-Out of the Sea 416

[Transcriber's Note: In this e-text, italics have been denoted by
enclosing the affected text in underscores]

CULM ROCK.

CHAPTER I.

THE OLD STONE HOUSE.

Culm Rock was a wild place. You might search the coast for miles and
not find another bit of nature so bare and rent and ragged as this. So
fiercely had the storms driven over it, so wildly had the wind and
waves beat, that the few cedars which once flourished as its only bit
of greenness were long ago dead, and now held up only bleached and
ragged hands. Jutting out into the sea, the surf rolled and thundered
along its jagged shore of rock and sand, and was never silent. It
would have been an island but for the narrow strips of sand, heaped
high and ridgelike, which bound it to the main land; and this slender
bridge, it often seemed, would be torn away by the ravenous sea which
gnawed and engulfed great tracts at once, and yet heaped it higher and
broader in the next storm. Beyond, on the firm and unyielding land,
the pine woods stood up, vast, dim, and silent, stretching away into
the interior. So, with the great dark barrier of forest behind and the
waste of shining sea in front, Culm Rock seemed shut out from all the
rest of the world. True, sails flitted along the horizon, and the
smoke of foreign-bound steamers trailed against the sky, giving token
of the great world's life and stir; and there were Skipper Ben and the
"White Gull" who touched at the little wharf at Culm every week; but
for these, the people--for there were people who dwelt here--might
have lived in another sphere for aught they knew or were conscious of
what was transpiring in the wonderful land which lay beyond the
stretch of sea, and between which and themselves the "White Gull" was
the only means of communication.

Do you wonder that people could spend their lives here, die, and never
have seen the world without? There were only a dozen houses,--poor,
racked, weather-beaten things, nestled on a bit of sand on a far
corner of Culm,--inhabited by fishermen and their families. They were
rough, hardy folk, but ignorant, and with only ambition enough to get
their living out of the great sea, and a poor and scanty enough living
at that. Skipper Ben brought them molasses and calicoes down in the
"White Gull," and took their fish in exchange; and if he told them a
bit of news from the great city and the greater world, it was all very
wel