Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-01-21
COLD WEATHER WORK
The 0ysterman's Lot is Not
a Happy One.
AMID SNOW AND ICE
HARDSHIP AND PERIL BEsET HIM
ON ALL SIDES.
How the longer Goes About His Task
The Jaunt to Market Through
Wintry Gales.
AMID SNOW AND ICE

Written for The Evening Star By ]. W. Muller.
Early in a gray morning. when the cold
filed the unfreezing tidal salt water with
feathery needles of ice like trapped cham
payne we set sail to steer down the crooked
channel of the bay and over an open sea
down the surf-bitten Long Island shore
with cargo of oysters
Not more than thirty-fve feet long was
the old sloop, and many seas of many years
had chewed her. The captain was owner,
skipper and crew In one He stood In his
little cockpit, just big enough to let the two
OF us half stand, half perch in 1t like men
in bucket, and steered her with mighty
tiller like a pump handle.
Out beyond the black line of the inlet
the tumblirg sea was spread with thin
queer haze. Snow" said the skipper Il
guess
Calmly he steered into it. without COM
pass, pinnacle, chart or log. Down it
came curtaned the swelling sea around
him, covered his craft, shut 1t in, while the
wind pulled, snorted. piped up and hit her.
Now there was channel two hundred
feet wide and deadly shoals on each hand
unseen but not unheard, for ever and
again. the old sloop tore through the
seas half buried to leeward. their BOOM
ings Numbered on either side.
Through the blindness she slashed, now
luff1ng. now running free. now pinched
into the wind, twisted and doubled, skinned
sandy traps SO close that her rudder pulled
kissing through the very backwash OF the
breaking surfs. until suddenly giant red
metal shape drove by monster stand
ing waist deep in the rolling water.
The Run for Harbor.
Around went the tiller and over went
the sheets, each rope and reef point crack
ing now with ice, as the sloop passed the
channel buoy, with a clear course before
her, to run for New York harbor that lay
beyond a maze of shadows and white
water fifteen miles away to the west. in a
storm which drove so thickly that from
the helm it was impossible to see more
than vague shadowy something which
was the vessels tlbSai.
Now every wave that ran at her was
bigger than she was. She shook them off
her bows twirled them aside, reeled over
them before they broke, a score of times.
But ever and again one would rise hollow
fronted before her very bowsprit, its crest
breaking fountain-like high in the air, to
cascade down on her with hundred gal
Ions of salt water
Our yellow oilskins were buckled tight
around necks and wrists. and our sea boots
were strapped fast to the hips. Yet the
shattering seas found us out and rained
down our backs and legs. Soon the OIL
skins were CLASSY with ice, and at last
each of us was ice-armored with nothing
free except face and hands, kept SO by dint
of rubbing the freezing spray off every few
moments
Going Blind but True.
Somewhere in the east the sun was ris-
Ing A vague tightening of the gloom told
of 1t. No other sign of day came. Not a
buoy, not a mark of any kind had been
sighted. Yet the old sloop tore on, unde-
waiting. and the old captain sat relaxed in
his place, twiddling the tiller and peering