the nodding, black objects grew in size until the head, body, and four legs of a horse were clearly cut against the sky. A little later every crest was surmounted by the comical figure of a marsh-tacky. Then a few sheep came out of the hollows among the hills and browsed on the coarse grass near the cabin, as though they felt the loneliness of their situation so far removed from mankind. With the marsh-ponies, the sheep, the wild-fowls of the sound, and the sighing sea for companions, the night passed away.

The bright moonlight roused me at five o'clock in the morning, and I pushed off again in shoal water on an ebb-tide, experiencing much difficulty in dragging the canoe over shallow places until deep water was entered, when the row to Ocracoke became an agreeable one. The landing-place at Ocracoke, not far from the lighthouse, was reached at noon, and the people gathered to see the paper boat, having been notified of my proximity by fishermen.

The women here can pull a pretty good stroke, and frequently assist their husbands in the fisheries. These old dames ridiculed the idea of having a boat so small and light as the canoe. One old lady laid aside her pipe and snuff-paddle (snuff-rubbing is a time-honored institution in the south), and roughly grasping the bow of the craft, lifted it high in the air, then, glancing at the fine model, she lowered it slowly to the ground, exclaiming, "I reckon I wouldn't risk my life acrossing a creek in her."

These people told me that the yacht Julia had stopped there to make inquiries for me, and had departed for Newbern.

It was more than a mile from the landing to Ocracoke Inlet, and a mile and three quarters across it to the beach. A straight course from the landing to the village of Portsmouth, on the lower side of the inlet, was a distance of five miles, and not one of the hardy watermen, who thumped the sides of my boat with their hard fists to ascertain its strength, believed that I could cross the sound to the other village without rolling over. One kind-hearted oysterman offered to carry myself and boat to Portsmouth, but as the day was calm, I rowed away on the five-mile stretch amid doleful prognostications, such as: "That feller will make a coffin for hisself out of that yere gimcrack of an egg-shell. It's all a man's life is wurth to go in her," &c.

While approaching the low Portsmouth shore of the sound, flocks of Canada geese flew within pistol-shot of my head. A man in a dug-out canoe told me that the gunners of the village had reared from the egg a flock of wild geese which now aggregated some seven or eight hundred birds, and that these now flying about were used to decoy their wild relatives.

Near the beach a sandy hill had been the place of sepulture for the inhabitants of other generations, but for years past the tidal current had been cutting the shore away until coffin after coffin with its contents had been washed into the sound. Captain Isaac S. Jennings, of Ocean County, New Jersey, had described this spot to me as follows:

"I landed at Portsmouth and examined this curious burial-ground. Here by the water were the remains of the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of the people of the village so near at hand; yet these dismal relics of their ancestors were allowed to be stolen away piecemeal by the encroaching ocean. While I gazed sadly upon the strata of coffins protruding from the banks, shining objects like jewels seemed to be sparkling from between the cracks of their fractured sides; and as I tore away the rotten wood, rows of toads were discovered sitting in solemn council, their bright eyes peering from among the debris of bones and decomposed substances."

Portsmouth Island is nearly eight miles long. Whalebone Inlet is at its lower end, but is too shallow to be of any service to commerce. Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets admit sea-going vessels. It is thirty-eight miles from Whalebone Inlet to Cape Lookout, which projects like a wedge into the sea nearly three miles from the mainland, and there is not another passage through the narrow beach in all that distance that is of any use to the mariner. Following the trend of the coast for eleven miles from the point of Cape Lookout, there is an inlet, but, from the character of its channel and its shallowness, it is not of much value.

Leaving Portsmouth, the canoe entered Core Sound, which grew narrower as the shoals inside of Whalebone Inlet were crossed, partly by rowing and partly by wading on the sand-flats. As night came on, a barren stretch of beach on my left hand was followed until I espied the only house within a distance of sixteen miles along the sea. It was occupied by a coasting skipper, whose fine little schooner was anchored a long distance from the land on account of the shoalness of the water. Dreary sand-hills protected the cottage from the bleak winds of the ocean.

While yet a long distance from the skipper's home, a black object could be seen crawling up the sides of a mound of white sand, and after it reached the apex it remained in one position, while I rowed, and waded, and pulled my canoe towards the shore. When the goal was reached, and the boat was landed high up among the scrub growth, I shouldered my blankets and charts, and plodded through the soft soil towards the dark object, which I now recognized to be a man on a lookout post. He did not move from his position until I reached the hillock, when he suddenly slid down the bank and landed at my feet, with a cheery --

"Well, now, I thought it was you. Sez I to myself, That's him, sure, when I seed you four miles away. Fust thinks I, It's only a log, or a piece of wrak-stuff afloating. Pretty soon up comes your head and shoulders into sight; then sez I, It's a man, sure, but where is his boat? for you see, I couldn't see your boat, it was so low down in the water. Then I reckoned it was a man afloating on a log, but arter a while the boat loomed up too, and I says, I'll be dog-goned if that isn't him. I went up to Newbern, some time ago, in the schooner, and the people there said there was a man coming down the coast a-rowing a paper boat on a bet. The boat weighed only fifty-eight pounds, and the man had a heft of only eighty pounds. When pa and me went up to the city agin, the folks said the man was close on to us, and this time they said the man and his boat together weighed only eighty pounds. Now I should think you weighed more than that yourself, letting alone the boat."

