Culm Rock The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught   By: Glance Gaylord (1847-1868)

The Story of a Year:

WHAT IT BROUGHT AND WHAT IT TAUGHT.

BY GLANCE GAYLORD.

BOSTON:

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by HENRY HOYT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

INNES AND NILES, Stereotypers and Printers, 37 Cornhill, Boston.

CONTENTS.

Chapter Page

I. The Old Stone House 5

II. Letters 21

III. On the "White Gull" 37

IV. Disappointments 53

V. The First Evening 71

VI. Culm Sights 89

VII. How the Month was spent 107

VIII. Noll's Decision 124

IX. Dirk's Trouble 142

X. In the Sea 159

XI. Dirk's Treasure 177

XII. Firelight Talk 195

XIII. The Winter's Waning 219

XIV. Ned Thorn 236

XV. Plans 254

XVI. The Work Begun 272

XVII. The Work Progressing 288

XVIII. The Work Finished 304

XIX. A Happy Walk 320

XX. New Thoughts and New Plans 336

XXI. In Peril of the Sea 353

XXII. Weary Watching 367

XXIII. Waiting 384

XXIV. Days of Calm 400

XXV. 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.