Bret Harte's short story: High Water Mark
When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness
was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools,
and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward
the open bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks,
with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant
dampness. And if you choose to indulge your fancy--although the
flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring--the wavy line
of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent
waters, and made the dead certainty of the returning tide a gloomy
reflection which no present sunshine could dissipate. The greener
meadowland seemed oppressed with this idea, and made no positive
attempt at vegetation until the work of reclamation should be
complete. In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry bushes one
might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled and
soured by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.
The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and
depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the
curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome
teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and
syllabled complaint of the "killdeer" plover, were beyond the power
of written expression. Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls
at all cheerful and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron
standing mid-leg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a
reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful
curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit
to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive
kingfisher--an ornithological Marius--reviewing the desolate
expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of
the marsh continually, but evidently couldn’t make up his mind
whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited in the
reflection that, after all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to
give a definite answer. On the contrary, it was evident at a
glance that the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on
the birds, and that the season of migration was looked forward to
with a feeling of relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of
extravagant anticipation by the callow, brood. But if Dedlow Marsh
was cheerless at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it
when the tide was strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly
over the cold, glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those
who looked seaward like another tide; when a steel-like glint
marked the low hollows and the sinuous line of slough; when the
great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees arose again, and went
forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings, drifting hither and
thither, but getting no farther toward any goal at the falling tide
or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the legend; when the
glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor furrow on
the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide and shut
out the blue above, even as the green below had been obliterated;
when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way,
started at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on the
boat's keel, or shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around
like the floating hair of a corpse, and knew by these signs that
they were lost upon Dedlow Marsh and must make a night of it, and a
gloomy one at that--then you might know something of Dedlow Marsh
at high water.
Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never
failed to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon
Dedlow Marsh. Although the event was briefly recorded in the
counry paper, I had the story, in all its eloquent detail, from the
lips of the principal actor. I cannot hope to catch the varying
emphasis and peculiar coloring of feminine delineation, for my
narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give at least its substance.
She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-
sized river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary
formed by the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which
constituted the southwestern boundary of a noble bay. The house in
which she lived was a small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few
feet by stout piles, and was three miles distant from the
settlements upon the river. Her husband was a logger--a profitable
business in a county where the principal occupation was the
manufacture of lumber.
It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb
of a high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to
the lower end of the bay. As she stood by the door of the little
cabin when the voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the
southeastern sky, and she remembered hearing her husband say to his
companions that they must endeavor to complete their voyage before
the coming of the southwesterly gale which he saw brewing. And
that night it began to storm and blow harder than she had ever
before experienced, and some great trees fell in the forest by the
river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.
But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew
that one she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong
hand, and that had he feared for her he would not have left her.
This, and her domestic duties, and the care of her little sickly
baby, helped to keep her mind from dwelling on the weather, except,
of course, to hope that he was safely harbored with the logs at
Utopia in the dreary distance. But she noticed that day, when she
went out to feed the chickens and look after the cow, that the tide
was up to the little fence of their garden-patch, and the roar of
the surf on the south beach, though miles away, she could hear
distinctly. And she began to think that she would like to have
someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that if it had
not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable, she
would have taken the baby and have gone over to Ryckman's, her
nearest neighbor. But then, you see, he might have returned in the
storm, all wet, with no one to see to him; and it was a long
exposure for baby, who was croupy and ailing.
But that night, she never could tell why, she didn't feel like
sleeping or even lying down. The storm had somewhat abated, but
she still "sat and sat," and even tried to read. I don't know
whether it was a Bible or some profane magazine that this poor
woman read, but most probably the latter, for the words all ran
together and made such sad nonsense that she was forced at last to
put the book down and turn to that dearer volume which lay before
her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf as yet unsoiled, and
try to look forward to its mysterious future. And, rocking the
cradle, she thought of everything and everybody, but still was
wide-awake as ever.
