The Republican journal., 1912-09-19


soon hove INSIGHT. It has, like most of
Mr.. Flaglers' hotels, wide colonaded
piazzas and, with it's white painted clap
boards and green blinds, suggests New
England. At this hostelry number of
Belfast people have put up in years gone
by: the families of the late Mr.. Charles
B. Hazeltine and Mrs. Richard Chenery,
Mrs. Pratt, myself, and others. From
this familiar landmark, full of pleasant
associa tons, we slipped swiftly up the
beach, having already passed the monu
ment which marks the spot where some
half dozen years ago New England
coaster and all hands were lost; and so
on all through the night we flew before
the following gale, until, after picking up
the powerful occulting gas-buoy at st.
John 8 Bar whose sudden flashes, by the
way, we saw before we did the fixed
white light at the entrance to the st.
Johns River. n feet high and supposed
to be visible fourteen and One-half miles
at sea.
We arrived just after daylight at May
port, one hundred odd miles north of
Mosquito Inlet Bar, l had turned in at
2 a. m. for cat nap. A little later
Charlie called me to look at light he
had made out in the East through the
haze. He wasn't sure whether it was a
lighthouse or vessel. took squint
at it through sleep-laden eyes and recog
nlzed the last quarter of the waning
moon, which for the past week had been
setting during my watch on deck.
In all this remarkable run not craft
except our own did we see or hear, ur-
til we met the great sand-sucker which
keeps the channel clear, coming out over
St. Johns bar, to dump her early ma
final cargo of dredged material. She
plunged into the old swell, heaving in
from seward, until her forward deck
was nearly awash, so heavily was she
loaded, while Myrtle mounted the rollers
as they approached, and rode them like a
duck.
Next, just inside of the jetties, we
passed gang of men about to set off a
charge of dynamite to break up the
wreck of the German steamer ''Zuburg,"
Capt. Won Rosen master. He had at
tempted to cross St. Johns bar without
pilot, and not being familiar with the
soundings lost her on the south jetty,
after missing the channel by few hun
dred feet only. Her decks were awash
at high water;and bristling with troupe
of actors and actresses, as supposed pas
sengers and crew, they and her battered
sides had figured in moving picture shows
throughout the past winter all over the
country.
The old white auxiliary schooner yacht
like pilot-boat Meta of Al tons burden,
and built as many years ago, presently
attracted our attention and reciprocated
our interest. From her station mornings
I'D
buoyed, marked and lighted entrance to
the harbor of Mayport and anchored in
fine little cove just round the upper
end of the great coal pier on the left
bank and found ourselves near the St.
home.
At the office door, or more correctly at
the broad piazza of the rambling old
house, stretching along the sandy strip
that bordered the harbor front, and from
whose comfortable old rocking chairs,
every bit of passing shipping could be
seen, was greeted by the wife of Capt.
D., the secretary OF the association.
She had watched us coming in and had
already reported US. Though strangers,
we We're fellow seafarers, and as such
were made at home Immediately, with
a desk upon which to write letters and
the use of their telephone, the only one
in town, and over which | at once called
up the family of Senator Taliaferro in
Jacksonville, Is miles away. After
making arrangements to visit them and
stocking up with gasolene, ice ana grub,
| still had half day to put in at May
port, so | continued to make myself at
home, and became much interested in the
varied activities of my hostess. Her
duties We're to report every vessel to
Jacksonville after it passed over the bar,
to arrange for tugs, pilots, etc, report
disasters and the like, or even arrange a
darkey funeral, as she was doing when |
arrived. In addition she kept the books
of the Association, attended to all its
correspondence, and cooked for the uE-
married pilots and about 20-odd board
ers and hangers-on, and seemed further
to be making home for every stray
person or cat that struck the place.
While attending to these very dis
similar duties, in the most husinesslike
manner but with the same ease and un-
concern with which an ordinary New
England woman fries doughnuts, she En-
running fire of instructive conversation,
Sei-S1 III ebiiSi oai tlSIIsel, oDOuL Tue tJllOlS
and their association. | learned that it
had nine members, all good men and
true, and an enormous number of cand.-
dates, the ambition of whose life was to
become members, and from whose ranks
the board of five commissioners, them
selves appointed by the governor, APP
pointed in turn the new pilots as re-
CURED. The interesting bits of foreign
life and the queer and unusual people
her husbands calling brought to her
very threshold, and over it, and the ac-
counts of disasters they bore and those
of the wrecks she herself had played an
assisting part in, would have furnished
volume of long cruises for W. W. Jacobs.
Her own life and that of her husband,
with its peculiar restrictions and few OF
portunities to get away even for short
visits, while their desire for travel was
being constantly whetted by the passing
ships, she contrasted with the better
things she hoped for their children.
These were a boy and girl in their
teens, so thrown on each others com
partnership by their isolation here in the
hamlet of Mayport that they still cried
for each other, now separated, away at
school, where they had been sent singly.
each to the best institution of it's kind
in the State, to prepare for career.
Mrs. D. was herself, as the reader
may infer, an interesting type; an I'M
usually active, competent woman, and,
far from being unattractive with it all