Cold Harbor

“ Both the sailor and Dorothy were glad to speak with anybody, and she asked:
“Will this fog last long? Is it often so cold right in the summer time?”
“Cold enough to freeze the legs off an iron pot, slathers of times. This is one of ’em! As for fogs lastin’, I reckon, little Miss, there won’t be no more [Pg 86] sunshine ’twixt here and Yarmouth harbor. If you’re cold out here though, and don’t want to go to your room, you’ll find things snug down yonder in that music-room, or what you call it.” ”

“ And herein must be sought the secret of people's standing a great degree of cold in the north, without being duly sensible of the extreme degree of it. This remark ought, perhaps, to be limited to such severe degree of cold (say 40° below zero) , as a man can withstand or live in.
The ice, being only glued together, separated about 2 o'clock, and left the harbor free again before night.
The express from St. Mary's came in, about two hours after our Detroit express left. By letters brought by it, I learn that letters of recall have recently passed the Sault for Capt. Back. ”

“ SUNDAY, Nov. 19/29 At anchor, Gape Cod harbor. Second Sunday in harbor. Services aboard ship. Seamen ashore. Change in weather. Colder. MONDAY, Nov. 20/30 At anchor, Cape Cod harbor. Carpenter and others at work on shallop, getting out stock for a new shallop, helving tools, making articles needed, etc. TUESDAY, Nov. 21/Dec. 1 At anchor in harbor. Much inconvenienced in going ashore. Can only go and come at high water except by wading, from which many have taken coughs and colds. WEDNESDAY, Nov. 22/Dec. 2 At anchor in harbor. Weather cold and stormy, having changed suddenly. ”

“ In a moment, there is heard in the silent bay a sound of a rush and ripple, different from the lap of the many-tongued waves on the shore; and, silently as a cloud, with white wings spread, a little vessel glides into the harbor.
A little craft is she—not larger than the fishing-smacks that ply their course along our coasts in summer; but her decks are crowded with men, women, and children, looking out with joyous curiosity on the beautiful bay, where, after many dangers and storms, they first have found safe shelter and hopeful harbor. ”

“ A silent stinging snow whipped in from the sea, and the lordly voices of the surges rose to inharmonious thunders in the straits of Antioch, or burst in rugged chorus against the rock-bound coasts of the gloomy promontory and the isles of Ré and Oléron. As the vigor of the storm increased, the harbor towers Saint Nicholas and the Chain, looming in the blur like suppliant arms, and the sea walls began gradually to waver and recede in the accumulating haze, while across the dim yellow flame in the tower of the Lantern the snow flurried in grey, shapeless, interminable shadows. ”

“ It is a town of summer hotels and boarding-houses, built upon what was a treeless plain, the outskirts being a galaxy of cottages, many of great pretensions. Here will congregate ten to twenty thousand visitors in the season, and Bar Harbor has become one of the most fashionable resorts 272 on the Atlantic coast. Its bane, however, is the fog, a frequent sojourner in the summer, though even fogs, in their way, have charms. ”

“ At South-west Harbor the visitor is usually desirous of inspecting the sea-wall, or cheval-de-frise of shattered rock, that skirts the shore less than three miles distant from the steamboat landing. And he may here witness an impressive example of what the ocean can do. An irregular ridge of a mile in length is piled with shapeless rocks, against which the sea beats with tireless impetuosity.
Fog is the bane of Mount Desert. ”

“ Our numbers are reduced to twenty-four, including our interpreter and two Greenland Esquimaux.
15th.—We have enjoyed ten days of moderate winds and calms, but the temperature has fallen as low as -31°. This causes frost-cracks in the ice across the harbor; they will freeze over, and others will form, and gape, and freeze at intervals, so that by next spring we shall probably be moved several inches, perhaps feet, off shore.
Mists have obscured the sun of late, and now it does not rise at all. We are indifferent; its departure [194] has become to us a matter of course. ”

