CHAPTER VI 



NANTUCKET IN APRIL 



It is fabled that nine hundred years ago the 

 Norsemen riding the white horses of the shoals, 

 dismounted upon Nantucket, its original Euro- 

 pean discoverers. But this is hardly to be be- 

 lieved, for they did not stay there. Conditions 

 the world over have changed much since the day 

 of the Vikings, but still today he who comes to 

 Nantucket must emulate them, and ride the same 

 white horses of the shoals, for they surround the 

 island and prance for the modern steamer as they 

 did for the long Norse ships with the weird 

 figure-heads and the bulwarks of shields. Blown 

 down from New Bedford by a rough nor'wester 

 we plunged through the green rollers south of 

 Hedge Fence shoals, wallowed among the white 

 surges of Cross Rip, and found level water only 

 between the black jetties of Nantucket harbor, 

 where in the roar of bursting waves the white 

 spindrift fluffed and drifted across like dry snow 



on a January day. 



65 



