ii8 WILD WINGS 



I reached my destination at Cape Charles, Virginia. In a 

 few moments I was talking over the telephone with Captain 

 Hitchens of the Smith's Island life-saving station, my host, 

 who was to meet me and sail me across. Such modernizing 

 of the conditions of the supposedly lonely and retired sea 

 islands hardly seemed in keeping with the purpose of my 

 journey. But after a darky boy had driven me twelve miles in 

 a livery team, and the genial keeper had sailed me four miles 

 across the bay to his island home, mv hopefulness returned. 

 Aside from the abodes of the keepers of the lighthouse and 

 life-saving station, the government buildings, there was not 

 another human habitati(Mi. The tall towers of the new light- 

 house on the bay side, 192 feet high, and of the old abandoned 

 one nearly undermined by the ocean, almost as tall, showed 

 up over the sea, Hats, and marsh for many a mile. What 

 a difference the telephone makes in the lives of these other- 

 wise isolated families I could \'i\idlv realize, as 1 heard the 

 keeper with whom I stayed "call up" in the morning the 

 various other island stations along the coast and chat with 

 their keepers about the weather and the occurrences of the 

 day or night. How different from the so-called good old times ! 



The first look from the station southward down the broad 

 beach told ehxjut'ntiy of the hojieless resistance of these sea 

 islands to the onslaughts of the ocean. Within the memory 

 of man their shores were a mile farther out to sea. The spot 

 occupied by the station was then in the midst of a pine forest. 

 Now the buildings are all but undermined by the waves which 

 storms drive up around them. From the very beach rise an 

 array of decaying stubs and stumps, a warning to the pines 

 behind them of what will soon be their fate. 



Somewhere I had received the impression that the condi- 

 tions of bird-life around my headtjuarters would be compar- 

 able to those of Noah's ark. Really I had almost expected 



