LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1528, 10 January 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ON SAND ISLAMD. [from the monthly."] The island itself h only one mile long, while in width it is always more or less, the ocean giving it nvw nieasura storm by storm aud tide by tide. On the island are two houses, the one with its face to the south-west, the other looking toward the east, and occupying positions as far, the one from the ether, as the limits of sand permit. A ridg° of rocks rises from tho so*, near either hni3e, suggesting the possibility of the build'ng site having been chosen with reference to something firm. (> 11 else on the island is iand and its belongings. Between the two louses, in very high st -rms, the ocoan on the north shakes hands with the ocean on the scrth, gripping the Binds in their grinding palms, and giving 3tn;dl promise of letting gc while a grain remain sto be shaken. In one of two houses livei, sixteen months ago, John Ware and his wife Nancy. In the other house lived I;ick Dixon, his" wife, and their children, A little m re than sixteen months ago, one afternoon in May, John Wats, and his wife left the main-land in a small row-boat to go and look at the house en the south-west of the island! ' We'll live here this summer,' said John, after they had lookec at the one-roomed dwelling, 'b:cause it will be so handy to run my boat in at nigit; and then by the fall we'll have money mough to go and live like fo ks.' ' I wonder why the rindows -ire only on one side of the house' said Nancy. 'Tosee the land, one must ;o outeloors.' 'I t'was a 'Ueer old fellow that built it; like as not he didn't want to see the land, nowhow,' sai. John, and he said no more. Tae next week, earlyin Juno, they moved. The day after the movig, John Ware sailed his boat, the Silver histle, up and, dawn the coast after the (whig yacht Menhaden, in search, of bony risl In the afternoon sixty, thousand flsh werecaught in the seine and put into the carrjaway, which was John's boat, It was near evening vhen, with a small lad to give Lim aid, h turned the Silver Thiatlo toward thamakland. On a point that stretched down cc saward a full mile stood a mill for tho anakiq of tish oil When near Hie place, John g.ve a ngaal from r, horn to announce his approach. Tl;e fish were hoisted from the bet iniso a car, and drawn up the bit of wooda railway into the dark en'ranoe to the great mill, where millions of lidi disappeared, ad from whence came thousands of gallons t il. John Ware's shire of the sixty thousand fish was eight dollars. Hewent home with the good nws Nancy W 3 waiting lor hita on tho sands. ' Kight dears a day!' ho said, bojishly. 'Why, N.i, we'll able to live quite like folks by' I'a'lat this rate' ' I in :;o giad,'' fbe f.iid ; but there will be rjiiuj days, ami days wbanit blows too hard for yon to go Ashing, an my eight-dollar d.iys will come then.' ' Lonely already, hey ?' vth gentle coremteerjiti >n in his voice 'lt uftki a a long clay :.'.],, a soul to speak to. Nov/ tbr.t you ivc come, don't let's t".!'.. abi/.ut it,' she said ' I'm going'to tho main aer I've had my supper, Nan ; but the bwil ht is long, aad I'll be bad? afore it's- g >ne.' ' I'll co in the boat with ,<3.. ;

Ue hesitated in «p n nking. b he answered, ' J'm sorry, Nan, but I'm goig in the ditigoy

to-night, and I've something to fetch back; there won't be room for you.' She was Bilent and grieved, and let him depart without do m the sand to tee him off; but after he had gone she watch'd tho boat f.s long ;>s sb.3 c >uld ses its dim outline, as long as tfhe coald discern a dark speck in the distance. The twilight lingered long that night, but it had been gone two hours when Nan heard a low cry. She listened a moment, then opened the door, and a white kitten rubbed its If in and purred about her feet. Had it; been a wild Indian, it would not

have surprised her more. Outside, thnwiod

was moving the ocean in an uncertaio, desultory way ; now a whiff from the south, then a puff from the west, and then a ' dying away,' to be followed by a brisk bit of air out of the north.

Nan took the kitten in her arms ; she stroked it as she sat listening and wondering how the cat came to be there. Then she arose and went outside to keep her watch. The heavens above seemed very near to the low roof as she went, thinking, 'it will be a rough sea soon, and John ought to be here before the wind blows much harder.'