“ Over the lake it was a white, whirling maelstrom, obscuring at midafternoon even the lighthouses at the harbor entrance; beyond that, the winter boats trying for the harbor mouth were bellowing blindly at bay before the jammed ice, and foghorns and sirens echoed loudly in the city in the lulls of the storm.
Battering against the fronts of the row of club buildings, fashionable hotels, and shops which face across the narrow strip of park to the lake front in downtown Chicago, the gale swirled and eddied the sleet till all the wide windows, warm within, were frosted. ”

“ All along the Commander had held forth on the delicacy of the Labrador trout and salmon, and therefore great was our delight when one day the mission people proposed a trip to the head of St. Louis Bay, where was located a fine trout stream not far from the winter hospital. It is necessary to maintain a winter station in addition to the summer station at Battle Harbor, as the outer islands are untenable in winter owing [36] to their exposed position. ”

“ It was a commonplace peril of the coast; it was a reasonable endeavor. It was thrilling, to be sure—the conjunction of a living peril with the emergency of the message. Yet the dusk and sweeping drizzle of rain, the vanishing lights of Scalawag Harbor, the interruption of the lane of water, the mounting seas, their declivities flecked with a path of treacherous ice, all were familiar realities to Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl. Moreover, a telegram was not a letter. It was an urgent message. It imposed upon a man's conscience the obligation to speed it. ”

“ All or nearly all the witnesses agree that there is no difficulty in entering that harbor in the daytime, and that the anchorage, though rather limited in space, is safe and quite good just northwesterly of the end of the pier and out towards the light-house, and that the harbor affords a good shelter to vessels in a storm, except when the wind is blowing from a northeasterly direction or east-northeast, and then that its course is directly into the harbor, which fact must have been well known to the master and mate at the time they decided to make the attempt. ”

“ Hapless Harbor, then, in a nor’east blow, and a dirty day—uncivil weather; an ugly sea, a high wind, fog as thick as cheese, and, to top off with, a scowling glass. Still early spring—snow in the gullies, dripping in rivulets to the harbor water; ice at sea, driving with the variable, evil-spirited winds; perilous sailing and a wretched voyage of it upon that coast. A mean season, a dirty day—a time to be in harbor. A time most foul in feeling and intention, an hour to lie snug in the lee of some great rock. ”

“ Here, at least, are plenty of memorials of the Pilgrims, and here town and harbor are outspread for perusal. Seen at full tide, the harbor appears a goodly port enough, but it is left as bare by the ebb as if the sea had been commanded to remove and become dry land. Nothing except a broad expanse of sand-bars and mussel shoals, with luxuriant growth of eel-grass, meets the eye. Through these a narrow and devious channel makes its way. The bay, however, could not be called tame with two such landmarks as Captain's Hill on Duxbury side, and the promontory of Manomet on the shoulder of the Cape. ”

“ Bar Harbor lies beneath a mighty mountain, a great, bare, black mountain that sleeps above the town; but as you leave, it rises suddenly, threateningly, until far away on Frenchman's Bay it looms above the town in withering vastness, as if to call all that little world petty save itself. Beneath the cool, wide stare of that great mountain, men cannot live as giddily as in some lesser summer's playground. Before the unveiled face of nature, as it lies naked on the Maine coast, rises a certain human awe. ”

“ The Harbor of Provincetown—which, as well as the greater part of the Bay, and a wide expanse of ocean, we overlooked from our perch—is deservedly famous. It opens to the south, is free from rocks, and is never frozen over. It is said that the only ice seen in it drifts in sometimes from Barnstable or Plymouth. Dwight remarks that “The storms which prevail on the American coast generally come from the east; and there is no other harbor on a windward shore within two hundred miles.” ”

“ The city is apt to be a bit hazy, the sun, or the moon, often just red blotches in the dusty air in time of drought, but its hills and the countless islands of the bay seem solid rocks with woolly wigs of forest and jungle. The ferry crawling across the bay to Nictheroy, ocean-going steamers creeping in and out of the harbor, leave their paths sharp cut and clear behind them as the trail of a comet shooting across the sky. ”

