Rhymes of Galveston Bay
Years ago, when I used to run vessels on Galveston Bay and along the coast, I gathered up some stories told by old boatmen on nights when we lay wind-bound. Later I put them into rhyme and I may have tried to ornament them with some phrases of my own. Some of the “Rhymes” were published in the Galveston News, 1910, and later came out in the Texas Magazine (Houston).
The Boat That Never Sailed
(Note: In the early 70’s the hull of a boat, all overgrown with vines and briers, was found at a place then known as Hungry Cove, on San Jacinto Bay. The story of it was told me by an old boatman who had been a settler of that section of the country for many years.)
Like the moan of a ghost that is doomed to rove,
Is the voice of the wind in Hungry Cove.
And the brier bites with a sharper thorn
Than the fang of hate, or the tooth of scorn.
And the twining vines are as cunningly set
As ever a poacher placed snare or net.
And the waves are hushed, and they move as slow
As fugitives making headway, tiptoe.
For Nature remembers, as well as Man,
The time and the place, and the Mary Ann.
The time, man-measured, was long ago,
Some seventy fleeting years, or so.
The place, where the sea was with light agleam,
And the shore shone white as a maiden’s dream.
And the Mary Ann—how a prayer prevailed!—
Was the name of the boat that never sailed.
For the men who built it, a blackguard twain,
Had taken a maiden’s pure name in vain.
And she prayed that for taunts, and for many mocks,
The boat would not move from its building blocks.
But the builders laughed at the maiden’s prayer,
And spit on her name they had painted there.
And they swore, in defiance of God and man,
They would launch the boat they had named Mary Ann.
But when they stood ready at stern and stem,
The boat fell down on the heads of them.
And no one came to where crushed they lay,
And no one will come until judgment day.
For their guards are briers with thorns that bite
With a pain as keen as the sting of spite.
And their only dirge is the song of the loon,
When the sea is black, in the dark of the moon.
The Padre’s Beacon1
(Note: Boatmen, at night, staring into the fog and haze in search of certain marks and objects, often think to see them, only to have them disappear again when they blink their eyes. These visual illusions are called Padre’s Beacons. An old boatman, many years ago, told how the name originated, and his story is here set down in rhyme.)
With eager eyes an Indian peered
Into the darkness of the night,
And his canoe he swiftly sheered
From right to left, from left to right;
For lost within the blinding fog,
He saw the mad waves roll and toss,
And found both snag and sunken log
But not the Padre’s beacon cross.
He dipped his paddle in the sea,
And found its depth now less, now more;
And where he thought the Pass would be
He only found a weedstrewn shore.
He questioned of the hidden star,
And counseled with the waning moon,
But found no answer, near or far,
Only the lone cry of the loon.
And he had steered by wave and wind
To where the beacon cross should be,
That marked the place where all might find
The way into the Trinity.
For there, ’mong cypress trees grown gray,
The padre’s little hut showed white,
Beneath a shining cross by day,
And in a taper’s gleam by night.
But vandal hands had cut adrift
The padre’s beacon in the night,
And without prayer, and without shrift,
A sea wrecked soul at dawn took flight.
And now who sails the bay at night,
And scans the dark with eager eyes,
Out of the sea, grown gray with light,
Can see a beacon cross arise.
For since that night long, long ago,
When clouds hang wide and fogs lie deep,
For him that laid that beacon low
There is no rest in death, or sleep;
All night he lifts it from the sea,
All night he strives, and strives in vain;
He stands it up, but when set free
It sinks into the sea again.
Baffle Point
(Baffle Point is on the north side of Bolivar peninsula, in what is known as East Bay. Many small sail-boats have been dismasted and upset in the vicinity of this point.)
A boatman loved a maiden, long ago,
And good and fair was she;
A maiden loved a boatman, even so,
And strong and true was he;
And one dark night the lovers sailed away
To where the good priest dwelt, across the bay.
A father’s heart grew fierce with raging hate,
And cruel as could be;
But he would plan and work, and work and wait—
A cunning man was he;
He swore that boatmen all, excepting none,
Should penance pay for the sin of one.
He planned and worked, and then he worked and planned,
Not idle night or day;
Sentinel sandhills raised he on the strand
In some mysterious way;
On sloping hills he planted phantom trees
That changed their shapes with every changing breeze.
Now when the south wind, singing, came inshore,
As gentle as could be,
For it he opened wide a cavern door
That none but him could see;
And then the trees would groan, and cringe, and sway,
Casting long shadows over shore and bay.
When the work was done as he had planned,
He laughed and danced in glee;
Then as the waters of the bay he scanned,
A boat his eyes did see;
And then the south wind in the cavern pent
Over the hills down to the sea he sent.
When he saw the wind in madness reel,
And strike the little boat,
And how down went the mast and up the keel,
A glad cry left his throat.