From what seemed to be a cloud, lying to the north and west, rays of flashing light went up towards the zenith. They lit up the troubled sea with a we'rd light, and made the very sands of the island instinct with strange life. ' I'm glad there's northern lights ; 'twill help hisn home,' she thought, and went down near the shore, the kitten in her arms As she went, she was something that made her draw breath quickly. It was her husband, an Ihe was rolling up the sands a barrel of flour.

Laughing half at the momentary fear that held her, as she knew who it was, and half at the relief she felt in learning why he had not taken her with him in the boat, she dropped the kitten and ran to help him. 'I thought I'd fetch something home for you to speak to when I'm away,' he said j ' and even a kitten is better than nothing.' ' A whole barrel of Hour !' said Nan in surprise.

'Yes ; why not ? You set me a-thinking to-night about storms and so on, and I just made up my mind to have it on hand while the weather was just right. It isn't every night I'd feel willing to row over with a barrel of flour in that mite of a boat.'

' I wish you had told me, John, what you were going for,'she said, stooping to aid in rolling the barrel up the sands. ' 1 wanted to surprise you, Nan,' was all that he said.

And that little 'difference' was the onlycloud that came into the fair sky of John and hia wife that summer.

Ev'ery morning J..hn Ware went to his work on the ocean ; every day Nan worked and waited, and now and then walked across the island to visit her neighbors, taking care to choose a time for her visiting when the tide should be low, for the sands were wet at high water.

Pleasure parties went sailing past her, sometimes, as she sat alone in her doorway, but there was nothing to tempt any one of them to land on the island. There was only «un and sand and a bit of a weather-brown house. JSan gave the white kitten a name. She called it Comfort. It did comfort her, for it winked and mewed and purred in reply to the words and the fish she gave it. John Ware worked hard, was happy, and did prosper amazingly. ' A good load today, and I'll have my two hundred clear to keep us this winter,' he said one morning, as he stepped into his small boat and pushed off to the Silver Thistle. He ran up the sail, looking at his wife as ho male it fast. I\ T an had Comfort in her arms.

A breeze, with September in its every breath, blew down from the main land. Mad little white caps chased each other far out to sea. The Silver Thistle danced on the short waves while the sail filled, and then the boat shot steadily away before the wind.

The fishing reason waa nearly over in that region, which was exposed to the full force of ocean waves, and the small boats were not built to weather heavy storms. Nan shivered as she turned away. ' It's cold, Comfort,' she said, * and we love warmth, don't we ?' Comfort purred, and lay still in her arms as she went in towards the house.

It was Monday. Nan began to wash, wishing that she had a larger pile of clothes than Jay in the corner ; the day would be so long and the September twilight would come so early. When she went outside to fasten up the clothes line, she Faw the Silver Thistle, a distant speck of white, following the yacht Menhaden down the coast. The wind was blowing harder and faster ; the sand began to flutter in little rows across the island, and Kan's clothes "whipped" ao on the liue that she took them down shortly after she put them up. *lf it was only from the other way the wind blew I'd get one of my eight-dollar days, she thought, « for 't would send the boats scudding in.' Aa the day deepened into noon, the wind suddenly veeied. I'resently the short seas changed to a long roll, then quickened and grew into breakers that boomed along the sands. Nan got down the spy-glass and looked across the ocean. Once she saw, or thought she saw, the Silver Thistle in the distance. 'lt's him,' she said, 'coming in at last ! I see the patch that I put in, after the Menhaden's boom run through the sail. Then she hastened to get ali signs of suds and tubs out of sight, to make the oneroomed house look tidy for its master's coming.

Nan had been a mill girl from her very early childhood. She knew nothing of home until she had part and lot in this one. She was very grateful for ifc; gratitude, in her nature, aros to a height that love could not reach, ji-very moment the wind increased and the breakers Nan made biscuit for tea, thinking, ae she took the flour from the barrel, of the night when it came home, and how she had laughed at John the next morning for supposing they two would stay on the island long enough to eat a barrel of flour. ' Why, it's two-thirds gone a'ready, but the sea make 3 hungry,' was the thought with which she opened the door of the Gven in the st;jve and cpaickly thrust, k r ez pan of biscuit iu.

