Santa Fe daily New Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1885-1897, 1896-09-18
THE BUCEPHALUS.

No snipe shooting tomorrow, SIR"
The officer of the life patrol paused with
lighted lantern on his arm, his sou wester
buttoned close up to his throat and the
peak Of his ollskin cap pulled far down
over his weather beaten face and passed
out into the night
As he opened the door gust Of wind
swept the knob from his grasp, dashed the
framework against the wall of the cham
Der and extinguished the Pickering oil
lamp that made shift to render visible the
darkness of the room.
Clarence Baxton hastily fastened the
door after the retreating figure, relighted
the lamp and sat down on the sea chest,
which served as a chair and bed. A
strange place 1t was, this beachcomber's
cabin. Timbers from every ship that had
come ashore on Coffin beach these 30 years
were woven into its heterogeneous Frame
work. Here part of steamships deck
house, there O stanchion from the sturdy
hull Of some long forgotten merchantmen,
yonder the patched wainscoting of clip
per ships once gorgeous cabin-cheek by
jowl these relics of departed pride stood
like monuments of the dead past in some
strange nautical cemetery.
Outside the gale ragged with increasing
fury. Low though 1t sat between the sand
dunes, the solid walls Of the howell trembled
and rocked under the impact of the blast
like ship In heavy sea. Such spring
storm had not been seen on the coast for
years-not since the night Gas veteran
told afterward) when the clipper ship Blu
cephalus came ashore way back in the
flfties In the angle over there the PROV of
this vessel formed a sort of cornerstone for
the strange structure, and the horse in the
flgurehead stared at Baxton with the
sightless eyes Of an emblem of death.
He would have been puzzled to explain
why he felt SO strangely, left alone in this
oozy cabin. Baxton was not supersti-
tious man, nor one given to sentimental
vagaries or emotional weaknesses, and
yet, as the door swung to after the officer,
he felt for moment strange and unac-
countable thrill, chilling Of the blood,
a consciousness of something outside of
his sphere of influence, superior to bis
power of control, that was gradually but
surely working its will around and about
him. The feeling was not one of fear.
What indeed was he to be afraid OFF Sure
ly not of the storm, for he was coZily
housed. Not Of thieves or marauders, for
he and the coastguardsmen were the only
human beings on that strip of beach. OF
what, then, was he fearful? 1t was all
all.
Baxton shivered as he threw another
piece of driftwood on the fire and drew
closer to the green blue blaze of the copper
stained timber that cast fantastic, many
hued shadows ON the rough walls. "No
going back to the mainland tonight" he
Thought as the picture Of the storm dashed
bay rose before his mind, and he silently
obiurgated the secretary of the treasury
who had promulgated the order forbidding
the life saving men to entertain guests in
their coy stations.
The seq chest was filled with old news
papers, the officer had said, with which he
might perhaps while away an hour. He
lifted the lid. Yes, SO 1t was; prints run
ming back for many years tied up and la
beled in oramped handwriting-that OF
Calamity Dicks, probably, the fisherman
who, until his death last year, had occu-
pied this cabin since no man remembered
when. Turning them over, Baxton saw
that the packets contained clippings de-
scriptive Of the wrecks on this same stretch
Of sand, called Coffin beach" Cemetery
beach would be BETTER" Baxton thought
as he surveyed the yellow bundles. Bark
Excelsior, June, 1912" read one, $50
drowned, . saved;n "Ship Andromaohe,
January, 1s48, % drowned, none saved, :"
read another; "Ship Harold, 16 drowned,
1 saved; ""C Clipper Vanguard, SO drowned,
IL saved" and SO on through pile OF
packages that reached knee high as he laid
them on the floor. Near the bottom was a
larger bundle labeled, "Clipper Buoepha-
lus, March, 1855, 1879 drowned, saved. :"
Where had he heard Of that shipf "Bu-
cephalus-B ucephalus, he repeated re-
fleotively to himself lob, yes, the ship
the old figurehead came from, and he be-
gan to unite the dusty package.
But slowly 1t came back to him that he
had heard the name before he came to
Coffin Beach. "Wheres' AS he asked the
question newspaper bearing the date
1866 lay spread before him and his eyes
rested on this account: "Clipper ship
Bucephalus, Liverpool to New York,
ashore on Coffin Beach, April 90. The
III fated vessel which was owned by
Messrs. II. B. Baxton & Co., - Front
street, this city, missed Its reckoning and
ran ashore on Coffin beach at 8 o'clock In
the morning Of Tuesday last and became q
total wreck. The life saving crew at this
place, one Of the most dangerous points on
the coast ia not on Gluty at this aaason of