The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1862. Various
you do not know what a 'Soundser' is. Then I will tell you. In the coastwise part of the State of New Jersey in which I live, numerous sounds and creeks everywhere divide and intersect the low, sea-skirting lands, wherein certain people are wont to cruise and delve for the sake of securing their products, and hence come to be known in our homely style as Soundsers. The fruitage afforded by these sounds is both manifold and of price. Throughout all the pleasant weather, they yield, with but little intermission, that gastronomic gem, the terrapin; the succulent, hard-shell clam, and the 'soft' crab; the deep-lurking, snowy-fleshed hake, or king-fish; the huge, bell-voiced drum, and that sheen-banded pride of American salt-water fishes, the sheepshead. During the waning weeks of May, and also with the continuance of dog-days, this already profuse bounty receives a goodly accession in the shape of vast flocks of willets, curlews, gray-backs, and other marine birds, which, with every ebb tide, resort to their shoaler bars and flats, to take on those layers of fat which the similarly well-conditioned old gentleman of the city finds so inexpressibly delicious. When the summer is once, over, and while the cold weather prevails, they furnish another and quite new set of dainties. Then the span-long, ripe, 'salt' oyster is to be had for the raking of their more solidly-bottomed basins; and all along their more retired nooks and harbors, the gunner, by taking proper precautions, may bring to bag the somewhat 'sedgy' but still well-flavored black duck, the tender widgeon, the buttery little bufflehead, the incomparable canvas-back, and the loud-shrieking, sharp-eyed wild goose. All this various booty is industriously secured by the 'soundsers,' to find, ere long, a ready market in the larger inland towns and cities. But united to this shooting, fishing, and oyster-catching, they have another 'trade' whose scene is on the waters, though it connects itself with the sea, rather than the sounds, and this is 'wrecking.' They are prompt for this service whenever the occasion requires; indeed, I sometimes think they prefer it, dangerous though it be, before all others. Inured as they are to every sort of exposure, they are of course a tough and rugged race; and what with their diversity of occupation, calling, as it does, for a constant interchange of the use of the gun, net, boat, fishing line, and some one or other arm or edge tool, they are usually, nay, almost invariably, handy and quick-witted.
By far the most notable 'soundser' our neighborhood ever bred was my hero, BILL. Physically, at least, he was a true wonder. He stood full six feet two, weighed eleven score pounds, and at the same time carried no more flesh than sufficed to hide the exact outline of his bones. Another man so strong as he I have never seen. I have repeatedly known him to lift and walk off with anchors weighing five and six hundred weight; and those big, thick hands of his could twist any horseshoe as if it were a girl's wreath. Certainly he was not in the least graceful; that 'ponderosity' of his could in no way be repressed. But he was still of rude comeliness, his shape being squarely fitted and tolerably proportioned, while his broad, red-maned visage wore a constant glow of plain, though sincere, kindliness and good-humor.
As his physical man was uncommon, so he had uncommon mental endowments. He was the only 'soundser' I ever knew who understood farming. He had inherited a farmstead of some twenty-five or thirty acres, and this he soon had blooming as the rose. When occasion required, he wrought on it, day and night. He divided it, with truest judgment, into proper fields, experimented successfully with various kinds of novel manures (most of which he obtained from the sea), grew stock, planted, in rotation, and, with only here and there a sympathizer, gave in his full adherence to the theory of root culture. And he was a mechanic. He could build house or barn to the last beam, and ship or boat to the last joint; nay, he once devised the model of a self-righting life-boat, which I have often heard shipmasters, and even real shipwrights, descant upon in the highest terms of praise. Moreover, I can affirm that he was a navigator. It is true that the science of seamanship, as set forth in books, he had never mastered. But he knew right well what winds of a certain force and direction foretold, what waves of a certain height and aspect meant; and this knowledge, combined with a squint, now and then, at his pocket compass, sufficed to enable him to take a vessel with safety anywhere along our coast.
