Drift from Two Shores | Page 3

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DRIFT FROM TWO SHORES
by BRET HARTE

CONTENTS
DRIFT FROM TWO SHORES
THE MAN ON THE BEACH
TWO SAINTS OF THE FOOT-HILLS
"JINNY"
ROGER CATRON'S FRIEND
"WHO WAS MY QUIET FRIEND?"
A GHOST OF THE SIERRAS
THE HOODLUM BAND
THE MAN WHOSE YOKE WAS NOT EASY
MY FRIEND, THE TRAMP
THE MAN FROM SOLANO
THE OFFICE SEEKER
A SLEEPING-CAR EXPERIENCE
MORNING ON THE AVENUE
WITH THE ENTREES

DRIFT FROM TWO SHORES

THE MAN ON THE BEACH

I
He lived beside a river that emptied into a great ocean. The narrow strip
of land that lay between him and the estuary was covered at high tide
by a shining film of water, at low tide with the cast-up offerings of sea
and shore. Logs yet green, and saplings washed away from inland
banks, battered fragments of wrecks and orange crates of bamboo,
broken into tiny rafts yet odorous with their lost freight, lay in long
successive curves,-- the fringes and overlappings of the sea. At high
noon the shadow of a seagull's wing, or a sudden flurry and gray squall
of sand- pipers, themselves but shadows, was all that broke the
monotonous glare of the level sands.
He had lived there alone for a twelvemonth. Although but a few miles
from a thriving settlement, during that time his retirement had never
been intruded upon, his seclusion remained unbroken. In any other
community he might have been the subject of rumor or criticism, but
the miners at Camp Rogue and the traders at Trinidad Head, themselves
individual and eccentric, were profoundly indifferent to all other forms
of eccentricity or heterodoxy that did not come in contact with their
own. And certainly there was no form of eccentricity less aggressive
than that of a hermit, had they chosen to give him that appellation. But
they did not even do that, probably from lack of interest or perception.
To the various traders who supplied his small wants he was known as
"Kernel," "Judge," and "Boss." To the general public "The Man on the
Beach" was considered a sufficiently distinguishing title. His name, his
occupation, rank, or antecedents, nobody cared to inquire. Whether this
arose from a fear of reciprocal inquiry and interest, or from the
profound indifference before referred to, I cannot say.
He did not look like a hermit. A man yet young, erect, well- dressed,
clean-shaven, with a low voice, and a smile half melancholy, half
cynical, was scarcely the conventional idea of a solitary. His dwelling,
a rude improvement on a fisherman's cabin, had all the severe exterior
simplicity of frontier architecture, but within it was comfortable and
wholesome. Three rooms--a kitchen, a living room, and a
bedroom--were all it contained.
He had lived there long enough to see the dull monotony of one season
lapse into the dull monotony of the other. The bleak northwest
trade-winds had brought him mornings of staring sunlight and nights of

fog and silence. The warmer southwest trades had brought him clouds,
rain, and the transient glories of quick grasses and odorous beach
blossoms. But summer or winter, wet or dry season, on one side rose
always the sharply defined hills with their changeless background of
evergreens; on the other side stretched always the illimitable ocean as
sharply defined against the horizon, and as unchanging in its hue. The
onset of spring and autumn tides, some changes among his feathered
neighbors, the footprints of certain wild animals along the river's bank,
and the hanging out of party-colored signals from the wooded hillside
far inland, helped him to record the slow months. On summer
afternoons, when the sun sank behind a bank of fog that, moving
solemnly shoreward, at last encompassed him and blotted out sea and
sky, his isolation was complete. The damp gray sea that flowed above
and around and about him always seemed to shut out an intangible
world beyond, and to be the only real presence. The booming of
breakers scarce a dozen rods from his dwelling was but a vague and
unintelligible sound, or the echo of something past forever. Every
morning when the sun tore away the misty curtain