It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last lay down in her
clothes. How long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke
with a dreadful choking in her throat, and found herself standing,
trembling all over, in the middle of the room, with her baby
clasped to her breast, and she was "saying something." The baby
cried and sobbed, and she walked up and down trying to hush it when
she heard a scratching at the door. She opened it fearfully, and
was glad to see it was only old Pete, their dog, who crawled,
dripping with water, into the room. She would like to have looked
out, not in the faint hope of her husband's coming, but to see how
things looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she
could hardly hold it. Then she sat down a little while, and then
walked up and down a little while, and then she lay down again a
little while. Lying close by the wall of the little cabin, she
thought she heard once or twice something scrape slowly against the
clapboards, like the scraping of branches. Then there was a little
gurgling sound, "like the baby made when it was swallowing"; then
something went "click-click" and "cluck-cluck," so that she sat up
in bed. When she did so she was attracted by something else that
seemed creeping from the back door toward the center of the room.
It wasn't much wider than her little finger, but soon it swelled to
the width of her hand, and began spreading all over the floor. It
was water.
She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing
but water. She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw
nothing but water. She ran to the side window, and throwing that
open, she saw nothing but water. Then she remembered hearing her
husband once say that there was no danger in the tide, for that
fell regularly, and people could calculate on it, and that he would
rather live near the bay than the river, whose banks might overflow
at any time. But was it the tide? So she ran again to the back
door, and threw out a stick of wood. It drifted away toward the
bay. She scooped up some of the water and put it eagerly to her
lips. It was fresh and sweet. It was the river, and not the tide!
It was then--O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither
faint nor fall; it was then--blessed be the Saviour, for it was his
merciful hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful
moment--that fear dropped from her like a garment, and her
trembling ceased. It was then and thereafter that she never lost
her self-command, through all the trials of that gloomy night.
She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a
table upon it and on that she put the cradle. The water on the
floor was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice
moved so perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet
doors all flew open. Then she heard the same rasping and thumping
against the wall, and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree,
which had lain near the road at the upper end of the pasture, had
floated down to the house. Luckily its long roots dragged in the
soil and kept it from moving as rapidly as the current, for had it
struck the house in its full career, even the strong nails and
bolts in the piles could not have withstood the shock. The hound
had leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched near the roots
shivering and whining. A ray of hope flashed across her mind. She
drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about the babe,
waded in the deepening waters to the door. As the tree swung
again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she
leaped on to its trunk. By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining
a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its
roots, she held in the other her moaning child. Then something
cracked near the front porch, and the whole front of the house she
had just quitted fell forward--just as cattle fall on their knees
before they lie down--and at the same moment the great redwood tree
swung round and drifted away with its living cargo into the black
night.
For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her
crying babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the
uncertainty of her situation, she still turned to look at the
deserted and water-swept cabin. She remembered even then, and she
wonders how foolish she was to think of it at that time, that she
wished she had put on another dress and the baby's best clothes;
and she kept praying that the house would be spared so that he,
when he returned, would have something to come to, and it wouldn't
be quite so desolate, and--how could he ever know what had become
of her and baby? And at the thought she grew sick and faint. But
she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the
long roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half
a revolution, and twice dipped her in the black water. The hound,
who kept distracting her by running up and down the tree and
howling, at last fell off at one of these collisions. He swam for
some time beside her, and she tried to get the poor beast up on the
tree, but he "acted silly" and wild, and at last she lost sight of
him forever. Then she and her baby were left alone. The light
which had burned for a few minutes in the deserted cabin was
quenched suddenly. She could not then tell whither she was
drifting. The outline of the white dunes on the peninsula showed
dimly ahead, and she judged the tree was moving in a line with the
river. It must be about slack water, and she had probably reached
the eddy formed by the confluence of the tide and the overflowing
waters of the river. Unless the tide fell soon, there was present
danger of her drifting to its channel, and being carried out to sea
or crushed in the floating drift. That peril averted, if she were
carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope to strike one
of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till
daylight. Sometimes she thought she heard voices and shouts from
the river, and the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Then
again it was only the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her
heart. She found at about this time that she was so chilled and
stiffened in her cramped position that she could scarcely move, and
the baby cried so when she put it to her breast that she noticed
the milk refused to flow; and she was so frightened at that, that
she put her head under her shawl, and for the first time cried
bitterly.