But while my old pal showed high abilities in other arts, as a 'soundser' and wrecker he was not to be matched. He brought to the first of these pursuits a clearness of observation which would have met the approbation of many an acknowledged man of science. He knew every sort of food which bird and fish fed upon, where it was to be found, and the circumstances favorable to its production. He knew why the game resorted to certain spots yesterday, and avoided them to-day; what circumstances—and they are very many—impelled it to joyousness or quietude; and what were most of its minor instincts. And all this was done thoroughly, withal. There was no haphazard or uncertainty in any of his conclusions. Taking thought of sundry conditions, he could tell at any time when such a thing was applicable; how many sheepsheads one could catch in the sounds; whether the honk of the wild goose, flying overhead, announced that he was on his way to a fresh-water pool or a bar of gravel; whether the black ducks were cooling their thirsty gizzards in a woodland pond, sitting scattered about the marshes, or huddling together on the bosom of the sea. In a word, his mind had gathered unto itself every law, of the least importance, affecting the existence of such wild creatures about us as cost any pains to bring to hand; and thus he was literally master over them, and held their lives subject to his will. That this power was really surprising, will hardly be disputed; and since we, his associates, could in no way possess ourselves of the like, it passed among us for something almost miraculous.
Still, brilliant 'soundser' as old Bill was, he was far greater as a wrecker; since I am now about to relate an occurrence in the line which proves him a veritable hero. As is perfectly well known, our American coast is often the scene of fearful storms, which deal out wide-spread destruction to mariners. With us, these gales are commonest in February, and hence this month is held in marked dread. Some years ago, in the season referred to, a storm burst upon our shores, whose like only a few of the older among us had ever known. After fitfully moaning from the northward and eastward for a day or two, the wind, one morning, finally settled due north-east,—thus sweeping directly upon the land,—and blew a hurricane. It was excessively cold, too, yet not so cold but that a fine, dry snow was falling, though from the fury of the wind this could settle nowhere, but was driven, whirling and surging, before the blast in dense clouds. In short, it was a time of truly unearthly wildness; and our hearts sank the deeper in us, since we knew what ere long must inevitably occur. At last, within an hour or two of nightfall, the sound of a ship's bell, rung hurriedly, pealed towards us along the uproar of the tempest, and by this we were made aware that a vessel had been wrecked on a certain shoal rising up in the ocean, about two miles from that part of the beach nearest our village. To go to the rescue of this vessel, at this time, was absolutely impossible. For, to say nothing of the wrath of the winds, the air was so thick with snow that, in the speedily advancing hours of darkness, in which we should not fail to be entrapped, we would be powerless to find our way at sea a foot. There was no help for it; the poor victims of the shipwreck must that very night know death in one or another most terrifying shape, 'if it was the will of the Lord.' With this mournful conviction, about twenty of us gathered at old Bill's house with the closing in of a darkness as of Tartarus, and kept its watches. The anger of the storm abated in no way whatever till morning, and then the sole change that took place was a somewhat thinner aspect of the driving snow. Yet, even when this was discerned, every man of us hastened to draw over his ordinary winter garb an oil-cloth suit which enveloped him from head to foot, and soberly announced himself ready to do his duty in the strait. That we should be exposed to the greatest dangers was absolutely certain; and whether a single survivor of the terrors of that awful night yet clung to the few frail timbers in the sea, for us to rescue, none but Heaven knew; still, the manhood of each demanded that what was possible to be done in the matter we should at least attempt.
And so we started; the leader being old Bill, who to some end, that I could not then divine, bore a boat-sail bundled on his back. Our first business was to make way to our surf or life boat. This lay about three miles from the village, reckoning as the crow flies, and was sheltered under a rude house which stood on the shores of a bay opening by an inlet into the sea. Our common way of gaining this house was through a circuitous passage of the sounds; but these we soon discovered, in consonance with a previous prediction of old Bill's, were entirely frozen over save in certain parts of their channels; and hence, this route being unnavigable for such boats as were at hand, which, without exception, were light gunning and fishing skiffs, we were forced to