The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1Stevenson, Robert Louis
General
The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson — Volume 1
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Authors, Scottish -- 19th century -- Correspondence; Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 -- Correspondence
I was back there again to-night. There was hymn-singing, and general
religious controversy till eight, after which talk was secular. Mrs. S.
was deeply distressed about the boot business. She consoled me by saying
that many would be glad to have such feet whatever shoes they had on.
Unfortunately, fishers and seafaring men are too facile to be compared
with! This looks like enjoyment: better speck than Anster.
I have done with frivolity. This morning I was awakened by Mrs. S. at
the door. ‘There’s a ship ashore at Shaltigoe!’ As my senses slowly
flooded, I heard the whistling and the roaring of wind, and the lashing
of gust-blown and uncertain flaws of rain. I got up, dressed, and went
out. The mizzled sky and rain blinded you.
[Picture: Diagram]
C D is the new pier.
A the schooner ashore. B the salmon house.
She was a Norwegian: coming in she saw our first gauge-pole, standing at
point E. Norse skipper thought it was a sunk smack, and dropped his
anchor in full drift of sea: chain broke: schooner came ashore. Insured
laden with wood: skipper owner of vessel and cargo bottom out.
I was in a great fright at first lest we should be liable; but it seems
that’s all right.
Some of the waves were twenty feet high. The spray rose eighty feet at
the new pier. Some wood has come ashore, and the roadway seems carried
away. There is something fishy at the far end where the cross wall is
building; but till we are able to get along, all speculation is vain.
I am so sleepy I am writing nonsense.
I stood a long while on the cope watching the sea below me; I hear its
dull, monotonous roar at this moment below the shrieking of the wind; and
there came ever recurring to my mind the verse I am so fond of:—
‘But yet the Lord that is on high
Is more of might by far
Than noise of many waters is
Or great sea-billows are.’
The thunder at the wall when it first struck—the rush along ever growing
higher—the great jet of snow-white spray some forty feet above you—and
the ‘noise of many waters,’ the roar, the hiss, the ‘shrieking’ among the
shingle as it fell head over heels at your feet. I watched if it threw
the big stones at the wall; but it never moved them.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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