The waters grew quiet and dull as a sea of lead;
A man and woman at his feet lay dead.
By them, some boatmen found him, long ago,
As dead as he could be;
Deep, deep, they dug two graves, and all arow
At night they buried three.
Since then the winds are ever out of joint,
And play strange tricks and pranks at Baffle Point.
Point Sesenta
(Note: All that is left of Point Sesenta—presumably so called from the sixty (sesenta) trees—is a reef known as Fisher’s Reef, on the north shore of Trinity Bay. The story of the Point was told to me by Captain James Armstrong, just as it had been told to him by an old Indian chief whose tribe used to visit the bay shore many, many years before the Republic.)
The mocking birds sang in the sixty trees,
And Inez walked in their shadow;
The soft winds came laughing from southern seas,
And the bay seemed a green-waved meadow;
But a wealth of song, and of wind and water,
Requites not the love of an Indio’s daughter.
Don Miguel’s pastures lay far and wide,
His herds by peons were tended,
But all he possessed was as naught beside
Fair Inez so young and splendid.
Still his heart was sore, for the winds kept saying:
“The trees sesenta are graying, graying.”
Inez the fair walked ’neath the moss-grown trees,
By the side of her gray-grown lover;
And oft times she dreamed that o’er many seas
He had come like a brave young rover;
But when for sight of him her dark eyes gleamed
They met dim eyes in a face deep seamed.
Then out of the north came a viking ship,
With a viking young and brawny;
A snare for love was his tender grip,
And a net were his locks so tawny.
Wherever man goes over hill and hollow,
There a woman loving him dares to follow.
Ah, that is the tale told in every zone,
A story told over and over.
Don Miguel one morning found Inez flown,
And the ship, and the bold young rover.
And the winds were hushed, and the trees unshaken,
And the birds had fled, their nests forsaken.
The boatmen passing beheld the trees,
Saw how they all were dying;
The winds grew fierce and angered the seas,
And the flurrying sands went flying,
Until Point Sesenta was quite departed,
And left but a name and a place uncharted.
Gumman Gro
(Note: Gumman Gro is phonetic Swedish for “The Woman Gray.” Skell, master of Sweet Cecilia, was a Swede; he and his boat disappeared from Galveston Bay one night and were never heard of again.)
They said that Gumman Gro had a great store
Of private treasure hid in Lone Tree Cove;
That she with cunning eyes watched sea and shore,
And that a curse was upon all who strove,
Always in vain, to cross the line afar
That she had marked outside of shoal and bar.
And it was said that many who had rushed
Upon the Cove with favoring wind and tide,
Had come away with heart and spirit crushed,
Bereft of courage and of manly pride,
To live their lives perpetual exiles,
Beyond the reach of cheering songs and smiles.
And so the boatmen, sailing up and down,
From Lone Tree Cove would sheer their boats away;
For on the shore a small hut loomed up brown,
And in the doorway stood a woman gray;
Whence she had come, or when, none seemed to know,
But Skell, the boatman, named her Gumman Gro.
And Skell would laugh the hearty laugh that springs
Straight from the hearts of men when young and strong,
While with a merry jest at men and things
He sailed his course, and hummed a seaman’s song;
Oft in passing Lone Tree Cove he’d sheer
His boat more close, and shout a word of cheer.
Then one dark night a storm swept o’er the bay,
And the mosquito fleet was scattered wide;
And many men and boats until this day
Have not returned to watch for wind and tide;
And ’mong the missing ones that all loved well,
Was Sweet Cecilia, and her master, Skell.
Often on nights when winds and tides are fair,
On nights of calm, when God’s stars search the deep,
Sounds from afar, like multitudes in prayer,
Across the waters to lone boatmen creep,
And then they see the dead sail to and fro,
But none knows whence they come, or where they go.
After the storm, when winds came from the west
On nights like these, Skell’s ghost from Lone Tree Cove
Set sail, so seamen saw; then on Skell pressed
To shun the shoals; straight out for the deep he drove,
But just so far he came, and then he stopped,
As if an anchor sternward had been dropped.
Then from the shore a cry, half laugh, half pain,
Mocking and pleading, rose, and dipped, and fell,
Stirring the waters like a shower of rain,
While Sweet Cecilia, and her master, Skell,
A moment wavered like a light wind blown,
Then flashed across the darkness and were gone.
Thus every night, when out of sunset land
The warm winds came and drowsed upon the bay,
Skell and his Sweet Cecilia left the strand,
And sailed and sailed as if to sail away;
And every night that cry, half laugh, half pain,
Would pleading come and call him back again.
This is the tale that old-time boatmen told,
One to the other, long, long years ago;
But not the greediest for shining gold
Would risk the fearful curse of Gumman Gro—
He’d hope, at last, whatever else befell,
Death would not land him where it landed Skell.
Notes
1 Cf. Southey’s “The Inchcape Rock.”—Editor.