ttle toy of a boat with its one occupant in the midst of
the awful, black, heaving sea! The vast dim ocean whispers with a
thousand waves; against the boat's side the ripples lightly tap, and
pass and are lost; the air is full of fine, mysterious voices of winds
and waters. Has he no fear, alone there on the midnight sea with such
a purpose in his heart? The moonlight sends a long, golden track
across the waves; it touches his dark face and figure, it glitters on
his dripping oars. On his right hand Boone Island light shows like a
setting star on the horizon, low on his left the two beacons twinkle
off Newburyport, at the mouth of the Merrimack River; all the
light-houses stand watching along the coast, wheeling their long,
slender shafts of radiance as if pointing at this black atom creeping
over the face of the planet with such colossal evil in his heart.
Before him glitters the Shoals' light at White Island, and helps to
guide him to his prey. Alas, my friendly light-house, that you should
serve so terrible a purpose! Steadily the oars click in the rowlocks;
stroke after stroke of the broad blades draws him away from the
lessening line of land, over the wavering floor of the ocean, nearer
the lonely rocks. Slowly the coast-lights fade, and now the rote of
the sea among the lonely ledges of the Shoals salutes his attentive
ear. A little longer and he nears Appledore, the first island, and now
he passes by the snow-covered, ice-bound rock, with the long buildings
showing clear in the moonlight. He must have looked at them as he went
past. I wonder we who slept beneath the roofs that glimmered to his
eyes in the uncertain light did not feel, through the thick veil of
sleep, what fearful thing passed by! But we slumbered peacefully as
the unhappy woman whose doom every click of those oars in the
rowlocks, like the ticking of some dreadful clock, was bringing
nearer and nearer. Between the islands he passes; they are full of
chilly gleams and glooms. There is no scene more weird than these
snow-covered rocks in winter, more shudderful and strange: the
moonlight touching them with mystic glimmer, the black water breaking
about them, and the vast shadowy spaces of the sea stretching to the
horizon on every side, full of vague sounds, of half lights and
shadows, of fear, and of mystery. The island he seeks lies before him,
lone and still; there is no gleam in any window, there is no help
near, nothing upon which the women can