They seemed
pathetically out of place, although they lived among us on equal
terms, respectable and respected.
The pathos of the sea haunted the town, made audible to every ear
when a coming northeaster brought the rote of the waves in from
the islands across the harbor-bar, with a moaning like that we
heard when we listened for it in the shell. Almost every house
had its sea-tragedy. Somebody belonging to it had been
shipwrecked, or had sailed away one day, and never returned.
Our own part of the bay was so sheltered by its islands that
there were seldom any disasters heard of near home, although the
names of the two nearest--Great and Little Misery--are said to
have originated with a shipwreck so far back in the history of
the region that it was never recorded.
But one such calamity happened in my infancy, spoken of always by
those who knew its victims in subdued tones;--the wreck of the
"Persia." The vessel was returning from the Mediterranean, and in
a blinding snow-storm on a wild March night her captain probably
mistook one of the Cape Ann light-houses for that on Baker's
Island, and steered straight upon the rocks in a lonely cove just
outside the cape.
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