'Now, I'll take, another, look out,' she said. Comfort Jay in John's easy chair, and blinked laaiiy as her mistress spoke. Nan put her eye to the glass, but, seeing nothing, rubbed the glass with her apron and looked again. A ship was sailing away on the distant horizon ; only one. She scanned every mile that lay within night. Then she thought that she must have been longer than, usual making the biscuit, and that the Silver Thistle had sailed around to the upper side of the island. She laughed softly as she remembered how simple she had beeu to suppose that John could anchor his boat on that ride in such a blow, Nan was sorry and a good deal out of patience that tho house had been built with all its windows (there were but two) on or,e, aide. She wanted to watch far hsr husband to come across the eddying and it blew too hard to go ov;,t and wait. An hour went by. The biscuit hai baked and browned and been taken from the oven. Supper was ready, but John was not come. Clouda had gathered. It was growing near to night. _ In'an had run round the oo;aex» a dozen times within that hour, but had seen only the rdgea of sand shitting and blowing and rising behind tho honse to a height that sight of tho coa-it line on tbo north.

' I must go up where I can see,' she said, at laat, never doubling for au instant but that, her battle through, the wind would yield to her vision the Silver Thistle at anchor, and her husband, somewhere. Her feet yank ia the sands ; the wind swept hei; 04 with a force that bent her strong youns; figure. Two or three times she xYU, tangled in the dense undergrowth that the tea had swept in. Half-blinded by the blowing of her ha ; r in her face, she reiched the crest (if the island and looked across the wide space that lay between it and the mainland Bho could discern maets rocking in Vs.'3 dbtant ii ;r!))r, but no trace o*. any boat, or sail, or man, nearer than the town up the coast.

* He's go-e in. for fear of his boat,' she fcho.ngjii ' and t must stay alono to-night.

I'll hurry home before its dark;' and she faced the wind. It took away her breath, and made her gasp and turn again to cstch it. Boom! boom! boom! The breakers ran up the sands as she reached her door.

Comfort got up and yawned, and turning around three times lay down again as Nan went in.

' Pus y, pussy, my little comfort you are, tonight! Let mo sit down!' she said, gathering up the furry creature and taking its place in the chair. The supper was cold when she ate of it, and she thought how lonely John would be, for he had grown to be a home-man that summer.

All that September night the waves tore in upon the sands of the island. Once or twice Nan, lying in her bed, felt a qualm like seasickness as the poor little dwelling trembled with the force of the wind. ' God bless the poor fellows on the sea to-night,' murmured the woman, repeating the words over and over again with a vague feeling that men must be upon the ocean somewhere that nieht, and that they would need Divine aid. and friendliness She quite forgot to pray for herself or for her husband, safe upon the firm mainland. Toward morning the wind leasened and the ocean lost its highest waves. As soon as the day dawned the staunchest boat intheb.arborup the coast put out to sea.

John Ware had, just before the wind changed on the previous day, taken into the Silver Thistle twenty thousand white fish. The lad who usu»lly went with him was suffering from toothache. John was a good seaman ; his load was light, and everything seemed fair for a good run to the factory; therefore the boy was left in the cabin of the Menhaden, and he started for the shore alone.

Darkness had fallen, and yet the fish had not been landed at the mill, and the Silver Thistle was not in the harbor. The men of the fishing gang to which John Ware belonged were in that staunch boat on their way to look for him. 'lt's no use to look there,' one said, with a nod of the head as they passed by the island.

' No, poor thing ! She will know soon enough ! Let her sleep while she may,' said another. But Nan was on the rocks when the day came. She had pone up the few feet of sand to the height of the island and seen the boat put out. Knowing that it would pass the point of rocks, she was waiting there to hail it as the men went byEither they did not see her, or, seeing her, did not respond to the signal she gwe. So she learned nothing of the Silver Thistle that morning.

To oe continued.