CHAPTER VIII
Aboard the “Fitzpatrick” that morning the Captain and the man of mystery were down in the cabin, talking and smoking. The man of mystery seemed to be nervous and fidgety, something unusual for him. He would walk the floor, then sit down, then he would walk again. At last he went up on deck and looked around, as he did he saw an object floating in the rips. He took the spyglasses and looked to make sure. Then he said to the captain who was standing near, “In those rips is a boat bottom up and clinging to the bottom is a man. Launch my dory.” The captain said, “No. Your dory wouldn’t live in those rushing rips.” He was a sailor, not a surfman and didn’t understand the possibilities of a thirteen foot dory when handled by an expert. He looked around. The man of mystery had gone. He ran across the deck to his dory jumped up on the rail and said to some of the crew standing around,“Lower away.” They “lowered away” until the dory hit the water. He unhooked the tackles, shipped his oars and started out in the direction of the object. Going in the direction of the object took him almost in the trough of the sea. As he went under the lee of the “Fitzpatrick” he took the whole force of those seas. He looked up and there was a sea forming and hissing, ready to break. He turned, took in the bow, and went over safely. Off again in the direction of the object, another sea rising and breaking, he turned, took it on the bow, and goes over safely. And so on and on closer and closer, slowly but surely. In the meantime, Ellis, on the bottom of the boat, was taking awful punishment. The seas were breaking and pounding down upon him with tremendous force. They would wash him off this side, he would crawl back, they would wash him off the other side, he would crawl right back. With dogged determination, physical stamina and perserverance, he clung to the bottom of that boat like a spider to a wall. He went up on the crest of another sea and looked for the dory. This time the man of mystery had worked the dory way up to the windward.He didn’t intend to lose that man on the bottom of the boat. This time he came running down on the crest of a sea. When you are running on a crest of a sea like that it is suicide to try to stop or try to turn this way or that. Let the sea have her, but keep her steady. For remember that every sea at last spends itself. So this time he came running down on the crest of a sea and went right by within four or five feet. It was an anxious minute for Ellis. But, as he went by, Ellis recognized him, it was Elmer Mayo of Chatham, an expert surfman, one of the very best. The sea at last spent itself and in the lull that followed, Mayo backed right back up to the boat. Ellis grabbed hold of the gunwale, hauled himself over, slid to the bottom of the dory, and they started for shore. Another fight, another struggle with the seas, seas that were running and breaking mountain high, seas that lifted them like a cork to their foamy crest. Seas, runningseas that took them in their grasp and carried them ahead like frightened deer until they fell back into the trough of another. Ahead of them the surf was still pounding, and breaking and roaring upon the shore. At last they arrived at the surf. Mayo looked along for an opening, but those seas were still running in from an expanse of three thousand miles, still breaking and roaring upon the strand in an unbroken line. What a position, what a spot—two human beings being in an open dory in those rushing, raging seas. They jockeyed for position waiting for the right sea—the third sea. When seas are running like that, there are always two large ones and then a smaller one. The third sea is always smaller than the two which precede it. God made it so and surfmen since time immemorial have taken advantage of the third sea. So Mayo was jockeying for position waiting for the third sea. At last it came hissing, foaming and roaring. They were in proper position. With a roar, it broke directly under their stem and taking them in its grasp carried them ahead up, up onto the beach. Mayo jumped out and held the dory. The sea receded. Seth Linwood Ellis stepped outonto the cold sand, barefooted. Nothing on but his underclothes. There he stood, Seth Linwood Ellis the lone survivor of the Monomoy Disaster. He told me many times that he grew to manhood an absolute teetotaler, never using tobacco in any form. With those temperate habits and an outdoor life, he built up a physical constitution which produced for him a physical superiority that won for him that day the battle with the seas, when all others perished. He then and there became noted the country over as the lone survivor of the Monomoy Disaster. In time he was promoted captain of the old Monomoy Lifesaving Station, and sometime later the United States Congress recognized his victory over the sea and presented him with a Congressional Medal.
So it is—those men who were lost and the one who was saved are simply samples of the men who, in former days, were the backbones and stability of Cape Cod—CapeCod which has always played an honorable part in the history of the state of Massachusetts. When Massachusetts derived her sustenance from the ocean, Cape Cod produced her quota of the men who went down to the sea in ships. At one time she was the very womb: the very cradle of fishermen and sailors, the best the world produced. She gave to the sea her best blood, the energy of her youth, and the counsel of her old. The salt waves of the sea have been the shroud, and the surges of the sea the funeral knell of many of her brave men. But now all is changed. In the bays, the harbors, and the inlets where once the ships, the brigs, the barks, the schooners, and the sloops swung proudly at anchor, the waves now ripple in silence and sadness.
Thus ends the chapter of the “Tragedy of Monomoy Beach, or the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
FINIS