When she raised her head again, the boom of the surf was behind
her, and she knew that her ark had again swung round. She dipped
up the water to cool her parched throat, and found that it was salt
as her tears. There was a relief, though, for by this sign she
knew that she was drifting with the tide. It was then the wind
went down, and the great and awful silence oppressed her. There
was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed sides of the great trunk
on which she rested, and around her all was black gloom and quiet.
She spoke to the baby just to hear herself speak, and to know that
she had not lost her voice. She thought then--it was queer, but
she could not help thinking it--how awful must have been the night
when the great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of
creation were blotted out from the world. She thought, too, of
mariners clinging to spars, and of poor women who were lashed to
rafts, and beaten to death by the cruel sea. She tried to thank
God that she was thus spared, and lifted her eyes from the baby,
who had fallen into a fretful sleep. Suddenly, away to the
southward, a great light lifted itself out of the gloom, and
flashed and flickered, and flickered and flashed again. Her heart
fluttered quickly against the baby's cold cheek. It was the
lighthouse at the entrance of the bay. As she was yet wondering,
the tree suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and then
seemed to lie quiet and still. She put out her hand and the
current gurgled against it. The tree was aground, and, by the
position of the light and the noise of the surf, aground upon the
Dedlow Marsh.
Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy, had it not
been for the sudden drying up of that sensitive fountain, she would
have felt safe and relieved. Perhaps it was this which tended to
make all her impressions mournful and gloomy. As the tide rapidly
fell, a great flock of black brent fluttered by her, screaming and
crying. Then the plover flew up and piped mournfully as they
wheeled around the trunk, and at last fearlessly lit upon it like a
gray cloud. Then the heron flew over and around her, shrieking and
protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt legs only a few yards
from her. But, strangest of all, a pretty white bird, larger than
a dove--like a pelican, but not a pelican--circled around and
around her. At last it lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite over
her shoulder. She put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white
neck, and it never appeared to move. It stayed there so long that
she thought she would lift up the baby to see it, and try to
attract her attention. But when she did so, the child was so
chilled and cold, and had such a blue look under the little lashes
which it didn't raise at all, that she screamed aloud, and the bird
flew away, and she fainted.
Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it was not so much,
after all, to any but herself. For when she recovered her senses
it was bright sunlight, and dead low water. There was a confused
noise of guttural voices about her, and an old squaw, singing an
Indian "hushaby," and rocking herself from side to side before a
fire built on the marsh, before which she, the recovered wife and
mother, lay weak and weary. Her first thought was for her baby,
and she was about to speak, when a young squaw, who must have been
a mother herself, fathomed her thought and brought her the
"mowitch," pale but living, in such a queer little willow cradle
all bound up, just like the squaw's own young one, that she laughed
and cried together, and the young squaw and the old squaw showed
their big white teeth and glinted their black eyes and said,
"Plenty get well, skeena mowitch," "wagee man come plenty soon,"
and she could have kissed their brown faces in her joy. And then
she found that they had been gathering berries on the marsh in
their queer, comical baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown
fluttering on the tree from afar, and the old squaw couldn't resist
the temptation of procuring a new garment, and came down and
discovered the "wagee" woman and child. And of course she gave the
garment to the old squaw, as you may imagine, and when HE came at
last and rushed up to her, looking about ten years older in his
anxiety, she felt so faint again that they had to carry her to the
canoe. For, you see, he knew nothing about the flood until he met
the Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor woman
was his wife. And at the next high tide he towed the tree away
back home, although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another
house, using the old tree for the foundation and props, and called
it after her, "Mary's Ark!" But you may guess the next house was
built above high-water mark. And that's all.
Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity of the
Dedlow Marsh. But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle
over it at high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog,
as I have, to understand properly Mary's adventure, or to
appreciate duly the blessings of living beyond High-Water Mark.
-THE END-
Bret Harte's short story: High Water Mark
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