“ Such are the woody shores of Cape Cod as we look back upon them in that distant November day, and the harbor lies like a great crystal gem on the bosom of a virgin wilderness. The "fir trees, the pine trees, and the bay," rejoice together in freedom, for as yet the axe has spared them; in the noble bay no shipping has found shelter; no voice or sound of civilized man has broken the sweet calm of the forest. The oak leaves, now turned to crimson and maroon by the autumn frosts, reflect themselves in flushes of color on the still waters. ”

“ Three miles of moors separated us from its deep blue, but it looked almost as close as the bay on our immediate right. At our feet [215] was a fourth bit of water, Pink Pond, where lilies were cut in the summer and ice in the winter, a bright blue sheet bordered with tall brown cat-tails. Far away, on the outside sea, jetties of suspended smoke marked the passing of an invisible ocean liner; near at hand, in the bay, rocked the fishing-boats; and at the entrance to Star Harbor a government cruiser was turning its gray nose northward. ”

“ On every side, as far as the eye could reach from this great elevation, spread out a solid sea of ice.
It was now September, and the temperature fell below freezing. It seemed certain that the Advance could not be freed from the ice until the next summer, and the explorers accordingly prepared to pass the winter there. They succeeded in dragging the vessel and wedging it in between two islands. In this harbor, known as Rensselaer bay, the stanch little Advance was frozen solidly in, never to be released. ”

“ We now lie in the outer harbour, while the four great funnels of our next boat can be seen towering over the hills that form the south side of the inner harbour. The cold is intense.
[214] November 22nd.—We spent the night at anchor outside the boom. They commenced to raise the anchor at daylight, but were stopped by signal, so that now at 10 a.m. we lie here waiting orders. The cold to-day is terrific. The wind is probably stronger than ever and goes whistling through the rigging. Our latest orders are to lie here till the gale moderates. ”

“ The ice was going abroad. As the farther fields drifted off to sea, the floe fell loose inshore. Lanes and pools opened up. The cake-ice tipped and went awash under the weight of a man. Rough going, ecod! There was no telling when open water would cut a man off where he stood. And the wind was whipping off-shore, and the snow was like dust in a [153] man's eyes and mouth, and the landmarks of Gingerbread Cove was nothing but shadows in a mist of snow to windward. Nobody knowed where Pinch-a-Penny Peter was. ”

“ There’s something in the air that makes me think we’re due right now for our first Norther.”
“But to Northern fellows that oughtn’t strike a wave of dread,” declared Herb. “We’re used to winter ice and snow. The thermometer down below zero never bothered me. Why should it down here, when it don’t even touch freezing?”
“Let’s wait and see,” laughed Jack. “After it comes, we’ll know more than we do now. But a harbor we must have. Keep your eye peeled for what looks like a good landing place, Herb.” ”

“ So on the morning of the third day following that of his call upon Judge Knowles he hobbled painfully and slowly up the front walk of the Fair Harbor to the formidable front door, with its great South Sea shells at each end of the granite step—relics of Captain Sylvanus's early voyages—and its silver-plated name plate with "SEYMOUR" engraved upon it in Gothic lettering. To one looking back from the view-point of to-day such a name plate may seem a bit superfluous and unnecessary in a village where every one knew not only where every one else lived, but how they lived and all about them. ”

“ It seems strange to see the place so deserted and so quiet. In the early winter I never went out of the vessel on the ice without having the whole pack crowding around me, playing and crying in gladness at my coming; now their lifeless carcasses are strewn about the harbor, half buried in snow and ice, and, if not so fearful, they are at least hardly more sightly than were those other stiff and stark and twisted figures which the wandering poets found beneath the dark sky and "murky vapors" and frozen waters of the icy realm of Dis. ”

“ On the third day they determined to start out. The sea had gone down to decent proportions, with a promise of several fair days ahead, as is always the case after a norther has cleared the atmosphere. Besides, their time was nearing an end, and they must get closer to Cedar Keys.
A long day's run was taken, and as they sought a snug harbor that afternoon the solemn face of Frank assured his chums that they were near the end of their delightful winter vacation. ”