Having assured the young man that I was indeed myself, and that the Newbern people had played upon his credulity, we walked on to the house, where the family of Captain James Mason kindly welcomed me to a glowing wood-fire and hearty supper. Though I had never heard of their existence till I entered Core Sound, the kindness of these people was like that of old friends.

Half a mile below Captain Mason's home, a short time before my visit, a new breach had been made by the ocean through the beach. About twenty years before a similar breach had occurred in the same locality, and was known during its short life as "Pillintary Inlet." The next day I crossed the sound, which is here four miles in width, and coasted along to the oystermen's village of Hunting Quarters, on the mainland. The houses were very small, but the hearts of the poor folks were very large. They came to the water's edge and carried the canoe into the only store in the neighborhood. Its proprietor, Mr. William H. Stewart, insisted upon my sharing his bachelor's quarters in an unfinished room of the storehouse. My young host was hardly out of his teens. In his boyish way he kindly remarked:

"I am here all alone. Father told me, before he died, never to let a stranger pass my door but to make him share my lodgings, humble though they are; and now, any way, you're just in time for the fun, for we are to have three weddings to-night, and all the boys and girls of the neighborhood will be at Hunting Quarters."

I entered a mild protest against joining in the festivities, on the plea of not having received an invitation; at which the handsome youth laughed heartily.

"Invitation!" he exclaimed; "why, no one ever gives out invitations in Hunting Quarters. When there is to be a 'jolliflcation' of any sort, everybody goes to the house without being asked. You see we are all neighbors here. Up at Newbern and at Beaufort, and other great cities, people have their ways, but here all are friends."

So we went to the little house in the piny forest, where two hearts were to be made one. The only room on the first floor was crowded with people. The minister had not arrived, and the crowd was gazing at the young groom and his pretty bride-elect as they sat in two chairs in the middle of the company, with their arms around each other, never speaking a word to any one. The heavy weight of people began to settle the floor, and as two joists gave way I struggled to escape through an open window, thinking we would be precipitated into the cellar below. But the good-natured company took no notice of the snapping timbers, only ejaculating, "She'll soon touch bottom;" and to my inquiries about the inconvenience of being pitched through to the cellar, a rustic youth, with great merriment depicted upon his countenance, replied:

"Sullers, captain, why, there ain't a suller to a buildin' within thirty miles of the Quarters. We never uses sullers hereabouts."

By my side was a young fisherman, who had got home from a cruise, and was overflowing with affection towards every girl present. "O, gals," he would cry, "you don't know how nice I feels to get back to you once more!" Throwing his arms around a bright-eyed girl, who vainly tried to escape him, he said, "O, weary mariner, here is thy rest! No more shall he wander from thee."

This sentimental strain was interrupted by an old lady, who reached her arm over my shoulder to administer a rebuke. "Sam, ye're a fool!" she cried; "ye're beside yourself to-night, and afore this paper-canoe captain, too. Ef I was a gal I'd drap yere society, wid yere familiar ways right in company."

The blow and the admonition fell harmlessly upon the head and the heart of the sailor, who replied, "Aunty, I knows my advantages in Hunting Quarters -- women is plenty, and men is few."

The crowd roared with laughter at this truism, but were quieted by the shout of a boy that the preacher was a-coming; whereupon the reverend gentleman elbowed his way through the guests to the quiet couple, and requested them to stand up. A few hurried words by the clergyman, a few bashful replies from the young people, and the two were made one. The crowd rushed outside of the house, where a general scramble took place among the boys for their girls. Then a procession was formed, headed by the clergyman, which marched along the sandy road to another house in the woods, where the second marriage was to be celebrated.

It was amusing to see the young men dash away from the procession, to run to the village store for candy at twenty-five cents per pound, containing as much terra alba (white clay) as sugar. With well-filled pockets they would run back to the procession and fill the girls' aprons with the sweets, soon repeating the process, and showering upon the fair ones cakes, raisins, nuts, and oranges. The only young man who seemed to find no favor in any woman's eyes invested more capital in sweetmeats than the others; and though every girl in the procession gave him a sharp word or a kick as he passed, yet none refused his candies as he tossed them at the maidens, or stuffed them into the pockets of their dresses.

The second ceremony was performed in about three minutes, and the preacher feeling faint from his long ride through the woods, declared he must have some supper. So, while he was being served, the girls chatted together, the old ladies helped each other to snuff with little wooden paddles, which were left protruding from one corner of their mouths after they had taken "a dip," as they called it. The boys, after learning that the preacher had postponed the third marriage for an hour, with a wild shout scampered off to Stewart's store for more candies. I took advantage of the interim to inquire how it was that the young ladies and gentlemen were upon such terms of pleasant intimacy.