316 THE ISLAND OF NANTUCKET. 



of a vessel that came ashore in a storm }^ears ago, and 

 is now half embedded in the sand, — its oaken ribs re- 

 sisting the tooth of time and the beating of the waves. 

 The wind soughed and sighed, and in its weird dialect 

 seemed to tell the story of wreck and disaster in the 

 great world of waters before and around me. Winds 

 that might have come from sunny Spain or the gold 

 coast, winds that swept the rocky heights of historic 

 St. Helena, winds from the Canaries, — they might 

 have come from anywhere in this world toward which 

 my face was turned. And with all this, through all 

 my emotions, like the grand undertone of the organ, 

 came the ceaseless, painfully regular roar of the break- 

 ers, sounding out the seconds of this manifest eternity 

 before me, beating the heart-throbs of this living thing, 

 this sentient being, — the ocean. 



" I turned away from the- scene that I can never for- 

 get, and realized almost for the first moment that I 

 was alone with all this gloomy grandeur. There, be- 

 hind me, stood the life-saving station, suggestive of 

 wreck and tragedy, — suggestive, too, of the strong 

 feeling of kinship there is, after all, among men. Be- 

 yond were the sad, still moors, and below a vast field 

 of dark verdure, — Tom Never's Swamp,— all ideal- 

 ized under the rays of the moon, touched by the magic 

 of the night." 



Tom Never's Head is about sixty-five feet above sea 

 level, is on the proposed route of the railroad to 'Scon- 

 set, and a visit to it will well repay those who love to 

 look on Nature in her grandest moods. George IIow- 

 land Folger, Esq., in his poem " Musings/' has also a 

 good word to say of Tom Ncver's. 



